OK, that's hyperbole. They could all read books — but when it came to reading images, none of them knew montage from mise en scène. This, of course, despite a world that has never placed a greater value on visuals.
I have a proposal to fix this: High schools should make taking a course in film studies mandatory for graduation.
14 comments:
I really do agree with this article but I don’t think for the same reason the author would want me to. I think that students should be required to take a film studies course to enlighten them to the arts as a whole. I would propose a course freshmen year that brushes the surface of many different fields of the arts including visual arts, film, theatre, music, and more. This would enable students to find a path if they were compelled to pursue the arts further. Even if they never wanted to take an arts course again, they are aware of the subject and can take that education into whatever field they may choose. I agree with the author of the article in that a film studies course would be teaching students to think critically in a way they can relate to (because more and more kids watch films than read literature unfortunately). I hope that this course may some day be a future in public high schools that struggle with arts education across the country.
Personally, I think that high schools should not have any mandatory classes. I have a firm belief that mandatory classes are useless or at least they are for me. I only do well in classes that I want to take because I have consciously made the decision to attempt to do well at a subject and therefore work my hardest to do just that. In mandatory classes, I often do not care about the subject and so I don’t bother to do well.
At my high school, we had plenty of film classes, and they were indeed the most popular and hardest to get into as they filled up very quickly. They were also extremely interesting as they focused on analyzing film for their political and social relevance during the time periods when they were created. These classes definitely helped me understand how art forms around different time periods and how to analyze this in today’s art.
I really do agree with this article. For me at times sitting in class and listening to lectures after lectures became extremely boring for me and I found myself not really engaging into these lessons. Watching films gave me a new perspectives on certain topics and I found it extremely beneficial for myself. Now i never had taken a film class or really thought deeply about a film presented to me however I do feel that this is something that would be great for high school students to be apart of. Jada Mayo 54102 <54-102> <54102>
Ben, I appreciate your comment about expanding required artistic studies to all areas of the arts. Any artistic medium can be used as a lesson in how creators appeal to the senses in order to persuade, and that this persuasion works in slightly different ways than written rhetoric. It's also worth noting that such a survey course would beg the overall question: Why did an artist choose THIS medium to express this idea? What does this form do that another form can't? That discussion in itself expands the idea of image analysis into form analysis, giving students a much more in-depth and multi-disciplinary understanding of the ways images/sounds/layered techniques are constructed affect an audience.
I also love that the author of this article seeks to endow audiences with agency. We talk about propaganda in history classes, but do we ever talk about how those images were constructed to rally a nation? And if we don't know how to analyze the images in our everyday lives, how can we not get sucked into governments' and advertisers' "truths" for sale? Image analysis is essential to remain actively engaged in the world around you, instead of becoming brainwashed by one's surroundings.
In addition, from a more selfish perspective, required courses that include image analysis can help us develop more informed audiences...and maybe, just maybe, help us facilitate appreciation for the arts in American society...Perhaps that's a lofty goal, but a required arts class could be a start.
In my high school AP English class, my teacher had a tradition of using the time between our AP exam and the end of the year, the time when most students would be checking out, to teach a critical film class. I can honestly say it changed my life. It had never even occurred to me to think of film critically. I am a lifelong lover of movies, and it took this class to actually see what they were doing. I ended up taking an elective film class the next year, and was disappointed to find that most people were taking it for an easy A. I sincerely wish I had had the opportunity to take a film class that was as organized and as taken seriously as my english classes. Even with my rudimentary film education, I still see film differently. It completely changed my viewing of film to understand the how and the why of film as much as the what (plot).
I think teaching film analysis is very important in high schools. Teens watch a lot of movies and tv on Netflix, but they are not thinking about the meaning or thinking about the movies in a critical way. Students are taught how to analyze literature in school, and what is the proper way to write. They are not taught how to analyze images and movies. There are a lot of things that people do not pay attention to in movies. There is an art to making a movie, just as there is to writing a book. Directors choose specific cuts and angles to illicit a specific emotion or thought from the audience. A film class would help teach students how to recognize those moments and speculate on what the director’s intention was or figure out how they feel about that moment themselves. Film is a very important cultural element that needs to be studied more and given recognition.
I think that teaching a class on film at the high school level of education is incredibly important. My high school did, it was a semester long course on film analysis and it could be taken instead of similar classes that analyzed books. However, I’m on the fence as to whether or not it should be compulsory to take such a class to graduate. There’s something about telling people that they have to do something that we all tend to resent, no matter what the justification. Regardless of whether this characteristic in people is good or bad, it makes it tricky to teach something when a student has no choice in being in the class. I think that an alternative approach to thinking about this is that almost all classes in high school are compulsory. Even if you elect to take different classes, you have to take a class that gives you the required credits to graduate. Maybe if high schools offered a choice to either take a class in analyzing TV or cinema, there’d be less resentment due to the choice provided. Either class could still teach visual analytics, and I bet the students would love watching TV or movies in school.
I agree with Sasha to some degree. The existence of mandatory courses in high school is something that should not exist. Forcing students to go to specific classes that the may or may not have any kind of interest in is completely ineffective in my opinion. That being said, I definitely wish I would have had more critical knowledge when it came to the art of cinematography. Also it seems quite obvious that the author of this article is a wonderful teacher that is passionate about the subject and would enlighten student to want to learn more about film, which would ultimately be the goal of his class. But that raises the assumption that all high school teachers have that same gift for teaching that this author has. And that is just not true. In a perfect world, yes, having a required course in film studies would be amazing, but I personally would hate to sit through a boring film class, taught by a unenthusiastic teacher. I just don't think this vision could be applied to the real world.
I agree with Ben and Rachel -- the article was well intentioned, but I don't find his reasonings for having film classes in high school as compelling as the ones I thought of as I read his argument. Over the past century film has become as important a medium in expressing character and issue as books and theatre. It only makes sense, as we look at how technology impacts our daily lives, to study it and analyze its significance on the time period it was produced and the artistic and political styles of the era. And isn't that exactly what we do for books and theatre, and we find it so integral to the school system to include it? The article makes a point that it isn't as difficult to watch a movie than it is to read a book, yet it is extremely important that we learn how to analyze words and think critically and critically understand images that are relevant to history before us.
I agree that schools should consider the use of film classes to teach students critical thinking skills. Not all students connect with literature the same way, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who doesn’t watch movies, so maybe films can serve as a more universal pathway to teach students critical thinking. I’m not saying we axe literary classes, and I doubt the author is saying that either, but it could serve as a better option to connect to all students, rather than leaving those who don’t engage as well with reading to struggle. I personally have a hard time engaging in personal reading, but I’ve always managed for school, but I think the use of critical analysis films to teach might be very successful for students like me. I really appreciative that I’ve had a English teacher in high school that used multiple types of source material to engage his students. Over the course of a year we read multiple novels, two plays, a graphic novel, poetry, articles, and explored critical analysis through both films and advertisements. I think my English teacher fulfilled what this article aims to point out. Students are going to go out into a world that is much more expansive than just books, and many don’t engage universally, so maybe we should spread out the feild and do a better job of covering all the bases.
I think the idea of teaching high school students to watch movies more critically is a brilliant idea but also a loss of magic of storytelling is a huge cause for concern. The idea of thinking critically of the media being presented to high school students is important. We shouldn’t be turning out people into the world who mindlessly accept the things that is told to them just because the source of output has historically known to promote the ideal that they can be trusted. We should be turning out people who receive the info and question its true worth and think critically how it affect them and the world around them. Once people start to do that maybe human as a society will be more conscious of how they actions affect others. If we start being more aware of our greater impact we might just start to be kinder and considerate as a society.
I don't know that these film classes should be mandatory, but it has always seemed a good idea to me to have them. At my high school, there were a few different film studies classes, most of them grouped into history electives, that looked closely at the films themselves as well as their messages. I never took any of these classes, but from what I've heard, many students expected them to be easy, let's-go-to-class-and-watch-a-movie free periods. However, they found that the classes were neither relaxing nor unrewarding. In these classes, as the author said, the students learned to look at film and images critically the same way we learn to do in English class. In fact, my junior AP English class had some rhetorical image study as well. We learned a lot about rhetorical devices and how they're used both in writing and in visual advertisements, which was very interesting to me. I felt after that class as though I had a deeper understanding of the reasoning behind what I'm seeing as well as how to look at what I see more critically. I can totally understand the desire for more film classes in high school, I think it would be very beneficial.
Film is such an examination of the human condition and the human experience, a feature sorely lacking from current school curriculums. We are taught to examine aspects of people, from their chemical makeup to what day someone set their foot somewhere. But we seldom remember, or are urged to realize, that the names we bandy about in history class were attached to actual people. I believe requiring film studies could help address this in one of the clearest, most direct ways easily and feasibly accessible to schools. Looking at a film with a critical eye requires one to recognize and confront other perspectives, and impels a deeper understanding of what comprises culture and how one's cultural DNA is made up. Modern education has certainly made a shift towards turning out students with "skill sets", without necessarily outfitting them with the ability to apply those skills in non-formulaic situations. Sure, film analysis is a "skill", but it is a skill developed through broader, more humanized analysis of content.
I don't think they should make a mandatory film class i think, like many have said, there should be a mandatory arts course. but more specifically I think they should just expand the arts requirements they already have. at my high school I was required to take 2 arts credits to graduate, that could be to art classes or two theatre classes. I took more than that but many people just took one art class and one theatre class not to get bored. I think if they structured it like they do stagecraft here at cmu, you could get a taste of all the entertainment venues while making it a fun experience for anyone. They could do this by expanding the arts requirements that they already have for high schools and add things such as film ,animation, and of course themed entertainment into our curriculum. Entertainment is growing on all forms and they all deserve attention in our education even if we choose not to pursue it in life.
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