Since its inception TV has been used to educate. Indeed the
first TV company in the world, the BBC, still has ‘educate’ in its mission
statement. As a mass-broadcast medium with almost full penetration in the
population, it has the ability to reach very large numbers of people. For many
it is the most popular activity, after work and sleeping, yet few would see
television as a truly educational technology and many see it as working against
the education of children and adults. Sedentary, couch potato television is
certainly not seen as an educational medium.
Goggle box
Television’s main educational
genres are:
·
formal course material
·
documentaries
·
children’s TV
·
drama
·
adverts
Some of these, like formal Open
University or PBS lectures for courses and adverts on public safety and health
are direct. Others, such as documentaries are a bit less direct and often rely
on the entertainment and production values of television for their effect.
Others still, such as teledramas, children’s TV, such as Sesame Street, and
drama are a lot less direct, even indirect in their intention. So TV has number
of formats spread across the formal to informal spectrum.
The rather unpopular term
‘edutainment’ sums up the dilemma that television faces in education. Its
primary function as a one-to-many entertainment medium can aid but just as
often hinders its power as an educational medium.
TV and formal learning
The UKs Open University has had a long standing relationship
with the BBC. It is not entirely clear that this has been money well spent. The
early broadcasts were neither powerful ‘lectures’ nor good TV programmes. These
course-based TV programmes, famous for their wooden presenters, beards and
kipper ties, were commissioned from 1971 onwards, and finally canned in 2006,
as newer technology was cheaper and better.
Unfortunately, the tradition has continued with the trite
History of the World (backed by the OU), presented by political journalist,
Andrew Marr. The current strapline is “The Open University and the BBC:
bringing learning to life”. With this series it is killing it stone dead. TV
proved to be a poor partner in formal learning.
Documentary
A great many excellent documentaries have been made on
almost every imaginable subject. History has a slew of its own channels but
there seems to be a curious skew towards the history of war that betrays TVs
populist appeal. Nevertheless, science is well represented as is the natural
world, although again there seems to be a skew towards predators and more
bizarre sides of nature. There are also dedicated arts channels.
TV’s allure, on the surface its greatest strength is
actually its greatest weakness in learning. The flood of beautifully shot
images and steady narration sweep the learner along but at a cost. There’s no
rest for reflection, little time for critical thought and much sinks and is
forgotten behind this bore wave of presentation. You are forced to go at the
pace of the narrator, and before the ability to record, stop and rewind, have
no chance of recapping things you may have missed. In many ways TV was like the
ancient scroll that simply rolled by at a steady pace, without page or chapter
breaks.
Children’s TV
Most children’s TV attempts to be directly or indirectly
educational. Sesame Street is perhaps the most famous example but there are
plenty of others.
Critics point to the dangers of using TV as a babysitter,
the passive viewing and impact of advertising targeted at children. A wider
argument still rages over the role of TV in robbing our children of their
childhood, obesity, isolation and brain development. Much of this debate has
shifted to online activity by children, but the arguments are similar. The
‘goggle box’ has been blamed for encouraging sedentary activity and passive
viewing in young children, as well as promoting violence.
Teledramas
Fictional drama, especially telenovelas in Latin America,
has been used to indirectly educate viewers on topics such as literacy and
family planning. Soap operas have also deliberately included social themes into
the scriptwriting, in an attempt to raise awareness in the specific target
audiences that watch these programmes.
This approach is parasitic in the sense of relying on
sedentary soap opera watching to get to an audience entranced by television.
It’s a Trojan horse approach.
Adverts
The University of Industry advertised around prime TV spots
to reach learners who had disengaged with education and successfully got 3.5
million learners on board. Others have used adverts to get students into their
courses and universities. This is perhaps one of the more successful uses of TV
in education.
Governments have also used television to get educational messages
across, especially about health and road safety. Political parties have also
used the medium as a platform for advertising their politicians and policies.
There’s also televised political debates and current affairs programmes.
The downside is the blatant consumerism of advertising of
non-nutritious food and toys, especially to young children, at inappropriate
times. Again, TV is Janus-faced as it relies on this direct blanket advertising
to pay for the very programmes it sees as educational.
TV formats restrictive
Most educational TV is slotted into existing TV schedules
that started on the hour or half past the hour. This is why TV largely conforms
to the half hour or one hour format. You have to schedule programmes at
predictable times which people can remember. This is fine for long-form
documentaries but, as we have seen with video on the web, most useful
instructional video needs to be a lot shorter. There is no ideal length,
indeed, the rule could be that it need only be as long as it needs to be, and
no longer. This generally means a few minutes, rather than a full hour. Only
very expensive documentaries can sustain audience attention in this long
format.
Amusement is not learning
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman warns us against mistaking the
rhetoric of a broadcast medium for learning. Stripped of dialogue, the flow of
film and television strips us of our ability to reflect, think, deduce and
resolve issues. It stops us learning. However, his main argument is that
teaching, as a form of dialogue, is being replaced by entertainment or
amusement. Video is also difficult to index and search, another pedagogic
drawback.
Technology carryover
Technology has a tendency to carry over its ethos and
methods into newer emerging technology. Early printing mimicked manuscripts. The
typewriter locked us into the QWERTTY keyboard and so on. TV has also had a
limiting effect on online learning. Too many projects, especially public funded
projects, were in trawl to TV and disastrous projects, such as BBC Jam wasted
tens of millions with little or no output. More worryingly, is the broadcast
mentality that forces overlong video sequences and high cost production on
content, with little advantage in terms of learning and retention.
Conclusion
TV has educated millions, largely informally, through news,
documentaries and drama. It has also helped reach people through advertising to
get them into education. In this sense it has been a social good and served us
as best it could. However, the downside is that it has always been a one-way, overlong
and inflexible broadcast medium. While still a force in informal learning, through the documentary format, its role in formal education and deep learning proved to be short-lived, as it has been shown to be inferior to online delivery.
No comments:
Post a Comment