ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the relationship between the creation of moments of intense beauty in drama education that coincide with, and provide powerful learning for, social justice. Drama acts as an antidote to the neoliberal agenda where schools are merely places where children are prepared for adult work. The chapter considers the importance of the moments within the wider political context of globalised capitalism and education policy. In New Zealand Global Educational Reform Movement (GERM) policies, including national standards, the devastation of the advisory services in curriculum areas, and the publication of national standards data, have increased pressure on state schools to reduce their curriculum to the testing of literacy and numeracy. The empathetic impulse of walking in someone else's shoes sits at the heart of drama education and so the marginalisation and diminution of drama education as deliberate GERM policy can be seen as a direct threat to democracy.
