I was in the video store recently and the staff there were watching, of all things, a Dick Cavett show episode from the early 1970s with comedian Bill Cosby, who was talking about his involvement with the PBS kids educational television show The Electric Company. There was an interesting discussion about using film and television to teach.
Lo and behold, on this same topic, while going through my feeds, I find a wonderful post The "Eye Generation" by Jim Brown in the Blogging Pedagogy blog from the University of Texas about the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle and visual literacy:
But, more to the point, Blackboard Jungle was trotting out
this "visual learners" argument in 1955. One of the ways that the
teacher in the film reaches his students is by showing them a cartoon
and then having them analyze the stories.
The cartoon the teacher, Mr. Dadier, played by actor Glenn Ford, shows is a version of Jack and the Beanstalk. It leads to an engaging class discussion of the ethics of Jack's situation.
During the scene, there are several frequent medium closeup shots of the students who are enthusiastically warming to the topic, interspersed with shots of the leader of the thugs, played by actor Vic Morrow, with a face reflecting his realization that he has lost control of his group of students to the teacher. It is an important dramatic turning point in the film.
Even more interesting is the exchange in the film by the teachers afterwards. Upon hearing that Glenn Ford had used a film in class to enliven the students, another teacher remarks,
Visual education, huh?
Mr. Dadier (Ford) replies,
Not really. I was just trying to get their attention.
Bingo! That was what really happened in that scene: it was not a question of teaching with visuals, it was an issue of: this is what it takes to get their attention. Having gotten their attention with a visual form, the actual teaching was through a classroom conversation.
The attention getting device might been a picture. Or a film. Or a poem. Or anything. Glenn Ford's character knew his students and used a cartoon.
It might have been music, too. One of the subplots of the film is another teacher who is a lover of jazz, who brings his precious and rare jazz records to school, only to have them vandalized by the thug students.
He failed because it wasn't just the form, it wasn't that it was audio, it was that it was old fashion, irrelevant, square jazz. There's a reason this film was the first with a rock and roll soundtrack, and starts with the attention getting snare drum snap! of Rock Around the Clock.
If Glenn Ford's Mr. Dadier had chosen one of those dull instructional videos made by the proponents of "Visual Education" he would have gotten his film project smashed.
But he didn't. He used an appropriate Visuality to get their attention, engage them, then shifted it to a discussion. That's the key, making that shift.
That's the difference between entertainment and education.