VIDEO
Intrigued by so many educational videos on different
subjects, I finally decided to choose the video that would be the most suitable
to my specialty – librarianship. Today,
the whole nation is concern about the illiteracy among young adults. In fact, nowadays 19% of high school
graduates can’t read (see https://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-american-adults-who-cant-read/). The fact is devastating. As an educator and librarian, I make all
efforts to find a solution. I read a lot
of articles and books; I participate in the online discussions and review the
blogs. But none of them has practical,
down to earth solution. A lot of ideas
and suggestions are either too vague or too theoretical. None of them, in my opinion, works. So, what to do? How we can ask a young man to read? What is
reading? Why we, humans, need to
read?
Wikipedia says,
“Reading is a complex "cognitive process" of decoding symbols". This cognitive process is available only to the homo sapiens, which differ them
from animals. Reading develops the
intellectual nest that bring the humans to the higher level in their evolution. To make the country the most invulnerable and
scientifically reformative, the Bolsheviks organized the campaign against
illiteracy in Russia in 1917. In 10
years the illiteracy was defeated; the tools and strategies used - proactive
teachers, educators, librarians, pamphlets, flyers, government support, and
ideology. Until recently, the man in
Russia, who did not read all Tolstoy’s books has been ashamed by his
contemporaries.
Today, the Ted-Ed educators offer similar tools that can be
used against the illiteracy in USA. The
series of videos, called “Why Should We Read?” contains the point of views on
Woolf’s, Joyce’s, Virgil’s, etc. work. All these videos briefly describe the
life of the author thru the prism of his or her literary treasure. For example, the video on “Why We Should Read
Virginia Woolf?” explains the motifs of main penwork of Woolf in the light of Modernism,
the art stream of XX century.
The video ‘Why Should We Read Charles Dickens?” embeds two
themes: the life of Charles Dickens and Industrial Revolution. These two themes are inseparable and tweeted
because as a child, Dickens experienced not only inequalities between workers
class and aristocrats, but also faced the poverty and famine. It is very interesting to see how thru the
video clip the educators were able, within a few minutes, to bring to the
audience the purpose of the Charles Dickens’ work and his style of penmanship. The
clip starts with the term “Dickensian” and ends with another term,
“Dickensie.” Both terms are intertwined and
both means the same thing: “A story with true adventures and discoveries that
occurred in the most unexpected places.” Using the words “adventure”,
discovery”, “unexpected places”, the educators try to deliver a message to the audience,
“Get a book and start reading. And
believe us, you get intrigued by the plot and the characters. Just open the book and read…Exercise your
mind!”
The animation part plays important role in this video. In the beginning, the first slide shows the
three main heroes from the well-known novels of Dickens. These heroes then appear one by one during
the story about Dickens as his prototypes.
Despite all positive
elements, however, this video is not addressed to young readers. The analytical approach and critical review
of Dicken’s work make this video more suitable for mature audience, rather than
K-12 students. However, this video can
definitely be played for the AP English students.
