Components: Radio Plays – Self Guided Learning
Timing: 60 minutes
Mode: In-class; Online
Instructors can assign either Radio Play 1 and its accompanying commentary or Radio Play 2 and its accompanying commentary for students to listen to online or in class. Students should listen to their assigned play and take note of words and ideas that they find judgmental, value-laden, or even discriminatory. These notes can be used as a basis for in-class small discussion groups about how human behaviour might be considered ordinary from one perspective, and a medical or social problem from another.
Radio Play 1: The Daydreamer – 25 minutes
Donald’s father is unfair and distant, and his mother undermines his sense of accomplishment and ability. No wonder the troubled teenager escapes into daydreaming, with tragic results.
Listen to the radio play The Daydreamer.
Listen to sociologist Kathy Kendall put The Day Dreamer in context.
Radio Play 2: The Woman Who Turns Back – 25 minutes
Frances is a reliable young woman with a good job and a nice boyfriend. When her roommate Ruby recklessly quits her job and foolishly loses her boyfriend, she turns to Frances for support. Affection and disaster ensue.
Listen to the radio play The Woman Who Turns Back.
Listen to sociologist Kathy Kendall discuss The Woman Who Turns Back, demonstrating how psychotherapist Sigmund Freud’s notions of “normal” social and sexual development and behaviour shaped understandings of mental well-being in the Post-World War Two era.
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