Chapter 4

Brechtian TEachIng and open Source code

as pedagogical tools

Brecht saw in each play or performance an opportunity to influence as well as educate his audience. An underlying purpose behind many of his plays was to collapse the distinction between the performance and the audience. This was one of the reasons behind the development of his Lehrstücke; to perform his pieces in a didactic manner for those in attendance. Yet, the pedagogical method he promoted was not limited only to on-stage performances only but was intended for reproduction in other locations, particularly in schools and among the youth. Theater as an art form superceded the stage and permeated all aspects of society. Brecht states in his treatise, Kleine Organum für das Theater, “Das Theater, wie wir es vorfinden, zeigt die Struktur der Gesellschaft (abgebildet auf der Bühne) nicht als beeinflußbar durch die Gesellschaft”.[1]

Brecht’s learning plays were also intended for the performers themselves. Brecht envisioned his “teaching plays” as functioning as a “theater without an audience” or a “Spielen für sich selber”.[2] According to Reiner Steinweg, Brecht considered the theater a place of self-understanding and self-instruction, or a “Theater zur Selbstverständigung und Selbstbelehrung”.[3] Each stage prop was meant to typify or clarify some item meant for teaching. Even the text in Brecht’s plays was intended as a standard from which the actors and actresses could critique their own performance as well as expand upon to vary their stage presence.[4] The adaptability of Brecht’s text was aimed at instructing theater goers as well as educating the performers. Given the freedom to modify the text to their interpretation rather than adhere to an inflexible format, the Brechtian Lehrstück has become one of the most recognizable of Brecht’s theatrical formats.

In the latter half of the 20th century there have been advocates of Brecht’s Lehrstücke among the youth. Hans Ritter cites one of many examples in his treatise, “Auf dem Weg zum Lehrstück in der Schule”,[5] where students in the later 1960s and early 1970s in West Germany adopted the Brechtian model as their own. Though their rendition of the Brechtian play, “Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar” is not categorized specifically as being a “learning play”,[6] the students adopted the basic principles of a learning play to their own performances. They were first prompted to think dialectically and then encouraged to political activism by means of the play’s content and by their commitment to see the performance realized. Though the school authorities confronted them by prohibiting an official staging of the play, the discussion regarding the performance incited much discussion about the ongoing Vietnam War and other conflicts that had been fought and were being waged at the time. The result of the students’ efforts follows Brecht’s writings in Theorie der Pädagogien as documented by Hans Ritter.

Zwischen der wahren Philosophie und der wahren Politik ist kein Unterschied. Auf diese Erkenntnis folgt der Vorschlag des Denkenden, die jungen Leute durch Theaterspielen zu erziehen, das heißt, sie zugleich zu Tätigen und Betrachtenden zu machen.[7]

It was this same goal of inspiring students to political activism through stage performance that motivated Brecht to write his now famous Lehrstücke in the late 1920s and early 1930s of Weimar Germany. Of the six works that are expressly classified as Lehrstücke, four of those were meant for instruction of students or school children. His play Der Lindberghflug, which was later renamed Der Ozeanflug, was intended as a “radio learning play for boys and girls - a pedagogical undertaking” (ein Radiolehrstück für Knaben und Mädchen - ein pädagogisches Unternehmen). Der Jasager / Der Neinsager was identified as a “school opera” (Schuloper) or “learning play for schools” (Lehrstück für Schulen). Likewise, his plays Die Ausnahme und die Regel and Die Horatier und die Kuriatier are classified as “plays for schools” (Stücke für Schulen). Those that were not specifically intended for school performance were Das Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis and Die Maßnahme.[8]

Brecht’s intent was to enlighten the performers, which, they convey in turn to the spectators by means of their Gestus, an acting theory put forth by Brecht.[9] One of the characteristics of this method of acting as put forth by Brecht was the rejection of improvisation and the use of direct citation instead. Brecht first touches upon this concept as he expounds upon his theories of Verfremdungs Effekte in his treatise “Neue Technik der Schauspielkunst”.

... bringt der Schauspieler seinen Text nicht wie eine Improvisation, sondern wie ein Zitat. Dabei ist es klar, daß er in dieses Zitat alle Untertöne, die volle menschliche, konkrete Plastik der Äußerung zu geben hat; wie auch die Geste, die er vorzeigt und die nunmehr eine Kopie darstellt, die volle Leiblichkeit einer menschliche Geste haben muß.[10]

This idea was a precursor to his later identified practice of Gestus. According to John Willett, the term Gestus, is an amalgamation of the terms “gesture” and “gist” which describe an individual’s “gest” as in “gesture”. How the individual acts and reacts to others based on his or her social position by means of easily identifiable codes of behavior in relationship to others constitutes the core of Brecht’s Gestus. From out of new ideas Brecht hoped to educate both parties involved; the performers to better understand the context of their role on stage and in private as well as engaging the audience in a virtual dialogue with the performers. Brecht’s search for a unique learning experience was realized partly in his pedagogical pieces or Lehrstücke.

This chapter examines the method in which Brecht created an educational experience for his performers and for those attending his plays. It also considers the target audiences Brecht influenced. The focus then shifts to open source software as a means of instructing individuals in a manner not unlike Brecht’s, by creating a correspondence, explained in computer terminology as establishing a network connection between the programmer/developer and the end user.

The Basis of Learning Plays

Brecht envisioned theater and radio not only as forms of entertainment, but also as didactic platforms. His “learning plays” or Lehrstücke are a direct result of his pedagogical efforts, in which he focused primarily on instruction through performance. The term Lehrstück is also understood as Lehrtheater and could be construed as having a political as well as educational undertone. According to some, it was Brecht’s intention to initiate political action through performances, which would in turn bring about social reform.[11] This remained Brecht’s focus well into the early part of the 1930s where the purpose of his “learning plays” was political activism and educating youth. With the change in government and the National Socialist’s rise to power Brecht went into exile and abandoned much of the format of his earlier Lehrstücke, while still trying to bring about change through his other plays.

There were several factors that influenced Brecht’s objective in creating learning plays for the audience, the primary being the audience members themselves. Brecht wanted to create protagonists out of the audience members and incite them to dramatic action. Secondly, Brecht shifted the focus of the theater from the past to the future through the idea of “ludus” or “play”. [12] This concept is an integral part of education dating back to Plato and Aristotle. During the early portion of the 20^th century and within the pedagogical practices of the day a rift had developed between play and learning, or “das Spielen und das Lernen”. Each was viewed more in opposition to the other, rather than being interconnected as was previously thought.[13] Brecht, however, saw it otherwise, which has since been further substantiated through actual practice. He considered “play” to be one of the most important means of learning. Brecht supports this idea within his text “Kleines Organum für das Theater”, in which he writes, “Seit jeher ist es das Geschäft des Theaters wie aller andern Künste auch, die Leute zu unterhalten. Dieses Geschäft verlieht ihm immer seine besondere Würde; es benötigt keinen andern Ausweis als den Spaß, diessen freilich unbedingt.”[14] Even Brecht considered “Spaß” or enjoyment an essential component of the theater.

This same premise of play being educational has been substantiated through the child development theories of Jean Piaget, who discovered that role playing and theatrical acting function as centerpieces to human creativity and thus are integral to the development and nurturing of individuals.[15] Several of Brecht’s learning plays were subsequently structured specifically for children and youth. For example, Brecht had children in mind when he made plans to write his play “Leben des Konfutse”. According to his own writings, “das Stück sei für ein Theater geschrieben, das Kinder als Schauspieler habe”.[16]

Just as his plays with children in leading roles were intended to edify other youth, Brecht intended these same plays to be for the edification of adults. Intended to operate like the moral plays from the Middle Ages or plays of the Enlightenment, Brecht’s Lehrstücke carried a definite message which was aimed at the average theater attendee. The French author Henri Guilbeaux positively assessed Brecht’s new genre of teaching in an April 1929 article for the Berliner Tageblatt. In his opinion, Brecht’s teaching plays are equivalent to moral plays. He stated the following:

Das Theater wird belehrend wirken, ohne in das didaktische und schulmäßige Genre zu verfallen. Die Parabel – das, was Bert Brecht „Lehrstück“ nennt – wird ohne Zweifel in diesem Sinne eine der Formeln sein, wenn nicht überhaupt die Formel des völlig erneuerten, entblößten, gemäßigten und schweren Theaters.[17]

Guilbeaux understood that Brecht was reinventing Theater and changing it from a form of entertainment back into its former purpose, communal education for all people.

When Bertolt Brecht initially began his cooperative effort in creating Lehrstücke with his musical partner, Kurt Weill, in the late 1920s, which resulted in their early and most effective Lehrstücke, both placed great hope in the emerging medium of radio as a forum through which they could begin their instruction.[18] This mass diffusion of thought and speech by means of radio broadcasts appeared to be the most effective method of reaching the largest listening base with the least amount of effort. While many of the other composers and writers of their day treated media with disdain, Brecht viewed radio as an opportunity to renew from the ground up the entire schema of music and instruction. As the popularity of radio grew, so too would its influence on the populace increase. With each new radio purchased, the impact Brecht and Weill would have on the growing listenership would also develop. However, they still feared that the commercialism associated with radio might cancel out their efforts. Still, in Brecht’s opinion radio remained the best medium for his learning plays as he attempted to establish a new type of theater, or as Brecht states, “Die Behandlung des Lehrstücks als Versuch, einen neuen theatralischen Typus neben anderen zu begründen”.[19] From out of this new theatrical concept, art served a specific role, being closely associated with learning. Brecht also stated the following, “Ich glaube nicht an die Trennbarkeit von Kunst und Belehrung”.[20] In other words, for Brecht all art was educational.

The format in which Brecht produced his Lehrstücke was closely tied to music, hence the close working relationship with Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, and Hanns Eisler. Brecht’s first three exploratory works in this genre, Der Lindberghflug, Der Jasager, and Die Maßnahme, were written in close association with these musical composers. Each was based on a specific musical format. Der Lindberghflug was conceived as a musical radio play or Hörspiel and was intended to work as a “radiophonische Kantate”. Der Jasager was developed with a school opera in mind, performed by students. Die Maßnahme was structured as a political oratorio. From the beginning Brecht supposed that music would form the basis for much of the conceptualization of these learning plays.[21] He saw music as a means of conveying the theatrical message in a more succinct and efficient manner. Each performance would no longer belong to the genre of dramatic literature, but would rather fall under and be used by those in the musical field. Music was to become the primary channel through which Brecht and his collaborators would teach and reinvent radio. Most of the early debate regarding Brecht’s Lehrstücke was found in the music journals. The newspaper music critics were responsible for much of the critique of Brecht’s early plays, rather than the theater and literature critics. For Eisler and Weill, composers with Brecht in his learning plays, along with the work of Paul Hindemith, who at the time was also using music for didactic purposes, the emerging music of the early 20^th century had a great influence on these composers. Jazz was especially influential in how these composers along with Brecht viewed the development of Brecht’s Lehrstücke concepts. Music gave voice to the art form that served a pedagogical purpose.

Programming Parallels

Educating fellow programmers is also a basic goal of software developers. The end results of their efforts, i.e. the software code, has tangential benefits not only for other programmers but also for the common end-user. However, as is stressed throughout this dissertation, it is only with the help of the average computer user that developers are able to improve on their product. Without feedback, suggestions for improvements and contributing patches, software development in the open source community would quickly be at a standstill. Discussion between the developer and the contributor and/or user is required for any progress in the field of computer software coding. There are very few commercial financiers, outside of the open source community, who reimburse developers for the hours spent writing open source software or software whose source code is given away. Instead, programmers write most code away from work. Feedback to improve the code base comes from other voluntary participants in the open source project. This is done for two major reasons; to diverge themselves and their software from any legal implications or ownership back to their company and also because most coding for the open source community is done for personal gratification and is usually a welcome change from programming done on company time.

In a manner similar to Brecht, who attempts to bring his audience into a dialogue with the performance and incorporating that input into later works, open source has an even greater influence in the collective work of the coders. Keeping in mind that the target audience of the open source community is primarily the coders themselves, much discussion goes on behind the scenes among the programmers and writers of code that other users may never see. In this respect, the open source analogy with Brechtian productions breaks down. While Brecht sought to bring education and enlightenment to the masses by means of his plays, most open source code is developed by and for other programmers. When it reaches a certain level of proficiency and respectability and a need arises among regular users for that particular application, then the program may be distributed more openly.

Once that point of saturation or “critical mass” is met and the free program begins to compete with its comparable proprietary counterpart then do regulars participate in the same collaborative process. Most users of these popular open source programs become contributors to the open source movement in some manner by way of the feedback and support they offer developers and others. As more users become educated in the ways and language of open source, their contributions and additions are felt throughout the computing field. They build upon the growing body of free and open source software code.

Many consider it an art form to write code in as succinct a manner as possible. Some even attach a Zen mysticism to the entire process. [22] If a function that normally requires 150 lines of code can be reduced to less than one hundred lines of code, while also increasing performance of the overall program and improving stability, i.e. it will not crash or stop functioning, then that author has created something that is esteemed by the community as having value. Though this is true in most any written genre, here it takes on added importance since the text within the lines of code actually performs an operation or makes possible the faster completion of a specific task. In other words, a two-dimensional construct achieves an added dimension through application and compilation. Artistic expression takes on a tangible function through the use of clear code writing. Compiling code into binary or machine language breathes life into written text so that it performs functions based on user input. Tasks are performed faster and results can be better substantiated through what are known as “checksums” or a proof of the resulting compilation. Comparing the compilation outcome with previous working copies corroborates the security and inherent viability of new code. Though improvements in Brecht’s own texts did not actually run some computerized device, he was constantly aiming to improve his own works through solicitations from others, redrafting former works and creating a new version of an earlier play.

Other methods of contributing to the open source movement and related code base are properly documenting the program’s features and explaining the correct methods and manners of usage. This documentation process takes several forms. It can be as simple as adding additional comments to the source code itself or it can be contributions to the project’s mailing list where feedback and bug reports are posted. The end result is that the programmers can quickly identify the problems and resolve issues for later revisions and releases. Clear and concise instructions as well as clarifications as to the proper syntax for its implementation are similar to stage instructions for theatrical performers. Much like a stage director “blocks” the actions of performers, or specifies where each actor or actress stands and moves during the performance, the programmer explains how each part of a code’s syntax works and which commands the program requires to run properly.

There are other discernible parallels between stage performance and the debugging of programmer’s code. When improperly written code fails to run correctly or “dies” when executed from the command line, it leaves behind what is called a “coredump” or a signature explaining the cause of its failure. The death of a file or its inability to properly execute its task is known as a “segmentation fault”. When a program “seg faults” it creates a file called a “core”. Using standard open source debugging tools a developer can unravel the intricacies of the program’s death by examining the “core” or coredump file. In this manner, he or she can determine where the fault lay in the code, i.e. what caused it to die and what might be changed in the code to fix it. This entire determinative process is known as “debugging”.

Brecht used a corresponding debugging process by having his performers act out their varied roles on stage. He determined whether the scene would remain or be removed based on the input of the performers themselves. Based on this input he made the necessary adjustments to the performance. With each play’s release Brecht incorporated additional elements and made corrections. Brecht did not believe in the autonomous writer or director.[23] He always worked with a team of assistants who not only researched the historical details behind his plays, but were encouraged to voice their own opinions during rehearsals. More so than anyone else of his time, Brecht recognized the non-static nature of theatrical performances. The script was always “provisional”, as no final version was fixed and no one single interpretation sufficed for all performances. The context was molded to the moment or the situation. In other words, Brecht defined theater as being a life-like representation of events then portrayed on stage. Because no event can ever reoccur exactly in the same manner, the forms these reproductions take are dynamic. He defines theater in the following manner, “‘Theater’ besteht darin, daß lebende Abbildungen von überlieferten oder erdachten Geschehnissen zwischen Menschen hergestellt warden, oder zwar zur Unterhaltung”.[24]

Getting to the Source

Open source code appeals to most users on account of the freedom it gives them to experiment with the actual code. They have at their disposal the actual writings and texts of programmers and authors of code. They can improve upon, modify or adjust anything within the code base to suit their purposes. Access to this type of knowledge provides a unique learning opportunity for users. No where else can they learn and experiment with so many different programs and applications at no cost. This freedom to test different methods of installing, editing and managing code attracts many. The lessons learned each time make open source an extremely profitable and educational resource.

Open source code is well liked in university environments on account of its ease of use, low cost and instructional value. Many college computer instructors use Linux as the platform of choice for student code composition. Linux acts as a tabula rasa on which students can create the coding environment of their choice, determine their visual display and set a host of other variables not available on other proprietary systems. Students are encouraged to review the works of others to learn good coding habits and techniques. It is also expected that they contribute back to any project they use and add to the total inherent value of the code.

Due to the medium with which most computer students and programmers work, it is simple enough to “cut and paste” and quickly copy existing content and claim it as one’s own. However, in order to maintain peer esteem and solicit additional help from others at a later time certain rules and codes of conduct must be followed. As explained earlier, these are several unwritten, yet universally acknowledged, rules that keep continued open source development on track. Without proper checks faulty code quickly propagates through the ranks of developers. Characters are sometimes lost in translation and lines of code go unchecked. If a program is not carefully proofed, a simple computing error can escalate and be incorporated into other projects. This degradation of quality is similar to what critics of the early radio shows and musical performances said regarding the quality of sound. The higher tonal quality is lost due to the mechanical limitations in reproduction. The performances themselves simply become “reproductions of reproductions” or “…daß Musik im Radio nur als ‘Reproduktion der Reproduktion’ zu bewerten sei - eine Art Konzertersatz, der auf Authentizität keinen Anspruch erheben könne”.[25] The quest for the original authenticity of a work or its true sound and content is the basis of all education. Students are expected to generate original works, or are required to construct original “pieces” from existing components.

Examples of new programs generated by students appears on a daily basis. These are usually collected on local web pages or in a source code repository. Two examples of source code repositories are the sites freshmeat.net[26] and SourceForge.net[27]. Though both provide references or “links” to various open source projects, the former is more a bulletin board or announcement page of projects underway, while the latter is a repository for the code itself. The SourceForge site acts as a virtual meeting room for co-developers to share and improve upon their advances in code. This same site also operates as a proving ground for the latest advances in open source computing. According to Sabine Nuss in the journal Das Argument, there are over 460,000 developers worldwide registered at SourceForge. There are also 51,398 registered projects listed on their site in active development as of November 25, 2002.[28] That number grows daily. The current number of projects hosted at SourceForge one year later now exceeds 71,000 individual projects.[29] These figures alone substantiate a profound interest in the developer community for collaborating on shared projects.

Brecht’s Pedagogical Theater

Brecht intended for his theater pieces to educate the actors and incite those in the audience to action. As his fame and reputation grew, performers sought Brecht out and were eager to learn from him directly. This was especially the case during his sojourn in the United States. Throughout the first nine years of his exile and before coming to the States, Brecht associated with other refugees. He never felt quite at home while living in Los Angeles and blamed his inability to adapt on the overwhelming emphasis on consumerism.[30] However, he was able to support himself thanks to his association with Ferdinand Reyher who assisted financially by collaborating with him on several film stories. Together they wrote Der Brotkönig lernt Brot backen. Brecht wrote the screenplay to Hangmen Also Die (1942) for the German director Fritz Lang who was also living in Hollywood.[31]

During his time in America Brecht surrounded himself with college-aged students, many of whom lived at Brecht’s residence for some period of time. Nearly all of them at one point or another were drawn into a collaborative effort with Brecht.[32] Many of the works he wrote during this time were filed away in the drawer for post-War production.[33] These students proved not only ardent admirers of Brecht but incorporated his ideals in their own works, while spending many hours working together, sharing writing and discussing various topics.[34] This was Brecht’s intention; that the students not only understand the writing behind the work, but also the performance.

Brecht’s theatrical roots are also grounded in political reform, one method of which is street performance. He derived his open air works from popular workers’ theater. The Nazis interrupted his original work in the early 1930s and he did not have the opportunity to perform and perfect his work in an open arena. Short for “agitation-propaganda”, agitprop theater was a form of political cabaret. It included short sketches and songs whose purpose was to incite a mainly partisan audience to political action. Partly improvisational and partly rehearsed, this method of acting involved appealing to the working class by ridiculing and creating a biting critique of elite, upper societal classes. Using Marxist theater theories similar and yet different to those of Erwin Piscator, Brecht used his theatrical elements for political agitation as well.[35]

In a later work, Der Messingkauf, one of Brecht’s characters puts forth the question as to whether or not the theater should be taken out of the street in order to lend the performances more credibility. “Aber ist es nicht nötig, das Theater herauszuheben aus der Straße, dem Spielen einen besonderen Charakter zu verleihen…”[36] The philosopher responds that the theater must keep intact the ties to its origins in order to maintain fresh and innovative performances. “…so muß doch der theatralischen wenigstens etwas von der ursprünglichen Funktion der alltäglichen bleiben. Gerade durch das unterstreichen der Verschiedenheit, des Professionellen, Vorbereiteten usw. erhält man diese Funktion frisch.”[37]

Brecht also used his Radiotheorie model to provoke politically charged ideas. Though he fell short of endorsing a specific political movement, as was attempted by the communist propaganda and agitators, he did see radio as a strategic social reform.[38] This and his theater productions were his primary means of motivating change. Piscator stated that it was he who invented Epic Theater in production, but it was Brecht who invented it in script.[39] Brecht approached his version of theater by going back to the story line, while Piscator returned to the documents. According to Roose-Evans in his book Experimental Theatre, Brecht “approached drama as a form of serious practical sociology, by aiming to transform society by subjecting ideologies to close scrutiny”.[40]

By limiting open source development to hobbyists and developers, who program as a diversion, the overall cost of open source is reduced. This allows students, who might not otherwise be able to afford the best software, access to peer-written and approved software. Keeping the code open to inspection developers guarantee others can learn from and correct their mistakes. The learning process becomes a two-way street, so to speak, with developers and users benefiting from each other’s knowledge.

Also according to Brecht, the true learning process is initiated from within. According to Ingrid Koudela, “Brecht schlägt vor, daß der Spieler von sich aus lernt und selber herausfindet, bis wohin er mit dem Inhalt des Stücks forgeschritten ist, anstatt sich von Anfang an mit dem Ziel des Lehrverfahrens konfrontiert zu sehen”.[41] It is the responsibility of the theatrical director to regulate that learning both to the audience and to the performers. Speaking further on the role of a theatrical director, Brecht states, “Seine Aufgabe ist, die Produktivität zu wecken, zu organisieren (…) unter Probieren versteht er nicht das Einpeitschen von vornherein in seinem Kopf Feststehendem. Er versteht darunter ein Ausprobieren”.[42]

Who better to test these theories and ideas than children? Brecht considered them the perfect blank slate since they were not subject to preconceived ideas or vulnerable to their own mental limitations. In his notations to “Leben des Konfutse”, Brecht wrote the following regarding the realization of theater by the use of children and that particular work was intended for children.

Es kann scheinen, daß man dem hohen Gegenstand nicht gerecht werden kann, wenn man ihn der Darstellung durch Kinder anvertraut. ... Außerdem wird die Darstellung eines solchen Lebens auf dem Theater, auch wenn die besten Schauspieler sie unternehmen, immer eine gewisse Unvollkommenheit anhaften, und der Stückeschreiber kann sehr wohl die Unvollkommenheit einer Darstellung durch Kinder der Unvollkommenheit einer Darstellung durch erwachsene Künstler vorziehen. Der Abstand vom Gegenstand wird bei Kinder größer erscheinen, und er kann einem geringeren Abstand vorgezogen werden. Feine psychologische Interieurs vermögen Kinder nicht zu geben – ein starker Grund, ihnen die Darstellung einer großen öffentlichen Gestalt anzuvertrauen, die alles selber formuliert hat, was sie für nützliche Information hielt.[43]

Children are more impressionable and can give a more realistic representation of reality than mature and cynical adults. Because children are also farther removed from the reality of the situation they offer a more accurate “portrayal” instead of an “act”. It is this portrayal or Darstellung that Brecht sought in his pieces. He did not wish to have the performers “be” the roles they were assigned, rather he wanted them to “demonstrate” the characters assigned them. To achieve this Brecht sometimes had the actors and actresses prefix their lines with the words, “he said” or “she said”, thus further removing them from that particular role they were reprising.[44]

Brechtian Learning Abroad

Similar to the widespread adoption of open source by developing countries, many Third World nations have openly accepted Brecht and his works into the corpus of their theatrical productions. Theater is an easy method of implementing educational reform and Brecht’s philosophy regarding theater has been widely adapted in developing nations. Brecht’s concept of theater fits in easily in those locales, not only due of the low production costs but also on account of its appeal to the working class and children. Through theater these same individuals gain life experiences and improve their educational status by both attending and interacting with Brechtian drama. Brecht’s aim to promote activism among the working class is not lost on the same individuals attending the Brechtian plays produced in these nations. The theatergoers come to a self-awareness, and an understanding of his or her role within society.

One location of notoriety where Brecht’s instructional plays have had success is in Brazil. Here the proliferation of so-called “street urchins” or children living on the street has reached epidemic proportions. Social workers recognized that the best chance of improving the condition of many of these children was to educate them. How the different Brechtian Lehrstücke were successfully implemented in Brazil is the subject of Ingrid Koudela’s 1992 book “Um vôo brechtiano: teoria e práctica da peça didática” (A Brechtian Flight: Theory and Practice of Didactic Pieces.) In it she explains the various pedagogical pieces that have been used in Brazil over the past 30 years.

She cites the overall success of Der Ozeanflug and how the audience even took part in the performance. Much of this success lies in the way Brecht’s works were tailored to fit the local audience. The use of the chorus, along with traditional Brazilian harmonics, produced a unique blending of words and rhythm that broke down the traditional relationships between spectator and performer. Brazilians are extremely musically centered. Combining these and other performances with familiar rhythms and by bringing the performance into the street with children created a universal appeal. The attraction of Brecht’s works during different political climates, from the military regime in post-Vargas Brazil to the emergence of a free democratic government over the past 15 years has also been the impetus for producing many of Brecht’s learning plays.

These political and educational messages encouraged by Brecht’s works were quickly adopted by the Brazilian educational system. Brazil dictates that children should be brought into an interactive learning process, where theatrical play is the preferred learning method.[45] The adoption of Brechtian methods and plays for use in the Brazilian educational system is growing steadily.

Improving Education through Open Source

Other countries have adopted free and open source code as the preferred method for improving their educational system. They underscore this decision with the reasoning that not only does it make financial sense to adopt free software, but having the source code available for the students to examine and emulate also improves their technological expertise. One of the more vocal nations to disband the use of proprietary software in exchange for open source was Mexico. As recently as 2001 the Mexican government announced plans to move all their proprietary software to Linux and Open Office, an office software package that comes free from Sun Microsystems and is included in many Linux versions and releases, rather then continue to pay high licensing costs and remain subject to closed source. The Linux in Education or SEUL/edu (Simple End User Linux) web site publishes a bi-monthly report outlining the most current trends among educational institutions and details the rapid changes in education as Linux becomes more commonplace among students and educators.[46] This bucking of existing trends, i.e. the rebuttal of closed source software, bodes well for future computer programmers in these regions. Since Mexico’s announcement governmental educational systems worldwide have begun promoting the adoption and use of free and open software. Denmark, Germany, France, Finland and Norway are just a few of the countries recently mentioned that have taken steps to incorporate Linux and open source applications into their educational systems, while disbanding the use of higher-cost proprietary counterparts.

It is interesting to note that, although the educators themselves see the value of using open source, there are few who actually understand how it works. The cost of employing most programmers and developers intimately familiar with open source exceeds most educational institutions’ budgets. It is the students who actually work first-hand with the software and develop the programs for actual use. Few are the managerial types who allocate sufficient budget for information technology while understanding the exact costs involved. They usually base budgeting costs on recommendations from students or users. Oftentimes, they rely on the input of paid consultants, who sometimes merely represent the interests of larger software companies and want only to sell their software. Understanding what they are selling is secondary. The bulk of the task of actually putting open source into practice and making it a part of the educational process falls on the students themselves.

As is the case in the United States, students have consistently demonstrated a better understanding of the network and operating systems than the teachers who manage most grade school and high school computer departments. Students regularly bring open source surreptitiously into the educational system. This also applies to the work place and underscores the economic reasoning for open source as is explained in Chapter 5, “Brechtian Economics and Software for the Masses”. As budgets grow tighter and the demands for more stable systems increase, students and employees have had to fall back on cheaper (and sometimes more effective) alternatives.

Speaking from experience, it is the engineers and administrators who, over time, educate management as to the most effective and cost-worthy alternatives. Just as it is in educational institutions, most absorption of open source technology occurs from the ground up, while proprietary purchases transpire from the top down. Brecht encouraged a theatrical reform that would eventually lead to a change in society; that through the education of the working class they may be able to bring about the types of social and class reforms that produce a more equal society. The importance of education and pedagogical disciplines, whether they are based in theatrical performance or in computer software and programming, cannot be overstated.