Film as an Effective Tool for Education

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth 24 times a second.” 
– Jean Luc Godard

If there has been a more compelling argument in favour of moving images it is this statement of Godard’s. The visual medium lends itself to myriad uses and there are compelling reasons why moving images, sound and imagery can effectively be used as teaching tools. 

The language of visual aids like documentaries and short films are ideal for pedagogy. 

Our first brush with the visual medium, albeit through imagination, are through stories that are narrated by grandmothers, parents or a favourite aunt or uncle. And those stories are abiding and stay with us for a long time. Sometimes, even passed on through generations. 

And what is filmmaking if not effective story telling!

Today, films/audio visual medium have become a powerful pedagogical tool because of its ubiquity in society, low price, ease of use, and democratic potential. What had for years been too expensive or difficult to utilize in the classroom, is now an invaluable teaching aid that educators should integrate throughout their curricula and encourage students to analyse and use. Visual communication can be used effectively by teachers and taught alike to co-construct knowledge and create alternative representations of their world. 

Everyone today is a Photographer/Filmmaker

For many years, the camera was primarily in the hands of photo-

Journalists, visual artists, and filmmakers; yet now, with the popularity of the ubiquitous mobile phones, it seems that everyone is a photographer or at the very least has the tool to become one. New web applications and smaller–faster hardware have made photography and short films so common that millions of people are creating, sharing, and viewing photographs and films daily. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Imgur, Flickr, and Pinterest are popular social media that capitalize on photography’s powers and the technological ease of sharing images globally. 

It makes sense for schools to capitalise on this knowledge and enthusiasm. Many teachers believe that a focus on core issues does not allow time for sharing their own enthusiasm for films and television with children. There is also a tendency to assume that moving image media are bad for children and detract from ‘real’ education. 

But the truth is that the emergent ‘cine-literacy’ of children sets them on the brink of an amazing world of images and sounds. Wild fantasy, gritty realism, scenes from yesterday and from a hundred years ago, live events from across the world, are all available for children to see and understand through the moving image media. Some of these may present lies, some are offensive or frightening, some meretricious and worthless. The same goes for books! However, we learn to read because books offer unique opportunities to share the knowledge and imagination of others. For the same reason,all children are entitled to learn about the world of the moving image and to themselves experiment with the medium.

The case for building moving image education into the learning experiences of children is therefore necessitated by the following: 

1. The necessity for active learning;
2. The power of linking home and school; 
3. Deepening understanding of texts
4. Creativity and the moving image;
5. Understanding of culture and society. 

Active learning: From the known to the unknown
Many studies have emphasised that the human brain learns actively. In other words, whatever is being taught must engage the learner as an active agent for meaning to emerge. In the deeper process of learning, the learner moves from the known to the unknown, making the known explicit to themselves and then enlarging that knowledge and understanding which he or she already possesses (Bruner, 1986; Vygotsky, 1978). In the case of very young children coming into school, teachers in the foundation stage know that they have to work with the known and the given to help their pupils to make sense of the world (Rogoff ,1992).

In our culture nearly all children have, from birth, extensive experience with film, television and video (Kress, 1997; Bromley, 1999; Marsh and Hallet, 1999).To carry on this work of involving children with texts and processes so that they can understand how to ‘read’ them at deeper levels and to produce them for themselves – one of the chief aims of the literacy curriculum – it is necessary to start with those very texts they are already reading actively (Browne, 1999; Meek, 1991). This learning process does not fade away. It continues to enhance their abilities to read and write and understand all kinds of texts, both in school and outside.