Myth? Unbelievable? Impossible? Of course not. One of the most recent trends that has brought education and entertainment together is the emergence of the educational comic book.
It all began way back in 1949 when Hutchinson’s experimented with a weekly comic called Puck, which was centred about a school curriculum. At the time, most teachers found that the comics had increased motivation and participation levels among students. However, there was also the conservative lot who actually kvetched about educational comic books oversimplifying learning. Since then, the educational comic book has metamorphosed through various avatars including Superman language arts workbooks and many others to gradually gain grudging acceptance in educational circles.
Truth be told, most people, particularly children, think in images and this is why they are drawn to comics, educational or not. With regard to education, comic books can be particularly useful because they help ease the cognitive burden plain text places on a learner. While students may spend many minutes reading a few paragraphs on the water cycle, a simple graphical representation of the same phenomenon explains the process in seconds. Such is the power of the medium.
Unlike other visual mediums like movies and animation, comic books provide a sense of visual permanence. Simply put, this means that specific images are always easily available to the learner allowing the learning to be self-paced.
The most important aspect of educational comic books is that they have the potential to make learning pleasurable in stark contrast to the boring textbooks that most children have to put up with. As a result, studying becomes less of a burden.
While guides, question sets and poorly compiled study notes have become a booming industry to boost examination results, educational comic books pose parents and students with a qualitatively better option.
Will educational comic books take off? That’s anybody’s guess right now!
Posts
Our arts & craft class teacher would teach us how to make a television out of our favourite comic strips. We would be thrilled and would use our favourite characters - Mandrake and Phantom comics, wind them around wooden sticks (often acquired from broomsticks) and insert them in a soap box so it appears like a television. We would turn the comic strip with this stick and make it play like a video. Kids these days are spoilt of choice!
ReplyDeleteIts difficult to imagine education from comic books, at least academically. But in retrospect, I feel I learned a lot from my favorite comic - Tintin! It transported me to a completely new world of knowing and even my vocabulary improved cos I was picking up words through conversations. It was interesting to know that even the bizarre language used by Capt. Haddock in his angry fits were all genuine dictionary words! Comics are always fun and if they educate, wow!
ReplyDelete