Visual Pedagogy, Media Cultures in
and beyond the Classroom
by Brian Goldfarb,
Duke University Press, Durham, 2002
263 pp., illus. b/w, Trade, $54.95; paper, $18.95
ISBN: 0-8223-2966-0; ISBN: 0-8223-2964-6.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be
From the title, one might expect this to
be a cookbook on the use of visual media in pedagogy, on building
communities and using media in different educational settings, but
that is not what it happens to be. Instead, Brian Goldfarb analyses
the use of television and video in classrooms, museums and city streets
as a tool for political struggle or ideological indoctrination. As
the subtitle suggests, this is a book about the way media can be and
have been used culturally, i.e. to strengthen group identities, to
promote values or to support community actions. The formation of a
media subculture in itself thus becomes a pedagogical tool.
The book is built on a thorough analysis of seven examples of the
use of visual media. From the Ford Foundation-sponsored classroom
television experiment in post-war Samoa, which was also used to see
if TV could alleviate the teacher shortage in inner city American
schools to TV Anhembi in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where politicians heavily
supported a local television channel as a tool to increase participation
in decision-making.
Two opposing views about the role of visual media have dominated the
debate over the past decades. One is based on the ideas of the Frankfurter
Schule (Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas) that saw popular culture and
consequently the mass media that spread it as another means of oppression
by the hegemonistic powers. Opposing oppression means also to reject
popular culture, criticise mass media and build an ethic of aesthetics.
The other view can be broadly described as 'postmodern' as it shifts
responsibility from the makers and distributors of popular culture
to the users who supposedly are able to critically read it and pick
from it what they want and need for their social emancipation and
(sub)cultural identification.
Goldfarb convincingly argues that both views are flawed and, by analysing
the material context, shows that the use of media can have emancipatory
effects in the short run as well as recuperative effects in the long
run. His central idea is that we need to look at both the user side
and the production side to get a clear picture of what the pedagogical
uses of visual media are. He implies that who controls the production
of the material also sets the agenda. Learning to critically read
media 'texts' is insufficient to take the ideological sting out of
the message, but rejecting the use of media altogether is to throw
away the baby with the bath water.
Brian Goldfarb has had the courage to write about television education
in the Age of the Internet. A very unsexy subject, by all means. Not
surprisingly, as far as the use of the Internet is concerned, his
message for the liberal classroom pedagogue is similar to his conclusion
on video and TV: "The artists, activists and educators who facilitate
these [media education] projects take advantage of their relatively
autonomous position at the intersection of larger institutions to
support the development of youth media countercultures. The production
process, when combined with the peer education model, functions as
therapy for youth in crisis, [...] encouraging them to form collective
politics of resistance." (p. 137)
The book includes an extensive annotated list
of media resources, organisations and distributors in the USA. This
doesn't turn it into the cookbook I referred to, quite on the contrary.
The odd hermetic passage notwithstanding, Goldfarb has succeeded to
write a clear and very readably appraisal of the use of visual media
while avoiding the gobbledegook of many books on media theory.
