It is often accepted that the advent of film led to a decline in the popularity of theatre.
The movies and the stage are vastly different mediums, often identified by film’s ability to transcend time and place versus the physical presence of the actors in theatre. It would be hard to argue against the success of film over the past century. The talkies have become an unbelievably lucrative business while theatre, with few exceptions, relies on philanthropy for its survival.
The movies and the stage are vastly different mediums, often identified by film’s ability to transcend time and place versus the physical presence of the actors in theatre. It would be hard to argue against the success of film over the past century. The talkies have become an unbelievably lucrative business while theatre, with few exceptions, relies on philanthropy for its survival.
Could it be that online learning and the traditional classroom hold a similar relationship?
As the Fringe Festival gestures on and the tents of Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan continue their white summer silhouettes by the riverside, the question seems timely. The classroom may soon attain the nostalgic status of live theatre. Like the writers who moved from New York to Hollywood, teachers will shift from schools to laptops, complaining as their predecessors did in theatre about the dumbing down of their profession. Said writer Ben Hecht after leaving Chicago,
Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.
Surely it must be tempting to step away from the terrors of classroom management to the safety of an ipad screen…. in a deck chair.
Susan Sontag’s essay ‘Film and Theatre’ reminds us that,“the history of cinema is often treated as the history of its emancipation from theatrical models.” It took film a long time to move away from the habits of an unmoving camera, exaggerated gestures and overly adorned sets.
Likewise, it will take distance learning some time before it can separate itself from the habits of classroom teaching. Discussion rooms that mimic conference style discussions, video speeches that stand in for the lecture theatre and the stasis of essay assignments remain unchanged. Like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard who cries,
You are, are you? Writing words, words, more words! Well, you'll make a rope of words and strangle this business! With a microphone there to catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor to photograph the red, swollen tongues!
The advent of colour and sound did not kill cinema and digital learning will not kill education. But, like film, digital education must find its own unique strengths as a medium if it is to thrive. Like film, it must not simply imitate that which came before, it must locate its strengths and build upon them.
So you're a film buff! Great scene, and an apt analogy, I think, for the movement from classroom to digital education. Your observation that digital learning has to find and define its own language, quite apart from classroom education, is an important one. Almost all new technologies mimic the thing they are changing, long before they actually create the change. Think of the Internet, and how static it was, much like any print resources you might find anywhere. It took awhile for people to realize that the emerging power of the Web was in the connections it afforded among content, people, institutions, belief systems, etc. We don't yet know where it will lead us, but we do know it is quite different now than it once was, and its unique language is developing quickly.
ReplyDeleteOne might argue that there is a more fundamental shift in education than we saw from theatre to film. In film, productions became even more controlled. Scripts, camera angles, special effects, lighting, sound -- these all seemed to fall under the tighter control of the producers/directors, whereas in theatre these were controlled, but they all contributed to a more dynamic conversation and negotiation between the audience and the performance. And fixing a mistake had to wait for the next time a play was performed, rather than being produced several times to find the perfect take. In education, is the expanding digital world giving more control to the students (audience) than before?
I can see both happening. In some digital resources, they are produced much the same way as film. But the collective environment, with the invitation to negotiate meaning in a dynamic interaction with resources and people, somehow feels more like theatre to me. Thanks! You've got me thinking again!
I am not sure that tighter control is not a result of the current conglomerate structure of media. Does the control of software and hardware by so few companies (think Apple, Google, Microsoft in particular) not suggest education may head the same way?
ReplyDeleteThis is certainly Khan (and I imagine Mr. Gates) hope. Could not the delivery of education be globally centralised and delivered by say.. Google?
I think the branded ESL learning companies, particularly around Asia are excellent examples of this. Cambridge, ECC Thailand, Aeon in Japan and Berlitz around the globe.
Unfortunately, I am beginning to think the analogy is better than I thought (an idea I had while mountain biking across the river from the Shakespeare tents). If education delivery is centrally controlled and delivered (like Hollywood) that will leave the rest of Ed space to discuss and develop the real innovations (like theatre and experimental film).
In fact, is this perhaps not what we already have. The only difference is that the school system is not digital... yet.
As I keep saying however, it my hope that the benefit of this progression is pluarility_ and choice.