The Eye Generation Prefers Not to Read All About It

* * *

Scene 1: Cut to Perry Schwartz, a bearded professorial type in his mid-60s, telling the students of his own background. He stands on a dark stage under bright lights. He has taught at Montgomery College since 1978. His focus has been live theater. He has made several short films, he says, including one based on "Our Little Trip," a play by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

When Schwartz mentions the beat poet, the camera closes in on students' faces. They are blank. Not one has heard of Ferlinghetti. Schwartz sighs.

* * *

It's no surprise that television, movies and video games have changed the way many absorb information. Now teachers are trying to harness that energy of the eye. This visually oriented generation "acquires much more of their knowledge -- some studies estimate that acquisition as 50 percent -- from visual texts" than from written sources, says Kathy Krauth, who is working on the Visualizing Cultures project at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.

Therefore, she says, the Eye Generation "feels more comfortable expressing themselves in visual form."

Examples are endless. Vacation snapshots, collegians-gone-wild party pix and everything else go straight to a handycam or cellphone camera to the Internet. Today's job seekers post video résumés at Vault.com. In a Democratic debate this month and a September Republican debate, voters will be able to upload YouTube videos of themselves asking the candidates questions.

Through YouTubing, Facebooking, MySpacing and myriad other ways, people take in vast amounts of visual information. But do they always comprehend the meaning of what they see?

That's the problem, says Krauth, who lives in Tokyo and teaches at the American School in Japan. Students are taught how to read and how to react critically to literature, but not about visual images.

Because visual literacy is not required in schools, she says, "this generation's ability to assign meaning to the visual texts of others is passive and still needs a great deal more work. They are easily manipulated as students, consumers and citizens."

In other words, students today need to be taught, through images, how to think critically.

* * *