Gunther Kress: "'English' at the Crossroads: Rethinking Curricula of Communication in the Context of a Turn to the Visual" (4)
Gunther Kress calls for a revamping of English curricula to include more of what students of English will need in the future, both in the context of visual communication and in a more precise definition of the term "literacy" and its many incarnations in the English language. Kress points out that "neither hypertext nor the contemporary rock-video are organized through narrative structures," apparently suggesting that we need to break out of the bindings of traditional English structures and teachings to include different examples of culture. In support of his argument that the visual is becoming essential in the English publications of today, Kress compares the text-heavy Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper to the splashy, graphical National Examiner tabloid paper, thus setting opposite each other the English language and the German language and their subsequent cultural views on the necessity of visual elements in publications. Kress also examines comparable science textbooks from 1936 and 1988 to illustrate that, over time, English publications have progressed (or regressed, depending on perspective) from majority text to majority graphics. Not only is there a significant decrease in the amount of text in the 1988 textbook, but the text that survives is much simpler, using shorter sentences and a more informal tone. Kress prophesizes that just as print publications have become more visual, the screen will, too, signifying a change in the language as a whole and in the English curricula to include the inevitable trend towards the visual.
I find it interesting, and perhaps a bit ironic, that we are, in some ways,
reverting back to the picture books of our childhoods in our growing dependence
on visual cues for understanding. We spend so much time learning how to read
and write (and to write well), and yet so much of the "writing" we read is
more graphical than textual. At the same time, in traditional English classrooms,
the visual is virtually ignored in favor of the word. Kress accurately anticipates
the need for the incorporation of both visual and textual in the English curricula
of our schools.
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