David Gran, an art, film, and technology educator I met in Shanghai, sent me a link, this morning, to a recent article (Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New M.B.A.?) from the New York Times about film schools. The article talks about how more and more people are entering film schools, while the job market in Hollywood and other motion picture and TV Meccas is relatively stagnant. Media has become so much a part of our lives, and increasingly a tool for business, political, and even cultural endeavors.
…it is not altogether surprising that film school – promoted as a shot at an entertainment industry job – is beginning to attract those who believe that cinema isn’t so much a profession as the professional language of the future.
The article points directly to DVDs being produced by street gangs to scare member into loyalty, and the uses that terrorist are making of video for intimidation. There is power in video media, not just for harm, but also for good.
Several times in the article, the term literacy was used to describe what film students are learning. Elizabeth Daley, the Dean of the USC School of Cinema, the nation’s oldest film school, said,
“The greatest digital divide is between those who can read and write with media, and those who can’t,” Ms. Daley said. “Our core knowledge needs to belong to everybody.”
What if college shifted away from profession preparation, and more toward specialty peparation (media, deep mathematics, information structures, social structures, behaviors, physical systems, biological systems, etc.) and we went to college for those specialties, and then market ourselves based on what we’ve made ourselves an expert in.
Just dreaming off the top of my head!
Image Citaton:
De Buysser, Klaas. “Intonarumori.” Klaas De Buysser’s Photostream. 20 Nov 2006. 19 Apr 2007 <http://flickr.com/photos/klaasdebuysser/302284921/>.
I think that “specialty preparation” is not as good an idea as it seems. With people changing careers 14 times, according to some sources, and most people not even working in their actual field, I don’t see the need for this right now. Who can really decide what they want to do for the next 50 years of their life when they are only 18 years old? If there was a way we could really know what we wanted to do, and not waste a bunch of time on media or deep mathematics when we really want to be a doctor, specialty preparation would be an excellent idea. I think that Masters and PhD. programs fill the need for specialty preparation right now.
Thanks for the blog, by the way, I read it religiously.
I guess what I’m envisioning — and again, this is just tidily winks — is that what a person is learning, as much as deep math, is how to become an expert. You become an expert in some field with some idea (or not) as to a job/niche to get. Then, things change. Either you decide you want to do something else, or the work environment changes and you have to retool, make yourself an expert again.
The key is learning how to teach yourself, not how to be taught!
Dave, you are absolutely right about learning how to teach yourself. I totally agree with you. My position as a recent college graduate is that there were many jobs that I was interested in, but some employers required a specific degree to even apply. When I did send my resume out to them, they didn’t give me the time of day because my degree wasn’t right. You and I realize that you have to teach yourself everything you need to know for your job, but some people still don’t get that.
Thanks for posting the article, Dave. I think its an important read for all educators, and I’ve been passing it out to students and their parents in my video classes ever since it was published. Video is in many ways the new language of our time; just look at the evening news clips that are captured not by professional crews, but cellphones. Look at the instances in which a 3 minute Youtube clip gets more exposure than a prime time TV show, where it can elevate an Ordinary Joe to stardom or destroy a political career, like George Allen’s (although you could argue he did that to himself).
Video production and media literacy classes allow us to teach students to think critically about the constant stream of media that bombard us – it also gives them the tools to respond.
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