Teaching With and
About Film and Television:
Integrating Media Literacy Concepts
Into Management Education
Author: Dr. Renee Hobbs
Associate Professor of Communication
Babson College, Wellesley, MA
ReneeHobbs@aol.com
Film and television's influence
on individuals and society is now so obvious that it is scarcely necessary
to provide a rationale for examining their importance. Even in casual
conversations, people are apt to make note of the impact of television
on voting patterns, use idioms they learned from popular films, discuss
relationships by referring to the similar problems of TV characters
of celebrities, talk about consumer products in the language of advertising,
and demonstrate that their understanding of the world around them has
been shaped by the images and stories received from television news,
newsmagazines shows, and TV and radio talk shows. The debate about whether
the mass media merely reflects or more powerfully shapes social values,
norms and behaviors has become nearly extinct in popular culture since
the late 1980s; the debaters have recognized that television has so
thoroughly permeated the culture as to be inseparable from it.
Still, by and large, both
scholarly research and public discourse about television's impact on
individuals and society has focused on the nature of the content of
television messages. Public attention to the always escalating sensationalism
of media content has manifest itself in concerns about the required
car explosions, sadism, terror and graphic violence in popular films;
the litany of exploitive crime stories on local news; the normalization
of dysfunctional relationships on talk shows; the ubiquity of advertising
and promotion for alcohol and tobacco consumption, and more.
But because Marshall McLuhan
established a line of inquiry thirty years ago regarding the impact
of media's formal structure on individuals and societies, a number of
scholars continue to explore the unique contributions of television
as a form of communication, for example in analyzing television's 'influence'
by examining the visual biases of the medium (Messaris, 1994; Postman,
1985) and the impact of various editing conventions on young people
(Collins, 1984; Salomon, 1979).
It is now common for scholars
in the field of communication studies to use words like 'reading' and
'text' to apply to the experience of watching television (Giroux and
Simon, 1989; Piette, 1993). But educators face a number of significant
questions when they use media in the classroom. To what extent is the
process of watching television really like or different from the activity
of reading a book? As faculty on college campuses turn to video as a
teaching tool, are we contributing to the decline of print as the dominant
medium of the academy, now that print has ceased to have relevance in
the larger culture? Or are we simply responding to the rapidly changing
cultural environment by using contemporary communication tools? As management
educators in and outside of the post-secondary environment, what skills
and knowledge must learners master in their ability to use video not
just for amusement, but as a tool for reasoning, analysis, expression
and communication?
This paper reviews some
characteristics of video-based educational materials by describing the
intellectual heritage of the movement to include media analysis and
media production as basic skills for the information age. We identify
the opportunities and challenges that management educators face in their
use of video-based tools in both business settings and in higher education.
Video, Literacy and Cognitive
Skills
The concept of 'literacy'
is a powerful one for educators--- it is at the center of almost everything
in the educational enterprise, since the process of working with texts
has been a dominant method of education for more than three hundred
years. But the definition of literacy has been subject to considerable
challenge and debate in recent years (Sizer, 1993; Giroux and Simon,
1989; Dorr & Brannon, 1992). If literacy is essentially the process
of decoding, interpreting and creating messages, then perhaps "reading"
a film or television program is not substantially different from reading
a newspaper or a novel. During the 1970s, a number of different scholarly
lines of inquiry developed in the fields of literature, art theory,
education, film studies and psychology which attempted to provide support
for this line of reasoning (Metz, 1974; Salomon, 1979).
According to this view,
images, film and television, like the printed word, are symbolic codes
that serve as arbitrary codes of representation; such image-based visual
codes must be learned by viewers in order to interpret the meaning of
an image. This perspective resulted in attempts to identify the 'grammar'
of images, using models from linguistics, computer science, and psychology.
In addition, scholars hypothesized that the new "language" of images
must develop specific cognitive and intellectual skills which are unique
to the medium of images, particularly observational and spatial reasoning
skills (Greenfield, 1984).
Critics of this theory
emerged to question the appropriateness of the concept of analyzing
the symbolic code of the image by comparing it to language. If images,
film and television did indeed function as a new language which needed
to be learned, then what explains the relative ease of young children's
comprehension of the medium? What would explain the near instantaneous
spread of film and television in reaching people throughout the four
corners of the globe? Whatever 'learning' was involved in the apprehension
of images, film and television must certainly be of a substantially
different type than the skills involved in learning to understand or
read spoken or written language.
For more than six years,
my colleagues and I at Babson College investigated this question in
our work with the Pokot tribe of Northwest Kenya. We have quantitatively
documented people's experience of watching television for the first
time, by testing the comprehensibility of various editing techniques
on people with no experience of film or television. The Pokot live as
nomadic cattle herders in the isolated regions of Kenya nearby the Rift
Valley in the Baringo District of Kenya. With little access to villages,
schools or medical treatment, they have very limited exposure to contemporary
communication media, and most adults have never heard radio or seen
film before.
Using naturalistic field
experimental procedures, we found that Pokot tribespeople have a very
well developed ability to comprehend a story presented on television,
even when a message makes use of extensive editing which fragments time
and space, including close-ups, flashbacks, and parallel editing techniques
(Hobbs, Frost, Stauffer and Davis, 1988; Hobbs and Frost 1990; Hobbs
and Frost, 1992). It appears that film and television are easy to decode
because they call upon pre-existing visual and cognitive skills. As
Messaris (l994, 39-40) writes: "What makes images unique as a mode of
communication is precisely the fact that they are not merely another
form of arbitrary signification. Learning to understand images does
not require the lengthy period of initiation characteristic of language
learning, and permeability of cultural boundaries is much greater for
images than it is for language."
The consequences of this
theory for the educational uses of film and television are formidable.
Consider the implications of using a teaching tool that can be easily
decoded by all learners, makes use of pre-existing skills, but neither
demands nor develops any new skills. Of course, those in the business
training field have intuitively recognized the power of video to teach
job related skills. It is now routine for workers to receive job training
information via videotape-- a medium that makes information accessible
to learners regardless of their background or ability. Image-based media
are highly effective in conveying information, arousing emotions and
promoting attitudes.
But for those educators
committed to strengthening students' ability to master the skills of
print literacy, not just job training, the activity of delivering messages
via videotape may displace time spent with print, therefore reducing
students' exposure to the reasoning and analytic skills which stem from
the manipulation of language (Messaris, 1994; Dorr, 1993; Salomon, 1979).
The educational potential
of television, in particular, has been additionally molded by television's
historic use as a leisure activity. Televison's educational potential
was eclipsed by its entertainment function as early as the 1950's, when
Edward R. Murrow's famous remark captured the paradoxical essence of
television technology: "Television can inform, it can educate, it can
inspire. But only to the extent that it is used for these purposes--
otherwise it's only lights and wires in a box." Because people have
grown up viewing the box in the living room as a toy-- something to
entertain-- the culture seems resistant to idea of considering television
as anything more than simple amusement. Even today, in some classrooms,
students spontaneously break into a cheer when the video cart is wheeled
into the room. Why? Because watching video is more effortless and enjoyable
than reading, speaking, writing, calculating, discussing, or almost
any activity that happens in the classroom. Students' expectations about
television have been shaped by a lifetime of using television as entertainment.
To consider using it for instructional purposes, faculty must be highly
conscious of students' existing attitudes about the medium, which as
Salomon (l981) has discovered, consist of the expectations that television
require little energy, little effort, little thought and yield instead
large amounts of relaxation and pleasure.
Educational producers have
also adapted to the public's expectations that television be entertaining.
The 'talking head' master-teacher model of educational video programming
has long given way to programming which makes use of the conventions
of commercial entertainment-- jazzy music, celebrity hosts, special
effects title sequences, and most importantly, good storylines. Occasionally
college faculty report their surprise when using a PBS documentary in
the classroom -- (with sophisticated production values and budgets of
$1 million per one hour episode) -- that students jeer the program as
too boring to even bother with paying attention. Given that commercially
produced entertainment programming is continually reinventing itself
in order to attract mass audiences, it is not surprising that students'
expectations about what qualifies as 'interesting' is also constantly
being shaped by the medium they have spent three hours a day with since
birth.
Why Use Film and Television
in the Classroom? There are many good reasons to make use of videotaped
materials and mass media artifacts in the management classroom: such
materials make accessible visual and emotional experiences to students,
they enliven the classroom and engage students' attention, and they
help build connections between the discourse of the classroom and the
contemporary cultural world. In light of these perspectives, management
educators have at least four distinct options for using (or not using)
film and television in the classroom:
Option A. Use no film or
television programming whatsoever, based on the rationale that these
media place no intellectual demands on students, are inherently designed
for amusement, and displace valuable classroom time away from traditional
classroom activities. (The "TV is the enemy of education" approach.)
Option B. Use educational
film and television programming relevant to your subject area occasionally,
recognizing that students' expectations that television be effortless
and entertaining may limit their attention, interest and abilty to gain
information from the 'serious' instructional materials. (The "Carrots
are good for you" approach.)
Option C. Use commercial
entertainment film and television programming occasionally, selecting
clips that are designed to capture student attention, motivate their
interest in class activities, and serve as illustration for your subject
area. (The "Hey! Look at this!" approach.)
Option D. Use educational
and commercial entertainment film and television programming relevant
to your subject area occasionally, with activities specifically designed
to force students to analyze the program as a "text," using analysis,
reasoning and inquiry based disucssion which help students watch film
and television with a critical eye. (The "Change the way you watch"
approach.)
While these approaches
are not mutually exclusive, they represent the wide range of pedagogical
approaches regarding media use in the classroom. Each has consequences
for use in the classroom. Option A continues to preserve the sanctity
of print culture as the priveleged means of discourse among educational
elites. It keeps film and television firmly in place as entertainment,
and keeps the divide between paidia (play) and paedia (learning). This
approach, by placing television as irrelevant to learning, risks the
danger that students may find this limited means of discourse similarly
irrelevant to their lifestyles and concerns, increasing the gap between
the faculty and the student.
Option B is a comfortable
position for most faculty, since it allows them to bring into the classroom
a preferred genre of film and television-- usually documentaries or
classic films. Cable television created, during the 1980's, a 'choice
paradox,' for while young people have increased access to much more
'good' television programs as a result of cable, they are less likely
to watch such programs because they have increased access to even larger
volumes of entertainment fare as well. As a result, for many youth,
classroom viewing of high quality informational programming may be the
only experiences they have with this genre of television. Option B,
however, assumes that students have the attentional and analytic skills
needed to skillfully watch educational programs, and while some students
possess these skills, most watch educational TV programs with the same
level of intellectual energy as they watch MTV.
Option C is most commonly
the result of creative faculty who find pleasure in their experience
with commercial entertainment, who enjoy making integrative links between
their subject areas and the contemporary cultural world represented
by the mass media. Occasionally in K -12 environments, teachers adopt
Option C because they can't find any other meaningful way to reach their
students, who are powerfully alienated from teachers and schooling by
grade 7 or 9. Sometimes Option C is a survival skill employed by faculty
who use this method of teaching to re-invigorate their own interest
in their subject areas. Option C risks trivializing the classroom by
failing to distinguish between the interests of the student and the
needs of the students? Consider Postman's (l985, 133) critique:
Television's principal
contribution to educational philosophy is the idea that teaching and
entertainment are inseparable. [Education philosophers] have argued
that there must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain
measure of perspiration and indispensable, that individual pleasures
must frequently be submerged to the interests of group cohesion, and
that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously
do not come ewasily to the young but are hard-fought victories. Indeed,
Cicero remarked that the purpose of education is to free the student
from the tyranny of the present, which cannot be pleasuable for those,
like the young, who are struggling hard to do the opposite-- that is,
accommodate themselves to the present.
Option D is the most radical
approaches of the four, since it puts the teacher in the position of
encouraging the student to make changes in their viewing habits and
behaviors. Option D is appealing to faculty who see real educational
potential in the use of both educational and entertainment film and
television programming but seek to put students in a more powerful position
in relation to these tools. Traditionalists who aim for student skill
development find Option D attractive because of its focus on active
reasoning and analysis of media messages. However, Option D may also
be attractive to social-change oriented and/or radical faculty members
who see the destructive aspects of media culture and see a responsibility
to give youth the skills they need to be less vulnerable to manipulation.
Option D risks student alienation, since many students enjoy the effortless
nature of their relationship with television, and resent being forced
to actively think about television. The author, as an advocate of Option
D, views this approach as an essential skill of literacy for an information
age, and has spearheaded a number of curriculum development, staff development,
and curriculum programs to help K-12 teachers integrate media analysis
and media production skills into traditional subject areas (Hobbs, in
press).
Although people don't need
formal instruction in how to watch film or television, they do need
instruction in how to analyze and think critically about it. Because
television is seen as a transparent, simple form that unproblematically
represents actuality, viewers frequently neglect to recognize the elements
involved in its construction. The "willing suspension of disbelief"
that operates in the realm of people's exposure to fiction often collides
with the truism of "seeing is believing," to create a powerfully emotional
experience for film and television viewers that makes critical analysis
difficult. And while "seeing is believing" has served humans quite well
in the 35,000 years of human civilization, it has been challenged by
image-based technologies since the invention of the camera in 1835.
Messages made with these technologies call upon the same well-developed
perceptual skills that humans use in direct experience of the world,
but unlike direct experience, they are representations-- a message carefully
and expensively designed for our consumption.
But seeing film and television
as a representation cuts against the grain of our attraction to it--
these messages are powerful because they seem genuine, authentic, and
"real." Sometimes this view is manifested in two common metaphors about
media messages: observations about media being a "window" that allows
us to see aspects of our culture or a "mirror" that reflects our society
back for us to examine. Faculty members who value video resources in
their classes will often comment on their usefulness in showing students
compelling and accurate pictures of human behavior, current events,
relationship patterns or scientific, technical or other specialized
information in an entertaining, visual way. They will note its effectiveness
in conveying information at low to moderate levels of difficulty in
ways that inspire and motivate students' attention; in ways that mirror
real-life behaviors; as a window on the world outside the classroom.
The problem here is that
neither the 'window' nor the 'mirror' metaphor is appropriate for examining
media messages. As Kathleen Tyner (l994) has said, "Media messages are
not windows on the world, or mirrors of society, but carefully manufactured
products." But while most faculty are comfortable teaching with and
about print materials, many are not so familiar with the appropriate
use of video resources. After all, for almost 40 years, television has
been simply a familiar household appliance in our living rooms. Few
faculty members have learned the basics of the design, manufacture and
distribution of its messages, and for the most part, teachers have used
it in only limited ways-- primarily for message transmission, diversion
or illustration-- in our classrooms. But using video resources for these
purposes is limited, and too often, serves to reinforce the prevailing
assumptions that media can only be fun or attractive.
Media Literacy: Teaching
About Media
Media literacy has been
broadly defined as an expansion of traditional views of literacy to
include the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and communicate messages
in a wide variety of forms (Aspen Institute, 1993). By examining the
key concepts of media literacy and the dimensions of media use and video
production in classrooms, faculty can identify how to use media 'texts'
with the same sophistication and skills with which we use print resources.
Media literacy is a term used by a growing number of scholars and educators
to refer to the process of critically analyzing and learning to create
one's own messages-- in print, audio, video, multimedia and other forms
(Piette, 1993; Hobbs, 1993; Brown, 1991). In recent years, educators
have begun to recognize the importance of helping students develop critical
thinking skills about advertising, news, drama, and other media genres
which are popular with young people, including music video, reality-based
programming, sports, game shows and soap operas.
At the college level, media
literacy is emerging as a set of knowledge and skills deemed necessary
to function effectively as a citizen of the information age-- included
among these are the skills of information access, selection and retreival;
the ability to analyze and deconstruct the components of a message in
order to appreciate how it was constructed; competence in evaluating
the point of view, veracity, relevance and quality of a message; and
the skills of planning, designing and creating one's own messages using
a variety of media forms. The emerging consensus among educators is
that these skills are -- like traditional conceptualizations of literacy--
competencies relevant across the curriculum, and are best developed
within the context of existing subject area instruction.
In contrast to the United
States, there is considerable consistency among educators in other English
speaking nations, especially in Great Britain, Canada and Australia,
about the concepts might be deemed central to the process of critical
viewing of film and television. For example, in Great Britain, elementary
and secondary educators now must include the analysis of a wide range
of mass media messages in their English classes, as part of the National
Curriculum developed in the late 1980's under the Thatcher government.
As a result, a great deal of scholarship has developed in Great Britain
to better understand the processes by which young people learn to develop
critical viewing skills (Buckingham, 1990); the thereotical foundations
which are essential to such critical thinking (Masterman, 1985; Lusted,
1993); the practical classroom applications which teachers can use to
teach with and about the media (Hart, 1993); the kinds of resource materials
which are most necessary for teachers; and the processes by which faculty
manage the complex process of making changes in their own daily practice
(Alvarado and Boyd-Barrett, 1993).
As a result of such developments
in practical work and scholarship, educators have begun to agree on
elements which should always be considered when film and television
messages are used in the classroom. These concepts are:
- awareness of the constructed
nature of representations in both print and visual media;
- knowledge about the economic
and political context in which media messages are produced by a number
of different institutions with specific objectives and goals;
- awareness and knowledge
about the ways in which audiences construct meaning from messages
and about the variety of processes of selecting, interpreting and
making use of messages in various forms.
All of these concepts are basic
issues which are necessary to understand the context of the text, that
is, the assumptions behind the construction of the messages that shaped
its design and influence its communicative value. Let us explore each
of these concepts in more detail, looking at how management faculty can
apply them in the classroom.
Key Concept #1: Messages
are Constructions
All media messages are
constructions--- from the newspapers we read to the textbooks we use,
to the photographs and video images in our newscasts. Messages are created
by authors or producers who have complex motivations, goals and purposes.
Educators recognize the need to focus on the author in analyzing messages,
because of the ways in which some of our students tend to have blind
faith in anything written, anything on the Internet, anything they see
on television-- without actively evaluating the purpose of the message,
the author's strategies, the techniques used to construct the message,
or what was not included in the content of the message.
As described earlier, images,
and in particular moving images, are processed like real stimuli so
that we tend to continually forget that they are constructed representations.
Unlike print, where the reader cannot escape the fact that information
is being transmitted through a medium, viewers of film and television
find it easy to process visual media with little awareness of the constructed
nature of the form. Many American viewers are so unconsciously habituated
to the form of television that its conventions and representations seem
'natural,' so that they are surprised when they are taught to observe
the editing sequences that are common in Hollywood feature films-- these
techniques had become 'invisible' as a result of frequent exposure.
Too often, teachers are not much more sensitive to this issue as Masterman
(l985, 6) notes that:
[A] major problem facing
those who wish to develop the study of the media in schools is that
one of their fundamental assumptions-- that the media are signifying
practices or symbolic systems which need to be actively read-- flies
in the face of many people's common sense understanding of the media
as largely unproblematic purveyors of experience.
So doing media literacy
means, in part, drawing students' attention to the constructedness of
the film or television message, asking questions about the message's
purpose, the motivations of the author(s), the target audience, the
techniques involved in selecting and organizing information, the use
of techniques to attract attention and inspire emotional response.
Consider the following
example from a management faculty's classroom. Professor Troyell uses
a flattering newspaper article about a local company's hiring and promotion
policies to teach about various theories of motivation. Troyell aims
students' attention to the direct quotes made by the CEO and other managers
and asks them to identify the underlying theory of motivation to each
quote. Then, he steers students into a discussion of the story's headline,
asking students to brainstorm reasons why a particular photograph was
used, considering the many possible types of photos which might have
been created, and the reason why the first paragraph begins with a sentence
that creates a lot of uncertainty.
Immediately following,
he shows students a brief television newscast on the same story, and
invites them to compare and contrast the presentation by examining how
a particular theory of motivation is illustrated visually in the newscast.
Troyell uses this newspaper article and TV newscast in ways which not
only develop his students' ability to grasp the concept of motivation
theory, but also strengthens his students' critical reading and viewing
skills by helping them to see both newspaper and television news messages
as constructed products that only ever partially represent the actual
experience they purport to document.
Key Concept #2: Messages
have Legal, Economic and Political Contexts and Consequences
The second concept put
forward as essential for the skills of media literacy is an understanding
of the political and economic context in which media institutions operate.
According to British scholar Len Masterman (l985, 71), "What is important,
in other words, is for any pupil or student to know enough about, say,
the Official Secrets Act, the influence of sources, the structural influence
of advertising upon the media, the law of libel, the growth of public
relations, institutional self-censorship and general patterns of ownership
and control to be able to recognize them in play within a particular
text." One of the complexities of teaching about political and economic
influences in media studies is that while they are critically important
forces operating on the media products we consume each day, these influences
are covert, long term and diffused throughout the culture, so that it
is not easy to point to direct and specific connections between them
and the media texts we consume.
What we know for certain
is the widespread public ignorance of Americans in terms of basic knowledge
of the political or economic issues central to the mass media. In a
random telephone survey of 250 adults, 80% identified "sponsors" or
"advertisers" as the source of revenue for broadcasters, but only 61%
could explain where advertisers got their money, with almost forty percent
of adults unable to make the point that consumers pay for television
indirectly through the purchase of goods and services (Hobbs, 1993).
Students, in particular, are often knowledgeable about a number of aspects
of media culture relating to celebrities, music and film performances
but much less aware of the legal, economic and political contexts which
shape decision-making in television, film, and the print media industries.
For a management example
of how to apply this concept in teaching, consider the work of Professor
Basignian, who enjoys teaching about international management issues
by using a clip from a popular entertainment film she has rented about
a community whose failing auto plant has been taken over by a Japanese
firm. After exploring the ways in which Japanese managers and American
workers manage conflict and re-assess their expectations of each other,
Professor Basignian also includes time to discuss the political and
economic context in which this popular Hollywood film was created. She
asks students whether this film could been made by the giant film company
MCA after its acquisition by Matsushita. What historical or political
events were happening in the mid-1980's which this film explores? What
ethnic and racial stereotypes are used about the exercise of power and
why are they used by the filmmaker? In addition to developing her students'
understanding of international management issues, she asks her students
to consider the economics of making a popular film with an anti-Japanese
perspective. Would the film have been as successful at the box-office
if it had shown the inferiority of American workers in more detail?
Would the film have been made if the film company had been acquired
by a Japanese investor? Can stories that feature Asian actors attract
large audiences given the lack of high-visibility Asian celebrities?
In developing these ideas through class discussion, Professor Basignian
has integrated a key media literacy concept into her use of film in
the management classroom and created opportunities for students to bring
their experience and knowledge about Asian culture, media economics,
and human relations and management into an dynamic learning experience.
Key Concept #3: Individuals
Negotiate Meaning in Media Texts
The third concept put forward
as essential for media literacy is an understanding of how audiences
negotiate meaning in media. The theoretical lineage of this approach
comes directly from new directions in literary criticism, which has
moved away from traditional models of message analysis which subordinate
the reader to "the twin authorities of authorship and the text itself"
(Masterman, 1985, 215). We now are beginning to recognize the meaning
is created as a result of the interaction between the 'reader' and the
'text,' and that this process is much more complex, active and problematic
than formerly considered. When faculty design reading and viewing experiences
where the focus is exclusively on comprehension of key facts, they neglect
to provide opportunities for students to make use of their own interpretive
skills in the reading and critical viewing process.
For a management application,
consider the work of Professor Smith-Knowles, who plays a PBS documentary
on the influence of technological advances on business in her class
and then tests students on their ability to recall key facts and statements
of opinion. This activity frequently fails, according to Smith-Knowles,
because students lack the skills to actively watch television and gain
knowledge of specific information. But when she stops the tape at each
thematic break and invites the students to comment, analyze and share
their memories, she discovers that different students are processing
the message differently. Some students bring their own knowledge about
the topic to bear on their interpretation, and so can provide information
which complements or occasionally contradicts the material in the documentary.
Other students focus on its use of visuals, its rhythm and pacing, comparing
it to other documentaries they've seen. Some make connections between
the program and other videotapes, historical events, world knowledge
and popular films they have seen. "Now I can't assume that everyone
is seeing the same thing when I show a videotape in class," writes Professor
Smith-Knowles in response to her exploration of her own use of video
materials in the classroom.
Some scholars have recognized
the connections between the skills of media literacy and new conceptualizations
of the teacher and student as they interact with information:
[I]f meaning resides, not
within the text itself, but in the interaction between audiences and
text, then this holds true not simply in front of the television screen,
but within every classroom. .. Differential decodings, traditionally
either repressed or treated as a 'problem' to be overcome through the
combined authorities of teacher, author and text, can now be given the
fullest articulation as reflections or refractions of important subcultural
differences with the group (Masterman, 1985, 218).
Media literacy, in this
view, is pointed firmly towards the direction of some educational reform
efforts, which emphasize empowering students, changing authority relationships
between students, teachers and administrators, and the active project-centered
and interdisciplinary approach to education (Sizer, 1992). These approaches
to education are appropriate models for all levels, from pre-kindergarten
to post-graduate, and reflect some the spirited experimentation with
new educational models now being developed in business school environments.
Conclusion
In looking at the unique
characteristics of images, film and television, management educators
face an enormous challenge. Because these visual media call upon our
existing perceptual skills, they are easy to process and accessible
to the widest possible range of individuals. Using media in the classroom
is the most effective way to engage students' attention, inspire and
motivate their feelings, and reach all students, regardless of their
academic preparation and diverse backgrounds.
At the same time, this
ease of use normally encourages students to adopt a passive stance of
reception, to approach the learning process with a kind of relaxation
and passivity which is incompatible with the values of education. Even
more importantly, such an approach to information gathering actually
threatens the future of representative government, where citizens must
ask questions about the sorts of information that are available to them,
analyze the biases and points of view that are embedded in information,
take an active role in interpreting and synthesizing information, and
build coalitions and interest groups by collaborating with others --
it short, in functioning as citizens and not mere spectators of the
game. As Umberto Eco (l979, 33) wrote, "A democratic civilization will
save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus
for reflection, and not an invitation to hypnosis."
By helping students to
internalize a basic set of questions to ask when encountering any message,
educators can reshape the process of viewing, an activity which has,
as a result of its ubiquity and pervasiveness in our lives, become passive
and mindless, too intimately connected with 'downtime.' I propose the
following basic questions as central to media literacy, and relatively
simple to add to a management professor's repertoire:
- Who made this message
and what were the producer's goals or motives?
- What lifestyles, values
and points of view are represented in this message?
- How might other people
interpret this message differently from yourself?
- What techniques were
used to attract your attention? to affect your emotions?
- What is omitted from
this message? Why was it left out?
When using media in the classroom,
to address these questions is to invite complications. But such complications
encourage students to reflect not only on the content of the message,
but on its form, and in doing so, we change our relationship with media
messages-- moving away from being consumers or receivers and towards being
active processors of ideas. As Umberto Eco (l979, 105) reminds us, "Television
is the school book of modern adults, as much as it is the only authoritative
school book for our children. Education, real education doesn't mean teaching
young people to trust school. On the contrary, it consists of training
young people to criticize school books and write their own school books.
It was like that at the time of Socrates and I don't see any reason for
giving up this attitude."
When people have skills
of critical inquiry in relation to media messages, it would be natural
to expect that, in a market economy, that new programs and services
would arise to satisfy the enriched skills of citizens. It is that expectation
that leads educators to recognize their role, as long-term stakeholders,
in helping to reshape the cultural environment by building the reasoning
and analysis skills of the workers, parents and leaders of the future.
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