CURMUDGUCATION: Why Teach Literature Stuff: #4 Books Versus Video

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Teach Literature Stuff: #4 Books Versus Video

Why Teach Literature Stuff: #4 Books Versus Video

When I was teaching, and I had extra time on my hands, I would reflect on the work--the whys and hows and whats. So in solidarity with my former colleagues, I'm going to write a series about every English teacher's favorite thing-- teaching literature, and why we do it. There will be some number of posts (I don't have a plan here).

Also, it would be nice to write and read about something positive, and I don't know anything much more positive than what teachers do and why they do it.

You may have read the first three installments and thought (or imagined your students thinking) "Heck, I can get all that by watching tv or videos." Here's why I disagree.

For non-fiction, video can be useful. An afternoon of Crash Course on YouTube is pretty educational. I will even credit the medium with making the speaker's voice plain, so that bias is readily visible and identifiable. But video, because it's way more linear than text (you are compelled to watch the frames in a particular order) and because it demands steady and constant focus, is severely limited. There's a reason TED talks are short, that educational videos are super-brief. You can only watch for so long. That in turn limits the depth that can be covered. To turn a great work like Ron Chernow's Hamilton biography into a visual medium resulted in a stage show that takes a few hours to watch and still cuts corners from Chernow's original work.

Video is simply too limited to do any heavy lifting in the non-fiction world. Factoids, juicy tidbits, isolated items-- sure. But no more. There will always be more there there on the printed page than in any other medium.

With fiction, those advantages of print are even greater.

Movies and television have become more sophisticated over the years, but tv in particular features CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Why Teach Literature Stuff: #4 Books Versus Video