THE trouble with teaching media is that people think it’s fun. You sit around watching videos, playing CDs and reading papers and magazines, for goodness’ sake. Even if you call it media studies in an attempt to make it sound a wee bit unpleasant, nobody believes you. Even if you change the name of your sector to creative and cultural industries, nobody assumes you don a boiler suit and hard hat and do some real work.
This misconception was brought home when I phoned learning resources to book CD playback for my writing class. The amused assumption was that it was for fun, a way, perhaps, of prolonging the new year party season. No such luck. The class had been asked to choose a song and then write a short piece for radio, using the music and the medium appropriately.
OK, if you’d walked past our room at one point and heard the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star”, Bette Midler belting out “From a Distance”, or perhaps bursts from Don Giovanni you might have thought we were enjoying ourselves. Reader, disabuse yourself of that notion as quickly as my mates in learning resources did.
No enjoyment is to be had in further education these days. This was work, producing stories that ranged from a spat between Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte in 18th century Vienna, to a meeting with a mysterious stranger in Dundee, Hogmanay 1990. It’s nothing but work, work, work.
My press and magazines National Certificate class spent most of the morning discussing the themes of the theft of identity, cloning and individuality in an Alasdair Gray short story. Big subjects for a Tuesday morning, I know. So big they forgot all about tea break. We have decided to have a quick look at the film Gattica because it explores the same themes as Gray’s story.
I know it’s not strictly necessary for outcome two, but we have bought some time from the relentless pressure of outcomes and assessments to widen our discussion. I am sorry, I know it won’t do. Terry Eagleton once suggested that it took English departments in universities some time to make reading literature unpleasant enough to be accepted as a hard-nosed discipline. Media studies has some way to go here.
The titles of modules and units help a bit in making things seem awfully difficult and boring. “Narrative in Fiction and Film” could have been called “Watch the Movie Read the Book And if you Bring Sweeties you have to Share” and then where would we be?
We should take a leaf from the communication title list which includes “Selecting and Presenting Complex Information for Vocational Purposes”. Now there’s a title to still any beating heart. We write modules and units that demand completion of outcomes, none of which stipulate the process should be enjoyed, or that it should contribute to confidence or promote originality. And a jolly good thing too. Why, one of the media studies students came up with a preferred reading of Gray’s story which was wholly original and, by golly, pretty damned acceptable. This has got to be stopped before it gets out of hand.
I fear it is already too late. My class of writers are rewarded with neither outcomes nor units but still they have persisted - many over several years now - in treating our institution as somewhere they can indulge themselves in lifelong learning and meet others who share their interests to form a social support group. This year, I resolve to try harder to make my learners look a little more anxious and a lot less cheerful. That should do it.
Dr Carol Gow is a lecturer in media at Dundee College.
