The Tedium is the Message

With a clear purpose, with the necessary skills, and with wisely chosen and richly varied media, tedium will never be our message.

John Harrell has published this very article in Your Church magazine. It is reprinted by permission.

 

WE ALL know that instant aphorism, analogous to instant tea or instant breakfast, "The medium is the mes sage." If nothing else, it instantly made its shaper famous, and ever since angels have rushed in ... and that's about the size of it. Over all, across the country and across denominational lines, I get the impression we've lost our heads over media. We're using media, all sorts of media—movies, bubblegum, balloons by the gross, cassettes and videotape—but if we don't know what we're doing, as far as anyone else is concerned, the tedium of it all is the message. And tedium is not the message of the gospel.

We've all sat through multiple-screen multi-sensory presentations—even perpetrated them ourselves—and just sort of blanked out. Not because the experience was so heady and intoxicating, but because there really was no point, or so obvious a point, that the frantic lost moment, or over-kill, bored us to tears or turned us off completely. In such cases, truly, tedium is the message. What has gone wrong and what are the clues for valid media usage that can communicate the vitality of the gospel?

Obviously we are in for trouble any time we use methods or materials with out a clearly penned purpose. The purpose should be so sharp in our mind that we can write it out in one sentence. It is generally a good idea to construct the sentence so that it contains the phrase "in order that." An example might be: "To generate an awareness of pitfalls and possibilities of media usage in order that readers may improve their teaching capabilities."

With your purpose written out, consider if it really gets at your people's needs and moves toward the long-range goals of the group. If not, reshape the purpose until it is absolutely right. Then you are ready to consider methods and resources to achieve the purpose.

Result of Blind Faith

Media disasters sometimes occur as a result of blind faith. There is no immoral intent, just a naive trust that the latest thing is going to work the miracle that hasn't been occurring recently in a group.

The fact is, using media does not make teaching easier. It may make learning easier and more profound, but it increases the teaching burden. There are just a lot of details to take care of even when you plan to use a simple filmstrip. And it helps immeasurably to have the filmstrip in the projector right side up and in focus.

Working with the media generally means working with equipment, and equipment being physical is susceptible to malfunction. Murphy's Law applies in the long run: "If anything can go wrong, it will." Napoleon's advice is well taken: "Plan on victory, prepare for defeat." If we are going to use media, it is essential that we develop skills of operation, which include emergency first aid.

With purpose shaped and skills acquired, it is still necessary that we have an appreciation of the nature and possibilities of the media resources avail able and that may aid in realizing the purpose. For us teachers, we can consider all media in terms of three categories. This oversimplification may wrench things a bit, but it will be handy and practical for a start.

Fragmentary

One category of media we will call fragmentary. The item might be a magazine picture, a videotape of a TV commercial, a nature specimen, or a book with an Aesop fable. Each is a fragment of reality. It simply exists. It may have a purpose in another context, such as to induce us to buy a particular product. But within the context of religious education, it is raw datum. As such, it is introduced into a group for study and response. It becomes our task to ask of it, What are you? How do I feel about you? and What can you tell me?

Cultural fragments, such as baseball cards, or a random documentary tape recording made during a coffee hour, can yield many insights into the kind of unexamined life we are living. Fragments from nature or history can en large our sense of the world we live in and the stream of time that issues into now.... It is essential to recognize their fragmentary character, their cut-offness, and the need for us to supply an explicit context if they are to be useful in religious education and not contribute to the tedium. For this, imaginativeness, a kind of poetic sense, is required.

Didactic

Most of us feel more secure with the second category of media we call didactic. These are "teaching" materials, pure and simple. They may be self-instructional workbooks, film or filmstrips, or cassettes. They inform and sometimes explain. They may even tell us how the new learning should touch our everyday lives.

There is a lot to learn these days, and didactic teaching media can facilitate learning. They can make learning more interesting, more encompassing, and more memorable. Can, depending on the skills of the producers and the group leader or teacher. There is nothing magical or guaranteed about didactic media. Eastman Kodak has no control over the charlatans and geniuses who buy and use their film. A good library of carefully chosen didactic filmstrips, cassettes, simulation games, etc., belongs in every parish and is the right of every volunteer and professional teacher and leader.

The third category of media is called illuminating. Unlike didactic materials, these media do not set out to inform us or tell us what to think. But in far more profound ways they illuminate experience and enrich our lives. They may refer to events, like a Rembrandt crucifixion, or, like an abstract MacLaren film, refer only to themselves. They have such integrity, such artistic and creative life of their own, that they be come significant events in themselves which we experience and take into our selves as valuable additions to our lives.

With talent and skill, church leaders can create similar events within the framework of liturgy or for some special occasion.

One of the wonderful things about the modern media of photography and re cording is that they can be mass distributed. Grunewald's altarpiece can be in only one place at one time, but the multi-media event, "Definition of Passion," can be part of people's direct experience everywhere.

So, there are three radically different kinds of media experiences—fragmentary, didactic, and illumination. All three need to be in our repertoire as teachers and leaders. And fortunately today we have many ways of learning about what media productions are available. There are a number of news letters, each with its point of view, educationally, theologically and aesthetically. You do not need to subscribe to them all, but the one that corresponds most closely to your point of view will keep you informed of the materials you'd want to know about. Teachers' magazines generally have a media column. These columns vary in quality and carefulness as do the newsletters. When you find a reviewer you trust, stay with him. He will broaden your perspective and deepen your appreciation. Last, there are books to help you find the media you need. The Audio Visual Re source Guide and the Media for Christian Formation Series are the standard books with the most reliable evaluations. A copy of one or both should be in every parish or church school.

With a clear purpose, with the necessary skills, and with wisely chosen and richly varied media, tedium will never be our message. On the contrary, we have at hand today the media and methods to express the vitality of the Good News as never before.


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John Harrell has published this very article in Your Church magazine. It is reprinted by permission.

September 1977

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