VISUAL LITERACY/ANALYSIS: The Value of Visual Literacy
Visual literacy is a useful tool that may be integrated into the curriculum to enrich and extend every learning area. (O.B.E.)
SPEAK LOUDLY
SPEAK VISUALLY
Visual Literacy provides a springboard for learning interpretative skills such as:
- analysing character traits
- bias
- fact and opinion
- predicting outcomes
- constructive evaluations
[Image credit](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdjWgjpMYQzX9trPNrEyGo72GNpCHzdGWJiuZhnSwYgGe/image.pn - lateral thinking
- discussion of important topics e.g. drug addiction, tolerance
- broadening your outlook by arguing and then adopting varied viewpoints (debating)
Last year, Nick Sousanis became the first PhD student at Columbia University to complete a dissertation entirely in comic-book form.
He got the idea while pursuing interdisciplinary studies at Columbia’s Teachers College. Drawing on his old habit of sketching cartoons, he pitched the idea of a “visual thesis” to the graduate, explaining that he could “make complex arguments through that medium that he couldn’t with words alone.”
“It was clear to him and his advisers that his knowledge was best expressed in the visual form,” says Ruth Vinz, Sousanis’s main adviser, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed. “His major goal wasn’t to disrupt the typical dissertation format, but instead to create meaning the best way he could.”
Soon after, an editor at Harvard University Press caught wind of Sousanis’s project and asked him to expand it into a book. Unflattening, which came out this May, illustrates (quite literally) the science of perception and the history of the image through the ideas of Eratosthenes, Copernicus, Descartes, and many others. But it’s not a book “with” illustrations; it’s a book of illustrations. And it’s meant to be read and absorbed just as serious a text is meant to be read and absorbed.
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In fact, Sousanis’s editor, Sharmila Sen, says one of the book’s goals is to challenge the notion that serious ideas require words: “For centuries, words have been considered the superior currency of intellect. So much so that our reliance on the written word, like any other kind of dominant perspective, is so pervasive that we don’t even realise our role in perpetuating it.”
Sousanis is not trying to devalue the written word. He only wants to point out that there are other possibilities, and hopes his work advances the conversation about what he calls the “narrowness of the education system.”
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“I think people can respond to it,” he explains. “I made a real purposeful effort from the beginning to take out all the language, the specialised vocabulary, that might keep one audience out and include one other audience. I handled all that with both visual and verbal metaphor so somebody could read it and they wouldn’t have to be in the field I was in but get a good grasp on it. They could get into the work and stay with the work and not be turned off it. People have sent me pictures of where the book has been shelved and it has been stacked with (Veronica Roth’s YA) Divergent series. It’s been shelved in philosophy. It’s been shelved in science. It’s kind of an odd one to characterise.”
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But the fact that it’s hard to characterise is what makes it so educational. Sen says there are many comics that are talked about by intellectuals, and there are many articles and books written about visual literacy. But it’s always words that are used to communicate these ideas. In Unflattening, Sousanis has opened up a new world of possibility by using images to talk about images.
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“The book makes your brain work on two planes, almost bilingually,” adds Sen. “That pushes us intellectually, cognitively. I feel like this book does that for me, and I really hope it does for others, too.”
But is this the definition of visual literacy educators have been working with since John Debes coined the term in 1969? No, not quite. Visual literacy has acquired a different meaning in recent years, and while Sousanis might have had similar insights fifty years ago, it’s more likely they’re a product of the times–specifically, the Age of the Internet.
Very informative post.
Yesterday my 6 year old was asking me about sarcasm and I was thinking about how literacy means so much more than "just" being able to read words. Visual literacy is also important. Thank you for sharing and for putting that into my aura while I lead my children in HomeSchool Learning.