Media Literacy with Purpose

Chapter 1 of Richard Beach's Teaching Media Literacy textbook focused primarily on justifying the use of media literacy in the classroom.  Beach bases his argument off of a reluctant school board member's beliefs about using media/film study in the classroom:  "To me, showing movies is  a pretty low skill level.  I would rather that teachers use the skills they have to get students involved in reading and discussing topics [...] if we're showng a lot of videos in the classroom then I view it as a problem.  We do get parents calling us saying: 'Why are they showing Schindler's List?  Why are we showing Pippi Longstocking?"  Essentially, the entire chapter is spent refuting this statement in support of using media literacy to engage students.  While I am completely in support of tailoring curriculum and activities to suit student's needs and interests, I have to admit that I agree with the point the school board member is making.  In the context of this chapter, I believe he may, in fact, have a point.

 

While I am aware of the fact that I am not, in fact, a practicing teacher yet (having just finished my student teaching literally today), I definitely can say I've learned an incredible amount about having a purpose for every lesson, for every activity, discussion, and piece of writing you have your students do.  I've also seen the successes and failures of many attempts to use media literacy both in my own classroom and in the classrooms of teachers I observed.  What I can say is that more often than not, movies are being used for filler days, for a "break".  Don't have anything planned for the day?  Watch a movie.  Substitute teacher?  Movie day.  Spent 4 weeks reading the text?  Now let's watch the movie version at the end  Is that really the way to engage students?  Teachers can't just show a movie for the sake of watching the movie version.  It needs to have a bigger purpose than that.  More importantly, movies can't be shown to replace poor teaching and instructional methods without expanding students' thinking beyond the film itself.  I don't think Beach would disagree with that.

I think that media literacy most certainly has its place in the classroom, especially the English classroom where there is the opportunity to teach big ideas and not just the words on the page.  Recently, I taught a four-week unit on To Kill A Mockingbird, and I was dead-set on using a movie clip of Atticus's final court room speech.  Being an award-winning movie, a powerful speech, and essentially the climax of the book, I thought this would be a completely relevant thing for my students to see.  After discussing it with my coop teacher, he kept asking me, "well, why?"  

To which I replied, "because it's a great scene, and I think it's important that they see it."  

"Well, why? 

"Because they'll get a visual representation of the movie? We're talking about appearance versus reality in the theme of empathy...."

"Still... why?"

Lesson learned.  The point is, movies need to be shown to expand on what students are already thinking.  While I never ended up showing the movie clip, we read lyrics from Phil Collins's "Another Day in Paradise" instead to talk about empathy.  Then we looked at present-day incarceration rates for African Americans and talked about white privilege.  And then in response to that, we talked about Tom Robinson's sense of hopelessness and listened to Tupac's "Dear Mama" and "Keep Ya Head Up", to which we had a final debate about whether all men really were equal in the eyes of the law.  Much more engaging and interesting for the students, because it fit my overall purpose.  

 

That being said, if the school board member is, in fact, talking about watching movies just for the sake of movie days, then YES, there is an extremely low skill level involved in comprehending that.  But, if Schindler's List is being shown not just because it is an Academy Award-winning film but because it resonates with themes and ideas in books like The Book Thief or Night,  present-day genocide in Darfur, or universal themes of perspective or power, then it has a bigger purpose.  Media literacy most certainly has its place in the classroom, it just needs to be done in a way that has some greater potential to get students to think critically about the world around them, to question what they've been told, or to take action against something they've learned.  Otherwise, really, what is the point?