More Marshall

I picked up Hot & Cool again today, again in a bid to give me a slight distraction. It helped that there weren’t any interesting NFL football games on television. Sundays I usually set aside for some football watching. (Added note: I’m glad I didn’t watch — I would have been shocked to see the Green Bay Packers lose to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by a score of 38-28.)

The reading came at a good time: I was trying to finalize my thoughts for a presentation I have Monday night for my curriculum design class all about media studies curricula.

I stumbled upon a chapter that started with this quote from McLuhan: “Today we’re beginning to realize that the new media aren’t just mechanical gimmicks for creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression.” McLuhan wrote this chapter of the book, all done in a narrative-style poem with some sections in bold, others in italics and some in different font types. (Note: I have typed up portions of the chapter in this post and formatted them exactly as they appeared in the book.)

McLuhan makes the point that the printed word, such as in the form of a book, is seen as an “individualistic form” unlike radio, television, journalism and movies (today, I would add digital media and information communication technology) that is considered “mass media.” The book, McLuhan argued, helped create the Western self-identity, even though it was the “first product of mass production.”

Because the printed word was so crucial to the development of self-identity in the Western world, maybe it is still seen as the medium through which students need to grow their own identities unlike mass media that is seen as destroying a sense of individuality. However, this seems like a reaction based more on fear — specifically, a fear of the unknown. Technology is progressing and evolving at such a rapid pace, it is hard for the current education system to keep up with those changes and integrate them into the classroom, or provide the training and resources teachers need to use new media as a way to enhance education.

It is also possible that children haven’t really changed where they learn: most learning takes place outside the classroom. The only difference is who, or what, is doing the teaching, McLuhan argued:

Before the printing press,
the young learned by
listening, watching, doing.

So, until recently, our own
rural children learned the
language & skills of their elders.
Learning took place
outside the classroom.
Only those aiming at professional careers
went to school at all.

Today in our cities,
most learning occurs outside the classroom.
The sheer quantity of information conveyed by
school instruction & texts.
This challenge has destroyed
the monopoly of the book as a teaching aid
& cracked the very walls of the classroom,
so suddenly,
we’re confused, baffled.

In this violently upsetting social situation,
many teachers naturally view
the offerings of the new media
as entertainment,
rather than education.

But this view carries
no conviction to the student.

If anything, the media have replaced one form of learning while at the same time re-enforced the traditional model of transferring knowledge inside the classroom. Where before teachers were seen as the purveyors of truth, the digital generation now sees media as the purveyors of truth. So what do educators do? They discredit this new form of communication as disingenuous and misleading, and prod students to not always be critical of what they see and how they see, but become critical of how much media they are accessing and using:

Today these new media
threaten, instead of merely reinforce,
the procedures of this traditional classroom.

It’s customary to answer this threat
with denunciations of
the unfortunate character & effect
of movies & TV,
just as the comicbook
was feared & scorned & rejected
from the classroom.

Its good & bad features
in form & content,
when carefully set beside
other kinds of art & narrative,
could have become a major
asset to the teacher.

Some media studies theorists use this argument as a reason for media studies, but under the protectionist model curriculum banner. However, discrediting media doesn’t create critical thinkers, nor does it produce effective media studies teachers, the latter issue being of key interest to me in my master’s thesis. This protectionist road doesn’t lead to some of the key issues and goals of media literacy, just as discrediting some authors doesn’t create critical literary thinkers:

The educational task
is not only
to provide
basic tools
of perception,
but to develop
judgment & discrimination
with ordinary social experience.

…

To be articulate & discriminating
about ordinary affairs & information
is the mark of an education man.

The more I read Marshall McLuhan, the more I think that he was well ahead of his time, and that the education system is still trying to catch up to a place he envisioned decades ago. Papers I have read debate how a media studies program should be organized, usually with a distinctly humanistic curriculum slant, where learning is based on what the student wants and their growth as an individual is of prime importance. What I haven’t read is how to organize a media studies training program for pre-service teachers. If I were to use McLuhan as a basis for development, it seems that, at least from this chapter, the first goal of a training curriculum should be to remove the fear and apprehension teachers have with media. Turn teachers into critical thinkers about media and they can turn their students into critical thinkers as well.

Until then, I wonder if it will be possible to fully realize the potential for a media studies curriculum.