Heads in the Sand

Prior to this program, I spent the past two years employed by Saint Louis University’s Department of Communication.  My primary responsibility was to instruct students in Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Sountrack Pro—you know communication technology, or in Selfe’s case, visual literacy.  This was a job because the existing Communication—I’ll say it again in case you missed it—Communication faculty didn’t want to learn it themselves.  The thought was that though this was useful information for students to learn, certain faculty members who had spent so long not knowing this stuff—ardent “book readers” and not the Kindle kind either—they shouldn’t be bothered to learn it now.  Though I am thankful that their apathy provided me with a paying job and health insurance, I don’t think Selfe would be all too keen with their pedagogical philosophy of avoiding visual literacy largely because of its inconvenience. 

Perhaps it’s unfair to characterize SLU’s entire department as ostriches with their heads in the sand—it was only the ones without tenure.  Faculty without tenure either knew these systems or worked to learn them, employing them with their students, trying innovative projects out much to their students’ delight.  However, once a professor received tenure at SLU, he had no incentive to change his ways.  If he had been straight theory, no tech all his career, he wasn’t changing it now for anyone.  Even if it made him a dinosaur, he was a dinosaur with tenure.  I think many, if not all, of Selfe’s assignments would be worthwhile to employing within a Communication department.   However, many of these tenured professors who refuse to adopt new theories or technology will retire soon and will be replaced by professors who at least understand this technology, if not ones who understand and it desire to continue learning.  I don’t know how indicative this is of most colleges or just SLU, so if it’s just SLU, shh!  That might be a secret and maybe I shouldn’t have told it. 

In her article “Toward New Media Texts: Taking up the Challenges of Visual Literacy” Selfe encourages teachers to employ a combination of alphabetical and visual literacy to ease the transition to teaching visual literacy, or even using these assignments to learn the technology themselves, “co-learning” them along with their students.  I don’t see many tenure track professors going out on a limb to do that.  They’d have to admit to their students that they didn’t know the material.   Visual essay and Visual argument could work because it only partially relies on technology, and uneasy faculty could assign poster board and photograph material without much effort of their parts.  Stuff like designing a webpage is way out for them.  But past this I think you’d be pushing it for any professor who has no incentive to change. 

As far as incorporating these practices/ assignments into English 1000, because that’s the first thing we think of anytime we read a pedagogy article, I think some aspects could be shared.  I love the idea of using film analysis.  If the point of the class is to teach students how to write then there is an obvious benefit from having them write about things they’re interested in.  I’m not suggesting that all movies are better than books, or visa-versa for that matter, but when considering 18-yr-old freshman, I think they’re more inclined to watch a movie than read a book—just a generality, I know, but an apt one I think. 

But as far as having them design web pages and employing other forms of multi-media, I’m voting no.  If English 1000 were a film theory course or even a literature seminar, then I’d be all for it.  I’d probably enjoy grading “papers” more.  But as this is a composition course, then the one and most crucial requirement is that they write, a lot.  It’s been said to death how it’s impossible to truly teach composition in a semester, so I can’t imagine a way to squeeze in web design workshops.