Celibel Capellan

Prof. Ewan

FIQWS

04-03-2019

What Are The Impacts Of Puppetry On Children Education?

In history puppetry was seen as a form of entertainment that uses puppets as a way to entertain people. It did not matter whether the people were young or old puppets were still made to entertain. However, as time went on, puppetry is now being seen and used as a tool to help educate children in their education. Puppets used in children education had supposably shown a great influence on a child learning. Whether it’s their behavior,interaction, or how/what they learn through the course of using them it is shown that puppets leave some type of impact on these children education.

There have been times where puppets are used to teach children which at times influence the way they interact or behave in their teacher lessons.  Mark B. Lev is a jewish educator and author of  “SOME USES OF PUPPETRY IN JEWISH EDUCATION.” Journal of Jewish Education, who had a difficulty in teaching a little girl basic Hebrew conversation when he was an undergraduate because the little girl kept on resisting on not learning the required material (48). When trying to make the girl speak and learn Lev kept having difficulty in trying to teach the little girl because of her resistance but that changed once he brought his puppet to one of their lessons (Ibid.). The puppet was named Notcher and with the use or help of Notcher, Lev was able to make the little girl speak and learn the basic Hebrew conversations which increased the progress of the child learning compared to how it was before (Lev, Mark 49). With the use of Notcher, a puppet, the little girl even wrote flashcards in her spare time as a way to help Notcher speak English considering Lev introduced Notcher as an only speaking Hebrew character (Lev, Mark B 49). This influenced the little girl to interact and change her behavior since she stopped resisting to learn and she began to talk Hebrew compared to how she was alone with Lev, “polite, diffidently” (Lev, Mark B 48 through 49) and resistant. This is where one can question the difference between a teacher teaching and a puppet being used in a lessons or in a class. The little girl in Lev lesson resisted to learn the material which caused the progress of the little girl learning to decrease compared to when Lev brought out his puppet. When the puppet was brought out the progress of the little girl learning began to increase because she wanted the puppet to learn how to speak English influencing her to interact more in the lesson and change her behavior of resisting to learn the material. When looking at this one can obviously tell that a change occurred when Lev brought out his puppet causing a difference to show between him and his puppet. The little girl kept resisting the material whenever Lev himself tried to teach her but the little girl did not resist when the puppet was brought to the lesson showing the difference between the pace Lev was having with the child and the pace the puppet was having with the child. Based on this alone one can say that the difference between a teacher and a puppet have is that a puppet can help speed up the learning process of a child while still influencing them to interact in the lesson while a teacher would still have progress but they would have to deal with stubborness from a child or more.

Unlike puppets used in jewish education, puppets are also now being used to educate children health which plays a big influence on a child learning. Authors Ackland Tilbrook, Trudy Dwyer, Kerry Reid-Searl, Judia A Parson from “A Review of the Literature – The Use of Interactive Puppet Simulation in Nursing Education and Children’s Healthcare.” Nurse Education in Practice, discusses about nurses using puppets as a play therapy in children healthcare education and author R.A. Hoey from “Puppetry Health Education.” Health Education Journal, discusses about the use of puppets in health education which both help bring out this big influence. The influence that these puppets have on children health education and “every health educator should hold” (Hoey, R.A 47) is that it makes them feel less anxious or worried before going through a surgical process (Tilbrook et al. 74-75). The puppets are being used to model how their surgery is going to be and why they must take the surgery which helps lessen the child anxiety since they are being modeled or educated about their surgery by a puppet who acts like a friend to them. Puppets as well as impacts how the children are being taught about to take care of their health (Tilbrook et al. 74). Like stated before they are being used to model how they are supposed to do these things and why they must do them. This influence the way children take care of their health because the puppets are showing how they must take care of their health or how they should take care of their health problems if they have any. This also helps answer the question of whether the use of puppets, a non living object or doll, is beneficial towards children in their education which in some way it could be seen as that they do benefit a child and their education considering puppets are helping decrease the level of anxiety that these children feel before going to a surgery process and they help increase their knowledge of their health and demonstrate how to maintain healthy or how to remain a healthy child. The use of puppets also helps children engage in group discussions helping strengthen their communication skills or interaction with others (Tilbrook et al. 74). By using puppets in groups it would influence children to participate or join in the discussions since the use of puppets can cause a friendly relationship with the children. Like stated before that having this friendly relationship causes the child to feel a sense comfortability when engaging in the discussions with other people or children in this case.

Whether puppetry impacts a child education, some people say . There are some that say that the use of puppets does not really influence a variety of children majorly older ones. They say this because a lot of those children believe “that they are too mature to watch a puppet” (Lev 56) or even listen to them. This can cause one to question whether the use of puppetry is suitable for teaching. Considering the age range of children that a puppet has a influence towards is limited they still are a suitable teaching tool towards the age they can influence.

As puppetry use broadend to the educational field an impact on children education was seen based on these evidence. The use of puppets had impacted the way children interacted and behaved in lessons by not resisting to learn and speaking about the material (Lev 48-49). Puppetry also impacted the way that children feel before going to their surgery and how they about taking care their health. The use of puppets helped decrease their level of anxiety and distress and it helped them join in discussions about taking care your own health (Tilbrook et al. 74-75). Therefore, one can say that the use of puppets in children education leaves a positive impact on children that reaches their age range.