media studies in schools

The first issue that’s brought up in the reading for this week (Beach, Chapter 1) is whether or not teachers should show movies in class. More specifically, the chapter gives the example of a schoolboard members arguing that viewing film is a “low-level skill,” and that schools should focus on teaching “high-level skills” such as reading, writing, grammar, etc., in standard forms. The schoolboard member thinks that teachers use movies to fill time, not to actively teach. Although I’ve had my fair share of substitute teachers who popped in a video for lack of a lesson plan, such use of media is not “media studies” in its truest form. Media studies means actually studying the movies, or podcast or website or blog, critically and analytically just as you would study any other text. I think it is narrow-minded to assume that movies are categorically “low-level.” If we only looked at romance novels to judge the quality of books, couldn’t we say the same thing?

I think the real issue is how media is presented to students, how teachers use it to address certain issues or teach themes, topics, ideas. Some of my favorite memories of high school are when my Language Arts and History teacher (we had an interdisciplinary block schedule) used song lyrics and movies from the Vietnam War era to help highlight different themes from books we were reading, both “classics” and contemporary novels. By no means were the songs and films “low-level.” We critically analyzed the lyrics, just as we would a poem or novel, and my teacher taught us how to view film as a “text” as well. Now, years later, the idea of text has opened to include so much more than just music and movies. The opportunities to incorporate the internet, podcasts, advertisements, blogs, vlogs, and other forms of communication into Language Arts curriculum are endless and very exciting.

One of the main reasons I want to become “media literate” and incorporate media studies into my teaching is because the students are already there. Kids walk around texting, listening to their iPods, they spend hours on MySpace and Facebook. To ignore this reality is to fail to acknowledge the present, and as Beach says, “the marginalization of media in the curriculum ignores the centrality of media in our lives” (p. 2). Acceptance of technology doesn’t have to lead to the demise of the book—I am sure that the printed word on paper will never disappear. But most kids love technology, and incorporating it into the classroom is a sure way to increase motivation, participation, and engagement.

Another idea I find fascinating is that the brains of kids raised in the digital age are actually neurologically different than those of older generations. According to Beach, “some neurologists and cognitive scientists posit that…multimediating in the bedroom culture has changed the neural networks in kids’ brains so that they prefer to learn in new and different ways” (p. 2). This research has direct implications for teachers, as we are the ones who must now teach in new and different ways. Furthermore, “it is also the case that this multimediating requires active, as opposed to passive, uses of media” (Beach, p. 2). No longer are kids meant to sit and watch a movie—they are actually wired to engage film, to analyze it, to dissect it and talk about it and apply it to their lives. What once might have been a “low-level skill” is no more. Media has become a legitimate part of our lives, and in school curriculum.