Comics Are Educational
So you know my view that comics are smart and that animated superhero movies like The Incredibles can be used to teach philosophy. Well it seems I’m in good company. For a change.
William Irwin, a philosophy professor at King’s College in Pennsylvania, edits the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, which includes titles such as Batman and Philosophy, and X-Men and Philosophy.
The article gives examples of how he and other teachers like him do this. For instance, what can Batman’s refusal to kill the Joker illustrate about complex ethical dilemmas? Or what can Dr Manhattan’s musing on physics add to the free will debate?
And in case any of you are aghast at this example of university-level dumbing down, be careful to let the man speak for himself.
“We are not saying that the canon of Superman comic books is equivalent to Homer and Dante and you can study them for their own sake. We’re not suggesting that comic books replace Plato and Descartes – not at all. The goal is always to get people interested in philosophy by speaking first in terms that people are familiar with.”
Comics are a recruiting tool to get people interested in life’s deeper problems. They can also serve to illustrate those problems as a kind of artistic thought-experiment. But they neither solve them, nor replace the study those thinkers who have tried. They aren’t supposed to.
Comics or graphic novels have their greatest educational potency as portals for higher thought. Especially for young males – like me – who hated everything to do with school. I would also want to argue that some graphic novels – Watchmen for instance – contain more depth and complexity than 90% of the trash in your average second-hand bookshop. Heck, you can even use them to teach career guidance.
That’s one comic book every high school kid should read.
PS This year in the Queen’s University Open Learning Programme there is a course I’m thinking of attending called Investigate and Create: Comic Book Illustration by Duncan Ross. I’m no artist but Duncan has assured me that this isn’t encessary. See you there?
Image credit: audiinsperation.
Moving back one step, I have convinced one or two teachers of “challenging” children to try and weave a comic book or two into the literature being used.
The one that said she’d have to check them for violence – well, I let that one drop. Ahem.
Concepts of right and wrong presented in bold colours and – we used reprints of fairly harmless 60′s Spiderman – simple language works much better than the convoluted texts that currently exists on any syllabus. Not that a 30 year old man dressed as a spider is convoluted or anything.
But it really bears out a very old adage – keep it simple, stupid. There’s a lot of emotion in a single comic book panel.
Any book I was forced to read at school – Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm – died the death by classroom suffocation. These are hardly ‘children’s books’ even though the first is about children and the second appears as a cute allegory. I needed comics to take me into the world of adult literature.
So Paul, you seriously tried to persuade teachers to utilize the power of comics in their classrooms? Fair play, you’ve got guts and optimism in equal abundance. But last time I heard, Stranmillis or St Mary’s weren’t offering any modules on alternative literary forms or creative teaching methods.
One thing we do hear about is the need to cater for different ‘learning styles’. Some pupils are verbal, others are visual. Don’t comics combine both in an obvious way? Maybe too damn obvious for some…
If anyone out there would like a taste of my favourite comic story ever, try a sip of this. For children? Yea, boys like me. For children only? I think not! Prepare for Ethics 101 cartoon style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW6zXEW8TQ8
Thanks for the chat Paul. Keep the faith.