Len Masterman

(Alpha Media, 2002)

Review by David Butts

Bazalgette’s “Sabre-Tooth Tigers and Polar Bears” address to the AMES 1999 annual conference provoked a rattle of quick-fire protests from Scottish media teachers. In “Down Cemetery Road”, Masterman brings up the heavy artillery. The answer to Bazalgette’s question, “Where do you go to get controversy these days?” is undoubtedly “Go to Masterman!” His monograph is in three parts. In the first section, he analyses Bazalgette’s response to teachers’ criticisms of the AMES address and argues that any weakness in the structure of media education has been primarily strategic rather than conceptual and to a large extent due to absences and errors in the BFI’s advocacy and policy over the past ten years.  Part II sets out to refute Bazalgette’s criticisms of confusion, patchiness and incoherence in media education as it is currently constituted. Part III examines Bazalgette’s arguments for refocussing the media education project on the study of moving image media alone and concludes that the change would result in a diluted, anodyne and ideologically neutered field of study. Moreover, Masterman contests the idea that moving images share a common visual language and argues that the concept, far from being “definable, coherent and recognisable” (as Bazalgette claimed), embodies “an illusory unity, destined to disintegrate on its first contact with the classroom”.

Masterman’s criticisms are detailed and comprehensive, backed up by quotations that indicate a significant shift in BFI policy over the years. The tone of the monograph varies between the voice of a university tutor reproving a student for careless thinking and the cut and thrust of a prosecuting counsel. In conclusion, the BFI is charged with making a take-over bid for media education, altering the brand to suit its own institutional strengths and predilections and, in the process, scrapping years of hard thinking and formidable achievement by media teachers. The indictment is severe and, some may feel, unfair to the BFI’s past achievements in promoting the cause of media education. Others may wish that Masterman had added a Part IV to his monograph, justifying in more detail the coherence of his own concept of media education and illustrating how it might be embodied in classroom practice. To be fair, Masterman might well point out that all this ground has been covered in his previous publications. Nevertheless, to counter-balance the recent BFI booklets (“Making Movies Matter” and “Moving Images in the Classroom”), media teachers may feel the need for a new and explicit statement of concepts and strategy. “Making Masterman Matter” could be a working title.

The declared intention of the monograph is to “help the process of reflection and analysis”, not to provide the last word. At this early stage of the debate, however, the advantage would appear to lie with Masterman, since he has taken the time to argue  that the coherence of his concept of  media education lies precisely in its “ability to draw together and make connections between spheres deliberately kept apart by the academic disciplines and school curricula”; whereas Bazalgette, in her AMES address, made assertions about confusions, contradictions, unmanageability and patchiness, without producing evidence to support her criticisms. It is probably unfair to draw comparisons between a brief paper aimed at making the audience sit up and think and a more reflective study running to ninety-nine pages. “Down Cemetery Road” deserves a considered response. “Up the Junction” perhaps; since those of us who knew and admired Bazalgette in the past as an advocate of a broader model of media education cannot help feeling that something significant must have happened to her on the return journey from Damascus, obliging her to make an unexpected switch of direction. Of course it is no crime to change your strategy, indeed it can be a healthy sign that rigor mortis has not set in; but readers may feel some sympathy with Masterman’s claim that an explanation of this apparent change of stance is called for. No doubt this will be forthcoming before long.

Both Bazalgette and Masterman are vigorous and hard-hitting debaters, well matched in defence and attack. It would be possible to follow their sparring with a detached and appreciative eye, keeping a tally of points scored. Alternatively, Scottish media teachers may reckon that the debate, which began as a storm in a Caledonian tea-cup, has now shifted south of the Border and is no longer of immediate importance. (“Let them get on with it, I’ve a Third Year waiting for me … “). Either reaction would be misplaced. For the past twenty years, Bazalgette and Masterman have exerted formidable influence and leadership in the development of media education, in Britain and overseas, and fundamental differences between them must surely be a matter of general concern. Moreover, Bazalgette, in her role as Head of Education Projects at the BFI, will be listened to by curriculum planners and decision makers in England and Wales and, through the BFI’s links with Scottish Screen, in Scotland. For media teachers, the tussle between these two major protagonists is far more than a spectator sport.

Masterman ends his monograph by insisting that the important debate is not about Bazalgette’s attacks (which he regards as being “almost entirely destructive”) upon media education, but about the function of the BFI in assuming a leadership role. That issue is certainly important, given the BFI’s undoubted influence in the field. For Scottish teachers, however, the essential debate must surely concern priorities. Within the confines of an overcrowded school day, what is of most value for pupils to learn? What should be part of the core curriculum (in Bazalgette’s words, “something everyone has a right to learn”) and what should more appropriately be offered as an option? A second question, for those who believe in the essential coherence and importance of media education as it is currently structured, is how to accommodate an interdisciplinary field of study within or alongside a subject-based curriculum. The shores of British education are strewn with the wreckage of cross-curriculum projects, but attempts to confine the study of the mass media within the boundaries of a host department (for example, English, Art or Modern Studies) can starve the cuckoo and distort the nest. Does this mean that media education, embodied in specialist courses of media study, must be relegated to the status of a desirable option? If so, must we accept that it will never be “something everyone has a right to learn”?

Bazalgette has her own pragmatic solution. Half a loaf is better than no bread, particularly if it contains all the nourishment you need. She suggests that, to be realistic, we have to shape media education into a form that will enable us  to “sell it to policy makers”. For Masterman, this is a half-baked solution, incapable of providing true sustenance. Readers must decide for themselves between the two opposing arguments.

The debate is of great importance and it demands to be explored more fully. “Down Cemetery Road” has made a major contribution and it deserves close and critical study, but this should be accompanied by a careful re-reading of “Sabre-Tooth Tigers and Polar Bears” and a review of other less polemical reflections; for example, Robert Ferguson’s article on “Media Education and the development of critical solidarity” in the MEJ Issue 30 and the concluding chapter of “Teaching Media in the English Curriculum” by Hart and Hicks (2002). The pattern of media education is not, after all, a “heads Bazalgette, tails Masterman” decision. There are other models to consider. The future, as Masterman affirms, “will only be safe in the hands of media teachers themselves”.

David Butts

St Jean de Cole

This paper is to be published in the MEJ.