OP ED: Why Film Study Should Be Mandatory in High School

[Frank W. Baker]

Students need the skills they would learn in a film studies class because our society's lack of visual literacy has handicapped our critical thinking and turned us into gullible consumers of images. In my more traditional role as a history teacher, I slowly learned the sheer faith students had in visual data. Photographs, charts, and even paintings were treated as bearers of indisputable (if frequently mysterious) facts, not rhetorically charged pieces of persuasion. Of course, you can see this in adults too, from the unquestioned circulation of clearly photoshopped images on Facebook to the utter credulity with which the stories offered to us by cable television news are accepted.  More here.