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I'm curious about the origins of the class name "Language Arts" in elementary and middle schools in the US.
It's defined as 'the study of grammar, composition, spelling, and (sometimes) public speaking, typically taught as a single subject in elementary and middle school.'
I really struggled in this class.
I was an immigrant from Venezuela and was taking ESL at the time. Reading was difficult and writing even more so.
I was an immigrant from Venezuela and was taking ESL at the time. Reading was difficult and writing even more so.
Despite that, all I wanted to do was communicate.
You would think that a class called Language Arts would have allowed me to find a modality that allowed little Juan to hear and be heard.
You would think that a class called Language Arts would have allowed me to find a modality that allowed little Juan to hear and be heard.
If you know me, you likely know where this is going.
Visual Language needs to be taught in the Language Arts classroom.
Visual Language needs to be taught in the Language Arts classroom.
In this spirit, I want to mention that @cathygjohn has addressed this very issue really nicely in their graduate thesis from a few years back: https://comicarted.com/blog/2017/6/29/developing-the-cartooning-mind-my-graduate-thesis. Additionally, they have been doing a brilliant podcast called Drawing A Dialogue: https://comicarted.com/drawing-a-dialogue
Though the language faculty is innate, the ability to create physically recorded (written, drawn, or collaged) language is not.
Just as writing and reading have to be taught, so do image generation(drawing, collage, diagramming) and visual narrative composition.
Just as writing and reading have to be taught, so do image generation(drawing, collage, diagramming) and visual narrative composition.
Language Arts is where this should happen.
It is there that, in theory, we teach the skills necessary to use language in the other spaces in the school.
learning mathematics, science, history, and art all benefit from well developed multimodal language faculty.
learning mathematics, science, history, and art all benefit from well developed multimodal language faculty.
To properly prepare most students for the present we must teach them how to visually communicate.
We don't actively teach this and most visual communication is learned via Memes, App UIs, Netflix, comics and billboards on the side of the highway.
We don't actively teach this and most visual communication is learned via Memes, App UIs, Netflix, comics and billboards on the side of the highway.
Well, I say it's learned but really, it's mostly just experienced through those spaces. The entities that have social and financial power in those domains are able to use the visual language medium to propagate whatever they want.
Because most of our literacy is only developed in the space of understanding visual language and not in the space of generating visual language, we are disproportionately subject to the language of others.
Authoring tools on existing social media platforms allow for drawing and writing and film editing + the ability to embed the media of others. This gives us all, especially the young, the ability to learn to express ourselves using visual language in our contemporary world
But hardly anyone is teaching us how to do this well!
that we continue to do it and evolve meme formats and rage comics and embed the posts of others is a testament to the language faculty.
that we continue to do it and evolve meme formats and rage comics and embed the posts of others is a testament to the language faculty.
Without an imposition of how to do it "from above", this language faculty, in the visual domain emerges and develops across our digital communications.
From below.
From below.
Imagine what we could do if we were taught to use this tool from a young age and didn't categorize it as something that only "artists" use.
In Language Arts.
In Language Arts.
