Using Visual Literacy for social development

The other day while having a telephone conversation with my younger sister (who is a senior in high school), she expressed that she was having difficulties in her photography/graphic design class. Surprised by the fact that this course was offered at her school, I quizzed her a little more about the curriculum of her class. Again, she surprised me when she mentioned several topics (on a broader level) that we have discussed in class such as image organization, the rule of thirds, and how to use color. While my sister has no desire to go into a visual based field, she said that this course was an art elective that she was required to take in order to graduate.
While my high school career only ended around six years ago, I do not recall courses such as this being offered. However, through further research on the topic of teaching “visual literacy” at the high school level, I found that this has become much more common. In a 2008 article by Debby Zambo (which I have sent in an e-mail to all of you), she discusses how teaching the concepts of visual literacy to adolescents have been proven to help them greatly in their social development as well as enhances their critical thinking skills.
The article explains that our youth today live in a very visual world and as such this can affect how they look at themselves, the choices they make about their future as well as the friends they select. For this reason the author believes that knowing how to “interrogate and critique an image’s purpose and emotional effect” can help adolescent to let go of some surface level values they have acquired about image, culture and society.
In class last week, we talked about how creating visuals can be a science and an art. While I agree that both realms come into play, I believe this study makes a strong case for viewing it as a science. The idea that the images we create could potentially have an effect on how someone views themselves or judges other people is a scary-thought in itself. However, knowing that in high schools we are using the principles and concepts of visual literacy to help breakdown these social barriers is a powerful thing.
As a behavioral science major it interested me to see how analyzing different graphics and photographs made me challenge my own values. Below I have included images which have come under scrutiny for the psychological and contreversial messages they conveyed to those who viewed them.

I’m very interested to see the classes opinion on teaching visual literacy in high school, but also on these images, and the messages you believe were conveyed through the editing and composition of these graphics, and the techniques used to hone the points each image made.

Controversial Graphics:

Image #1: Killer Heels

Image 2: OJ Simpson Covers

Image 3: United Hearts