ABSTRACT
The growth of educational drama in mainland China has been significant over the past ten years, with the government increasingly advocating the place of the arts in schools and promoting their integration with other subjects, particularly at primary level. Due to strong, political centralisation in China, teachers feel most secure when responding to moral topics that the government has recently promoted or outlined in policy documents, and both schools and drama companies are quick to respond to the agendas set. When teachers do make an effort to use drama for the purposes of moral education, there are often strongly ingrained attitudes that divert them from doing so either effectively or appropriately. Feng recalls the stories told during moral education lessons when she was a young girl about young martyrs for the Republic, such as the fourteen-year-old Liu Hulan, beheaded in 1947 by the Kuomintang army for her unshakeable loyalty to the Communist party.
