Silent Films in the Classroom

This week in my Mass Media and Society class, we went over a brief history of the early film industry. Not only was this just plain interesting, but I thought this was a great opportunity to think about just how this could apply to the classroom. In one of the readings we read in previous weeks, can't recall just which one it was, the author mentioned how he/she used silent films in her classroom as a new subject for interpretation. I admit, when I had first read this idea in the text, I couldn't see this being a very effective medium for interpretation, let alone being all that interesting. Yet, when we watched clips from a lot of classic silent films, I realized just how much interpretation is absolutely crucial to even understand what is going on in the film. They require you to be a much more active viewer than modern "talkies" do. With this in mind, I see how silent films could be a viable source of material in the ELA classroom. This, I believe, is just a thought that makes teachers cast their nets a little wider when searching for material. We think to include blogs, podcasts, videos, movies, and more, but we can also look back in time and use silent films as well.