The Skill of Acting in Upbringing

Self-analysis is the most important thing. Therefore, it is very important to teach children the skill of acting. They have to be able to step out of themselves, put their “selves” aside, and play a different role. Say, I want to become another person. How do I imagine that person? How do I act him out? And how do I take my “self” and put it aside? This is the art of acting, and it is very important for a child. This enables him to impersonate and thereby understand others. Every child has to learn it, as well as psychology, and other techniques.

There has to be a very serious dialectic preparation, especially during the first several years of life, since the foundation of the future person starts forming at age 6 and is completed by age 9 or 10. After that it only develops.

– Can acting be used in the form of games already at age 6?

– Certainly! Children love playing this game because through it they get to know themselves. A child starts to understand: How do I look at the world and other people differently as I change? By doing that, children prepare themselves for the perception of a qualitatively new world.

– Based on your advice, we held a game called “a court case over egoism” where children exchanged roles. The children really enjoyed taking part in it, but interestingly, when we offered the adults to do the same, it frightened them and they refused.

– You see! This is why we have to work with children. They have to go through all the various situations in this court, experience different roles, and that way experience themselves from different sides: Now I’m playing the role of the accused, now I am the accuser, now I am his advocate, and now I just want to figure out what is happening to him, and so on. This way, they won’t be afraid. But we, adults, do not understand this. We are closed off inside of ourselves. And yet, we have to raise our children to be free from themselves.