Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
II-
The immediate causs of SEFT'S demis was the findings of a consultancy report, which was commissioned by SEFT at the instigation of its major funder, the British Fitn Institute, and undertaken by Comedia in the Summer of 19EE. The Comedia Report was widely criticised, yet it paintd a pictur of the Society's structural problems which many were
obliged to agree was broadly accurate. The Report largely fotlowed the analysis containd within the Comedia book, \ryhat A Way To Run A Railroad' (Charles Landry et al, 1987): it argued that,like many of the radical organisations whicb grow up in the late 1960's, SEtr.r had faited to adjust to changing political circunstances, and continued to rely on an outmoded form of 'libertarian activism'. According to the Repon, the consequences of this failure were manifested at every level of the Society's operation. Aside &om a general sense of 'demoralisation, lethargy and frustralion', the Report drew attention to the absence of agreed procdues ftr decision-making and for formulating policy. Without a clear management sfucnle, the relationship between the salf and the voluntary memben of SEFT comminee was often confused and fraught with difficulty, In i$ fnal yea$, SEFT was in crisis, financially, adm in istratively and
consistendy frustrated.
History Lessons
Ultimately, SEFT was unable to relate to tle neds and concems of classrmm teachers: on the contrary, it often
appeared deliberately to exclude and intimidat them. In order to understand
how this siftation aruse, we need [o look back at Society's historical development.
Ironically, SEFT began as an organisation whose primary aim was to support the work of film teachers in schools: is qdiest publicatiors, in the 1950's and 1960's, were full of advice for tachers, offering oudines of film studies courses and suggestions of materials to use. The rigorous theoretical profile adopted by Screen did not emerge until 0ie late 1960's, and only really took off with the appointnent of Sam Rhodie as the
seventies.
politically.
SEFT's mairr priaity in tlre seventies and indeed that of BFI Education - was the establishment of film studies as an academic discipline in higher education. This was, on one level, a strategic choice: it presumed that educational change would flow from the top down, from univenities and polytechnics into schools. In retrospect, this approach appears to be based on a mistaken, or at least naive, reading of the situation: certainly by the 1970's, the secondary curriculum was increasingly developing independently of higher education.
Nevertheless, it would be unfair to ignorc SEFT's subetantial achieve-
Perhaps the most significant failing here was SEFT's inability to balance and combine the interests of its major constituencies. The long-standing rift between edrrcationalists and eademic theorists became more acute in the 1980's, as media education began !o gain ground in schools. The vast bulk
menb dudng this period, ,Screen in the seventies was largely responsible for developing theoretical approaches whose influence spead way beyond the relatively small area of film studies, and which contributed to a far-reaching transformation of disciplines as diverse as English, art history and social theory.
By the mid-1980's, however, the role of Screen - and of SEFT itself - had become significandy less central. The body of wort which has come o be known as 'Screen ttreryy' - the often uneasy cornbination of semiotics, psychoanalyric thmry and Althusserian
Marxism - was increasingly challenged and displrced by other approaches. Screen itself was no longer working alone on tre frontiers of theory, and increasingly seemed o have lost direction, While its cLculation was never
peated efforts !o develop the Society's educational wsk and to extend its support !o media teachen had been
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large, its influence, which had been considerable in the seventies, began to wane in the more eclectic academic climate of
have abandoned. The task of identifying a pedagogy for media education in schools fell to
the 1980's.
Screez's sister joumal Screen Ehtca,ron, and it was here that the contradicLions were most acutely felt. One major problem here was that tlte monolithic analysis of the ideological role of the media also had to be applied to educa-
tion. Indeed for Aldrusser, the education system was rcgarded as the major
ideological state apparatus, whose function was essentially that of ideological reproduction. Exacdy how the functionaries of one ideological state ap
paratus were to generate critical teaching about another state apparahs was not made clar. The contradiction was
it in students'
heads.
This view is problematic, for a number ofreasons. It presumes that knowledge exists in some kind of pure, objective sphere, independendy of the lnower,
and thus outside social relations. Yet any body of knowledge implies a pdagogy: the rules and prescriptions which determine what counts as valid
knowledge simultanmusly define.xhat it means to know, and the characteristics of those who lnow and those who don't. This view implicity regards teaching as a process of transmitting knowledge which has been originated elsewhere in effect, of lilling empty vessels.
'Screen theory' thus inevitably embodied a pedagogy - a set of implied relationships benveen teachers and leamen. The joumal's own pedagogy was relendessly authoritarian: critics within its pages who questioned its increasingly inaccessable prose style and its political obscurantism were sternly reprimanded for their lack of theoretical rigour. Certainly in the 1970's, SEFT's policing of the 'correct' theoretical line was marked by a degree of arogance worthy of the sectarian I-eft at its most doctrinaire.
Teachers were urged to 'work on the contradictions which arise h the culture at the educational level', and to'engage directly in cultural struggle in a manner
which direcdy confronts social-demo cratic consciousness'. Precisely how this ideological shonckcuiting and cultual struggle was to be achieved cor d not b sp,elt out. The privileging of theory led to a situation in which writing about classroom practice was not merely hopelessly unglamorous, it was also tantamount to bourgeois empiricism. The number of detailed accounts of classroom practice published in Screen Educatian in the 1970's could probably be counted on fie fingers of one hand. As Judith Williamson argued (SE 40), teaching in Screen Education was rather like sex: you lnew other people did it, but you never knew exactly what they did or how they did it.
developing a theory which proclaimed the almost total power of state apparatus to determine consciousness and social action. The version of psychoanalytic theory appropriated by Screen in the mid-1970's simply compounded this:
the individual subject was seen as
Cultural Struggle
faihjre to acfnowieage is own peOa gogy, 'Screen theory' implicity prescribed a pedagogy for teachers which was highly elitist. Media audiences were predominantly seen as duped and manipulated, oflen at a sub-rational level: for teachers in schools, the only
hope was to expose the operations of the 'dominant ideology' by direcdy attacking the pleasures and preferences of students. Teachers were implicidy defined as members of a theoretical vanguard, charged with a missionary responsibility to alert the masss to the deceptions which were being practised upon them. At least in terms of its pedagogy, there was a fundamental continuity btween 'Screen theory' and Despite - or perhaps because of - its
hopelessly bound into a monolitlric patriarchal'symbolic order', from which there was litde hope of escape. The media - panicularly through the op-
eration of such generalised categories as 'narrative' and 'realism' - were seen as the primary agent in distinguishing between different forms of realism or narrative - all were equally tainted with
the'dominant ideology'.
The only possibility of opposition lay in
outright rejection, tfuough anti-nanative devices and anti-realism, of the illusory pleasures of dominant forms. This
privileging of the avant-garde, and the canonisation of figures like Godard, was
based on the assumption that texts could be judged as 'progressive' according to
Des?ite its neglect of classroom practice, there was a clear position on qlagogy in Screen Education which was fundamentally opposed lo what it chose to define as 'liberal' or 'progressive' teaching strategies. h retrospect,
it
of
major shifts to the Right in educational politics - for example, in the form of the
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/$ J.lBlack Papen and the so-called Debate' - much of the rhetoric of Screez Education was dtrected not against Right, but against the liberal Left, and particular against the 'delusions' of 1960's. Child-centsed education relendessly caricanued, in a manner far removed from that of Kenneth Baker today: 'experience' and ' became the new
erises many teaching maierials in media education. On the one hand, there is commiunent to 'learning by discovery' and the attempt to validaie the readings which students make. On the hand, there remains an underlying set
things, and we must sek to avoid its mistakes. Beyond this any future organisation wiil need to forge a more equat and more constructive relationship berween academic thedy and educational practice. This means wcking with teachers in a very different way: ratier than seeking to inspire them with empty rhetoric, or provide them with a body of academic lnowledge to transmit, it should sek to enable ieachers to share their expenise, and o reflect more 0reoretically upon their own leaching. Support for l@al teachers' goups, and the publication of teachers' work in however provisional a form, are essential here. Any inservice training which is provided should aim to get beyond simply handing out materials and ideas for lessons, or offering potted versions of eademic research: it should work over a longer tef,rn, io encourage tachers to become autonomous and self-critical, and to research their owa prrtice.
corect answers, or
realisations, which students are expected to produce. All readings are valid, some are still more valid than
pre-determined
other of
but others.
Cleady, these contradictions are not !o be resolved by yet more abstract rhetoric or speculation. On the contrary, there is an urgent ned in media education for detailed, systematic reflertion on classroom practice - reflection which should be infmmed by theory, but which
should also help
develop
it. It is one
ing), as the only means of tsansmicing the knowledge which would prepare working-class students to take contriol of the means of production.
of the major indictments of SEFT's work that it was unable and unwilling to encourage this kind of work by teachers - in a way that parallel organisations, such as NATE, have ben able to do with considerable success.
A national associatiur of media teachers is urgendy required, panicularly in the current context of educational change, For those ofus who
wasted so much time and snrgy in SEFT, the least we can do is to ensure rhat it will be besr next time amund.
teaching?
Ultimately, SEFI'S privileging of academic theryy and its neglect of the realities of classroom practic meant that it was simply out of touch with
leachers' everyday concerns. The
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The nert lssue ol lnitlatives ls due to be publlshed in
policy-making processes.
January 1990.
The Edilorlal Board wel comes elther suggestlons lor arllcles or arlicles lor considerallon. Please supply double spaced type scrlpt by 20/1289lo:
individuals exerting unfair control. It will need to clarify the relationships between the membership and any paid employees, and lay down clear and open procedures for devising policy, and for ensuring that policies are carried out consistendy and effectively. SEFT effectively failed to achieve any of these
or
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