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ICI Academic ║ Professor Gao Desheng: How Does Education Respond to the Requirements of the Image Era?

2020-07-17

Professer Gao Desheng

ICI, ECNU

How Does Education Respond to the Requirements of the Image Era?

Abstract: There is no doubt about the importance of excellent film and television works entering schools, but it is more important to study the characteristics of images and the basic mechanism of their effects on human beings. Nowadays, the whole world is a big screen, and the children who live in the screen become “screenagers”. The popularity of images is due to both technical reasons and the roots of human nature. From the perspective of individuals and the whole human race, the “picture everywhere” is actually only a kind of “retro” or “return to the child”. The image is alive, it can put forward requests to human beings, e.g. grabs the person’s attention, acts on the person directly. In the face of the requirements of images, education must respond to it, including changing the attitude toward images, making full use of the persuasive power of images, cultivating the “key virtues” of the image era.



Professor Gao Desheng elaborated his opinions from three aspects: he first stated the feature of the current era; then, he accounted for the requirements that images impose on human beings; finally, Professor Gao expounded the response of education to the image era.



The Era of “Images Everywhere”

Professor Gao described the feature of the current era as “The whole world is like a big screen”. Words have been the dominant medium for many centuries, and this situation has undergone great changes. Although words are still important, the revival of images is not only an obvious fact, but also an unstoppable trend. Just as paper is a perfect match for words, screen in current era is a perfect match for images. It is difficult for “screenagers” under this era to imagine life without screens and images. From the perspective of an individuals, infants and young children can read pictures first and then recognize words. From the perspective of the whole human race, images not only precede words, but also the foundation of words. From the perspective of the relationship between human beings and images, “images everywhere” is not a new thing, but a kind of “retro”.



The Requirements that Images Impose on Human Beings

Images seems static, however it is alive. Images have desires and requirements; images can speak and can always telling us something. The way images realize its desires lies in the way they act on people. The way that words act on people is a thinking process from symbol to meaning, while the way in which images act is directly connected. Images have great persuasive power, “images tell us the truth” is an online buzzword that shows people’s subconscious trust in images. What people say is not as convincing as an image.


The Response of Education to the Image Era

Professor Gao believes that school education needs to change its attitude toward images. Nowadays, the only place that is not controlled by images is the school. Currently, school education is indifferent to images due to its unconsciousness. Schools are supposed to cultivate students’ visual literacy, make full use of the persuasive power of images, and cultivate the “key virtues” of the image era, such as prudence, sincerity, respecting originality and caring about others.