[Frameworks] query for those who teach filmmaking

[Jonathan Walley]

As a tenured professor who has spent the entire day meeting with students about their work, writing page-long evaluations of same, assisting with the preparation of a student film festival - and the entire week researching digital filmmaking technology and contemporary French cinema (to name two) to improve my knowledge of these things for the next two weeks of film history lectures, I don't have a lot of time to jump into Frameworks fracases. I'll just briefly call "Bullshit" on your cliche, tired, caricatural of tenured professors. Oh, I'm also assisting another tenured colleague prepare his performance and salary review (no accountability and no consequences?).

Saying adjuncts are good for students is more bullshit. We've had plenty of part time and adjunct hires who have done just as poor work as the proverbial "checked out" tenured prof. An adjunct hired for a single semester as a leave replacement has even less motivation to prove him/herself than a tenured faculty member - not that it's the adjunct's fault. And a revolving door of overworked and underpaid adjuncts that provides no consistency or continuity in a department is not good for students either. Adjuncts don't have the market cornered on youthful exuberance and "with-it-ness."

As for "application in the real world:" I hear that refrain regularly from anti-intellectual conservatives who want to eliminate arts and humanities programs, who demand that colleges focus on "professional" or "career readiness." If that's all you value, then yeah, teaching film students how to use Bolexes, Steenbecks, etc., is pretty useless - but then so is teaching them about practically anything else.

Jonathan Walley (tenured professor)
Department of Cinema (which I'm told is dead)
Denison University (which is a liberal arts school teaching all sorts of things with no application in the real world)

On Apr 23, 2014, at 8:12 PM, Aaron F. Ross wrote:

> It's true, professors with tenure can ignore the changing times. There's no accountability and no consequences, so tenured professors can be rigid, inflexible, and anachronistic, and get away with it. But of course, that is doing the students a disservice. There's a huge disconnect between academia and the real world, and young people know it.
> 
> In a way, the decline of tenure and the expansion of adjunct hires is good for students. It's bad from a labor perspective, but at least it keeps fresh blood coming in. Adjuncts have to continually prove/improve themselves, and can't rest on their laurels. Ever.
> 
> Regarding technology, I'm a selective adopter. Just because something is new does not make it good. But the corollary to this is that just because something is familiar does not make it good, either. We all must think critically about technology if we are to be effective educators, makers, and even consumers. Control the tools, or they will control you.
> 
> The fresco analogy unintentionally makes the opposite point. Art schools don't teach fresco painting anymore, except as an extremely specialist subject. Oil painting is a widely adopted technique that has immediate application across the board. Fresco painting is, for the most part, a dead art. So, in fact, students should not be required to learn it.
> 
> If you want to piss off students, wasting their time and money, then by all means, make them learn some specialized, anachronistic subject that has little or no application in the real world.
> 
> Aaron
> 
> 
> 
> At 4/23/2014, you wrote:
>> But you _can_ reject the technology.  Not at all times, nor throughout the whole program.  But, just because oil painting exists does not mean that art students shouldn't learn how to make frescos. --scott _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks at jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>      Aaron F. Ross, artist and educator
>      http://dr-yo.com
>      http://digitalartsguild.com
> 
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