Winter 2004

Talking History

Giving cartoon analysis a second chance

Teaching history through cartoon analysis looked like a great idea—until examiners realised that students were not quite getting the jokes. LIZ McGINNIS discusses what went wrong and how to fix it.

When history teachers decided to include the study of cartoons in school courses, the thinking was that students would find it informative, educational, revealing, thought provoking and fun.

Many teachers have begun to feel that these noble aims have backfired and we have now created a large problem. We expected students who found ‘dry as dust’ text ‘boring’ to be overjoyed at the use of visual imagery. What has gone wrong? Why do examiners constantly complain that students appear not to be able to make anything but the most literal of interpretations of cartoons?

In many instances the original aims have been achieved—students have enjoyed using a different source of historical information and certainly interesting class discussions have occurred through different interpretations of the cartoons. However, there have been difficulties: we have discovered that our students do not always readily identify what seems so obvious to us; that their ‘cultural capital’ is not the same as ours. For instance, they may not readily identify a clothes line (the famous cartoon of Menzies and the Brisbane Line). Sometimes, without such recognition, the point of the cartoon is as clear as mud. The ‘fun’ dissipates rapidly when students are confused and disheartened, especially if the lack of recognition should occur in an examination! The same student may well have been able to display insight and personal interpretation in a text-based question covering the same content as the cartoon, but because they could not decode the cultural references in the visual display they are unable to demonstrate their historical capability.

Visual literacy is an essential element for understanding our society and as history teachers we can and should try to help our students learn to ‘read’ the meaning, decode the message and identify the bias/point of view conveyed by a cartoon in much the same way as we teach them to apply critical thinking skills to a text document. But is it really the same type of skill? How can we help our students develop this ability?

Some thoughts on this are:

• Studying cartoons in a vacuum leads to little learning and great frustration (try it yourself with a cartoon from a field with which you have little or no familiarity).
• Students need to have a thorough knowledge of the context of the cartoon in order to appreciate all its subtleties.
• Students need to be taught the elements of a cartoon so they know how to start the decoding process.
• Familiarity with symbols and metaphor needs to be developed over time, and special attention given to what the symbols and metaphors may have meant in different times and places.

Following a successful grant application to the Public Education Endowment Trust, the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library (JCPML) at Curtin University has produced Cartoon PD in a Package to help teachers improve their teaching of cartoon analysis. The kit is aimed at teachers of secondary students and is divided into cartoons suitable for both lower and upper school classes. All the examples used are Australian and follow a theme of war throughout the twentieth century. Different approaches are suggested for the different age groups. For example, for the younger students a ‘scaffolding’ method is used where the cartoon is built up layer by layer from a blank square. The purpose is to help students to appreciate how the cartoon has been constructed. They are guided to interpret the symbols and metaphors used and to guess where the cartoon is leading. The trialling of the materials by both experienced and inexperienced teachers has indicated that this approach kept the students engaged as they tried to guess what was coming next and what the cartoon meant.

For senior students, a different approach called ‘chunking’ is outlined. As these students are facing examinations, they need to be able to go through the process of identification and interpretation quite quickly. The focus is on encouraging students to recognise the ‘chunks’ of the cartoon and to take a systematic approach to working out its context, message and meaning, while recognising themes consistent with their areas of study. The trialling again indicated that if students followed the suggested approach and physically outlined the key ‘chunks’ (either with a pen/pencil or even just a finger), they were more accurate in their analysis and more likely to discern nuances than if they ‘just looked at it’.

Cartoon PD in a Package has been designed to prompt teachers through every aspect of the process of cartoon analysis and to provide a self-contained, easy-to-follow professional development program for this very important facet of the history teacher’s task. Eleven sample cartoons are included with full directions for classroom use. The context for each is provided in sufficient detail for an inexperienced teacher or one unfamiliar with these parts of Australian history. Questions (with suggested answers) are supplied for the teacher to ask in class. The order of the questions encourages students to develop their skills of efficient and methodical analysis. For the younger students, the questions are identified as high, middle or low order. Follow-up questions requiring written responses are provided (again, with suggested answers). Terminology is explained and a sample cartoon supplied with the key elements highlighted. Extension questions are included, as well as other activities to help students appreciate how cartoonists construct their messages.

All of this material is available through the JCPML website at http://john.curtin.edu.au/education/ cartoonpd/index.html and it is hoped that the ‘fun’ element will be reinforced in the history classroom.

Liz McGinnis is the Discovering Democracy project officer for Western Australia and teaches at Methodist Ladies’ College.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au