Issre

II-

lzssons lrom SEFT

The immediate causs of SEFT'S demis was the findings of a consultancy report, which was commissioned by SEFT at the instigation of its major funder, the British Fitn Institute, and undertaken by Comedia in the Summer of 19EE. The Comedia Report was widely criticised, yet it paintd a pictur of the Society's structural problems which many were
obliged to agree was broadly accurate. The Report largely fotlowed the analysis containd within the Comedia book, \ryhat A Way To Run A Railroad' (Charles Landry et al, 1987): it argued that,like many of the radical organisations whicb grow up in the late 1960's, SEtr.r had faited to adjust to changing political circunstances, and continued to rely on an outmoded form of 'libertarian activism'. According to the Repon, the consequences of this failure were manifested at every level of the Society's operation. Aside &om a general sense of 'demoralisation, lethargy and frustralion', the Report drew attention to the absence of agreed procdues ftr decision-making and for formulating policy. Without a clear management sfucnle, the relationship between the salf and the voluntary memben of SEFT comminee was often confused and fraught with difficulty, In i$ fnal yea$, SEFT was in crisis, financially, adm in istratively and

consistendy frustrated.

History Lessons
Ultimately, SEFT was unable to relate to tle neds and concems of classrmm teachers: on the contrary, it often
appeared deliberately to exclude and intimidat them. In order to understand

how this siftation aruse, we need [o look back at Society's historical development.

Ironically, SEFT began as an organisation whose primary aim was to support the work of film teachers in schools: is qdiest publicatiors, in the 1950's and 1960's, were full of advice for tachers, offering oudines of film studies courses and suggestions of materials to use. The rigorous theoretical profile adopted by Screen did not emerge until 0ie late 1960's, and only really took off with the appointnent of Sam Rhodie as the
seventies.

joumal's edilor in d very eady

politically.

SEFT's mairr priaity in tlre seventies and indeed that of BFI Education - was the establishment of film studies as an academic discipline in higher education. This was, on one level, a strategic choice: it presumed that educational change would flow from the top down, from univenities and polytechnics into schools. In retrospect, this approach appears to be based on a mistaken, or at least naive, reading of the situation: certainly by the 1970's, the secondary curriculum was increasingly developing independently of higher education.
Nevertheless, it would be unfair to ignorc SEFT's subetantial achieve-

Perhaps the most significant failing here was SEFT's inability to balance and combine the interests of its major constituencies. The long-standing rift between edrrcationalists and eademic theorists became more acute in the 1980's, as media education began !o gain ground in schools. The vast bulk

of SEFT's resouces was directed

towards the publication of Screen, an academic i:umal whose relatively small readership rvas largely confined to higher education. The effmts of media educationalists within the Sociery were thwaned by the lack of educational expenise among the permanent staff, and indeed by the open contempt for teachers displayed by many of those associated with Scren. The journal Initiatives and tlr- series of media education conferences which look place in the mid-1980's were tolerated, but

menb dudng this period, ,Screen in the seventies was largely responsible for developing theoretical approaches whose influence spead way beyond the relatively small area of film studies, and which contributed to a far-reaching transformation of disciplines as diverse as English, art history and social theory.

By the mid-1980's, however, the role of Screen - and of SEFT itself - had become significandy less central. The body of wort which has come o be known as 'Screen ttreryy' - the often uneasy cornbination of semiotics, psychoanalyric thmry and Althusserian
Marxism - was increasingly challenged and displrced by other approaches. Screen itself was no longer working alone on tre frontiers of theory, and increasingly seemed o have lost direction, While its cLculation was never

hardly given adequate supporl Re-

peated efforts !o develop the Society's educational wsk and to extend its support !o media teachen had been

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,sstrc 11

- l.ersons fron SEFT

large, its influence, which had been considerable in the seventies, began to wane in the more eclectic academic climate of

their own inherent characteristics, irrespective of the contexts in which

they were read, or the audiences who read themThe scope for educational intervenlions within dris theory was thus severcly circumscribed, The privileging of theory implicidy sanctioned a very

the Leavisite appr@ch it claimed !o

have abandoned. The task of identifying a pedagogy for media education in schools fell to

the 1980's.

The Pedagogy ol Theory

While the developm enl of ' Screen theory' in the 1970's was largely the province of academics, it also had
signifi cant educational implications. Perhaps the most fundamental of these was simply the privileging of theory itself. Following Althusser, a central emphasis was placed on the political role of thmry: the only truly scientific knowledge was to be gained through the development of a theory of idmlogyin-general' - any study of specific ideologies, histories, or social fomations was rejected as mere empiricism. While there was certainly detailed empirical work on film texts published in Screen during this period, it is nevertieless remarkable how little there was, and how much of it was confined !o a limited canon of 'approved' texts. There was very little work on television, or on media industries, and almost none on audiences. Empirical work of this kind was forced to lake a back seat in favour of extremely generalised theories of film as an ideological or psychic 'apparanrs'. Beyond this, it is important to note the fundamental political pessimism of the theories which were advanced. Ata time when major political battles were being fought behveen the labour movement and the state, Screen was busily

hierarchical division of intellectual labour. Academics r ere sen !o

job to make it accessible, and to deposit

pnrduce knwledge: it was the teachers'

Screez's sister joumal Screen Ehtca,ron, and it was here that the contradicLions were most acutely felt. One major problem here was that tlte monolithic analysis of the ideological role of the media also had to be applied to educa-

tion. Indeed for Aldrusser, the education system was rcgarded as the major
ideological state apparatus, whose function was essentially that of ideological reproduction. Exacdy how the functionaries of one ideological state ap
paratus were to generate critical teaching about another state apparahs was not made clar. The contradiction was

it in students'

heads.

This view is problematic, for a number ofreasons. It presumes that knowledge exists in some kind of pure, objective sphere, independendy of the lnower,
and thus outside social relations. Yet any body of knowledge implies a pdagogy: the rules and prescriptions which determine what counts as valid

simply effaced by a high degee of

vanguardist rhetoric. Teachers were regularly described in Steen Education

as 'socialist intellectuals' who could 'shon-cLcuit the ideology of the state'.

knowledge simultanmusly define.xhat it means to know, and the characteristics of those who lnow and those who don't. This view implicity regards teaching as a process of transmitting knowledge which has been originated elsewhere in effect, of lilling empty vessels.
'Screen theory' thus inevitably embodied a pedagogy - a set of implied relationships benveen teachers and leamen. The joumal's own pedagogy was relendessly authoritarian: critics within its pages who questioned its increasingly inaccessable prose style and its political obscurantism were sternly reprimanded for their lack of theoretical rigour. Certainly in the 1970's, SEFT's policing of the 'correct' theoretical line was marked by a degree of arogance worthy of the sectarian I-eft at its most doctrinaire.

Teachers were urged to 'work on the contradictions which arise h the culture at the educational level', and to'engage directly in cultural struggle in a manner

which direcdy confronts social-demo cratic consciousness'. Precisely how this ideological shonckcuiting and cultual struggle was to be achieved cor d not b sp,elt out. The privileging of theory led to a situation in which writing about classroom practice was not merely hopelessly unglamorous, it was also tantamount to bourgeois empiricism. The number of detailed accounts of classroom practice published in Screen Educatian in the 1970's could probably be counted on fie fingers of one hand. As Judith Williamson argued (SE 40), teaching in Screen Education was rather like sex: you lnew other people did it, but you never knew exactly what they did or how they did it.

developing a theory which proclaimed the almost total power of state apparatus to determine consciousness and social action. The version of psychoanalytic theory appropriated by Screen in the mid-1970's simply compounded this:
the individual subject was seen as

Cultural Struggle
faihjre to acfnowieage is own peOa gogy, 'Screen theory' implicity prescribed a pedagogy for teachers which was highly elitist. Media audiences were predominantly seen as duped and manipulated, oflen at a sub-rational level: for teachers in schools, the only
hope was to expose the operations of the 'dominant ideology' by direcdy attacking the pleasures and preferences of students. Teachers were implicidy defined as members of a theoretical vanguard, charged with a missionary responsibility to alert the masss to the deceptions which were being practised upon them. At least in terms of its pedagogy, there was a fundamental continuity btween 'Screen theory' and Despite - or perhaps because of - its

hopelessly bound into a monolitlric patriarchal'symbolic order', from which there was litde hope of escape. The media - panicularly through the op-

Sreen Educatbn steadily drifted

towards higher education as the decade progressed, and its eventua-l demise in 1981 - or at least its incorporattion within Screen, which was effectively the mme thing - finally closed down even that limited arena for educational debate.

eration of such generalised categories as 'narrative' and 'realism' - were seen as the primary agent in distinguishing between different forms of realism or narrative - all were equally tainted with

the'dominant ideology'.
The only possibility of opposition lay in

outright rejection, tfuough anti-nanative devices and anti-realism, of the illusory pleasures of dominant forms. This

privileging of the avant-garde, and the canonisation of figures like Godard, was
based on the assumption that texts could be judged as 'progressive' according to

Des?ite its neglect of classroom practice, there was a clear position on qlagogy in Screen Education which was fundamentally opposed lo what it chose to define as 'liberal' or 'progressive' teaching strategies. h retrospect,

it

seems remarkable that at a time

of

major shifts to the Right in educational politics - for example, in the form of the

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/$ J.lBlack Papen and the so-called Debate' - much of the rhetoric of Screez Education was dtrected not against Right, but against the liberal Left, and particular against the 'delusions' of 1960's. Child-centsed education relendessly caricanued, in a manner far removed from that of Kenneth Baker today: 'experience' and ' became the new

bssons frDn SEFT

'Great the in the was not creativity' swear-words.

erises many teaching maierials in media education. On the one hand, there is commiunent to 'learning by discovery' and the attempt to validaie the readings which students make. On the hand, there remains an underlying set

things, and we must sek to avoid its mistakes. Beyond this any future organisation wiil need to forge a more equat and more constructive relationship berween academic thedy and educational practice. This means wcking with teachers in a very different way: ratier than seeking to inspire them with empty rhetoric, or provide them with a body of academic lnowledge to transmit, it should sek to enable ieachers to share their expenise, and o reflect more 0reoretically upon their own leaching. Support for l@al teachers' goups, and the publication of teachers' work in however provisional a form, are essential here. Any inservice training which is provided should aim to get beyond simply handing out materials and ideas for lessons, or offering potted versions of eademic research: it should work over a longer tef,rn, io encourage tachers to become autonomous and self-critical, and to research their owa prrtice.

corect answers, or

realisations, which students are expected to produce. All readings are valid, some are still more valid than

pre-determined

other of

but others.

Ntho|gh S U een Educatran's position was not necessarily consistent or

uncha-llenged, il was certainly dominated by a denunciation of 'liberal' strategies like class discussion and practical work. Instad, what was neded was 'confrontation and analysis', a 'dismembering' of the 'dominant ideology', which would lead inevitably to mdical political action. Teachers were urged io engage in 'direct teaching' (which presumably meant lectur-

Cleady, these contradictions are not !o be resolved by yet more abstract rhetoric or speculation. On the contrary, there is an urgent ned in media education for detailed, systematic reflertion on classroom practice - reflection which should be infmmed by theory, but which
should also help

develop

it. It is one

ing), as the only means of tsansmicing the knowledge which would prepare working-class students to take contriol of the means of production.

of the major indictments of SEFT's work that it was unable and unwilling to encourage this kind of work by teachers - in a way that parallel organisations, such as NATE, have ben able to do with considerable success.

Learning the Lessons

So what are the lessons we might learn from the demise of SEFT - and what might we hope to avoid in establishing any new organisation [o support media

Towards Classroom Practice

In many ways, dre legrcy of Screen Education contnv,s !o inform media education in the 1980's. While the rhetoric now seems merely absurd, the fundamental relationship between academic theryy and classroom practice established at that time remains influential. Handbmks on media teaching are still based on the implicit assumption that the teacher's role is merely to hand down academic knowledge !o students: when it comes to classroom practice, we are given 'suggestions for leaching', but no indication of what happens when you actually carry them oul This approach
severely neglects children's existing understanding of the media, and fails to consider how they learn. As a result, the question ofpedagogy remains deeply fraughL In many prescriptions for media teaching, there remains an uneasy contradiction between the model of media effects rvhich sees students as essentially duped by the 'dominant ideology' - and the model of teaching - which is often that of libertarian progressivism. This places the teacher in an highly contradictory postition; on the one hand, Vhe is seen to be in possession ofa 'fiulh' which is not available to hiyher students, while, on the other, s&e is urged to engage sl.udena in an equal dialogue, and to avoid hierachical teaching methods.

A national associatiur of media teachers is urgendy required, panicularly in the current context of educational change, For those ofus who
wasted so much time and snrgy in SEFT, the least we can do is to ensure rhat it will be besr next time amund.

teaching?

Ultimately, SEFI'S privileging of academic theryy and its neglect of the realities of classroom practic meant that it was simply out of touch with
leachers' everyday concerns. The

political posnring of the 1970's was

ilreffective at the time, and became increasingly Lrclevant in the changing educational climate of the 1980's. Yet SEFT was unable to change: ttre unequal relationship between cademic
theory and educational prrctice was embedded in the very structure of tlle organisation itself - in its allocation of resoulces, its recruitrnent of staff and its

lssue 12
The nert lssue ol lnitlatives ls due to be publlshed in

policy-making processes.

January 1990.
The Edilorlal Board wel comes elther suggestlons lor arllcles or arlicles lor considerallon. Please supply double spaced type scrlpt by 20/1289lo:

Any new organisation will need to ensue that it remains responsive to

teachers' nds, and tlnt ils structure reflcts this fundamental aim. If it is !o speak on behalf of media teachers as a whole, it will need to adoF a regesentative, democratic stsucturs, and prevent

This kind of contradiction also charac-

individuals exerting unfair control. It will need to clarify the relationships between the membership and any paid employees, and lay down clear and open procedures for devising policy, and for ensuring that policies are carried out consistendy and effectively. SEFT effectively failed to achieve any of these

tbe possibility of particular goups

or

Initiafives, C/O 126 Mercers Road, llo lloway, London,

N19 4PU.

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