All these phenomena show that photography is more and more closely related to school education and student growth. On the basis of investigating the development of photography education and activities inside and outside the school in recent years, this paper advocates that photography education should actively enter primary and secondary education and become an important means of auxiliary course teaching.
First, photography has a strong educational function.
Photography is popular, interesting, documentary and instrumental, which is very suitable for school education and auxiliary course teaching. Simply put, photography has the following two prominent functions in school education and auxiliary course teaching:
1. It is the general trend of current education to cultivate students' good ideology, morality and noble sentiments, and to use aesthetic education instead of preaching and entertaining education.
Because of the authenticity and credibility of photographic images, the education that creators get from them is more effective than other means. The real and vivid image education of photographic art is very helpful to cultivate students' correct outlook on life and values. The most obvious educational effect is to consciously guide students to observe society correctly, discover and capture the bright spots of society with cameras, eulogize the truth, goodness and beauty of society, and lash the false, evil and ugly of society through photography and personal participation in shooting practice. For example, some school educators in Shanghai, in order to make students pay attention to Shanghai's municipal construction, especially the progress of tree planting and greening projects, organized the same group of students to shoot creative activities in the same place for half a year, so that students could feel this change personally. By comparing the photos taken before and after, we can give students a vivid, profound and effective social education and achieve good results. This model can be seen everywhere, so I won't go into details here.
The practicality of photography has led to countless educational functions. In addition to cultivating and improving students' aesthetic ability, observation ability and reaction ability, photography can also have a positive impact on children's living habits, ideological character and behavior patterns: for example, going out to collect customs, cultivating the spirit of hard work and the ability to take care of themselves independently; Group travel enhances students' team consciousness and mutual concern. What's more, some teachers have observed that photography can make some introverted or even depressed children get good treatment; For example, some grumpy children can fundamentally change their thoughts and behaviors after a photo activity that cares for the poor. Compared with other forms of education, these educational effects are very favorable.
2. It is conducive to promoting the development of teenagers' comprehensive ability and mastering many skills.
Photography is a comprehensive skill. Through photography activities, we can cultivate students' observation ability, thinking ability, imagination ability and practical ability, and also cultivate a series of related abilities such as organization, expression, overall planning, contingency, cooperation, coordination and independent work. Photography creation is not simply pressing the shutter. Sometimes, in order to complete a creative task, from planning to on-site scheduling can be said to be an exercise of students' comprehensive ability. Because of photography, you will encounter all kinds of difficulties and deal with all kinds of characters. For example, what if your subject doesn't cooperate with shooting? What if I can't find the best photography spot? This requires students to have good overall planning ability, communication ability and adaptability. For example, in Shanghai, once a teacher organized a student to go to a juvenile sports school for photography creation. The first problem was that the other party did not receive him. After negotiation, he finally entered the creative scene, and then he met with difficulties in unsatisfactory lighting and scenes. After repeated selection and waiting by his classmates, he finally got a satisfactory creative map. The photographic work of one of his classmates won the grand prize in the national sports photography competition. Through this activity and solving problems in the activity, students have a deeper understanding of the social significance of photography creation.
Second, how to promote photography education in schools?
Like computer education, the main positions of photography education in the future are schools and classrooms. Judging from the current educational practice in schools, there are some successful experiences that can be used for reference.
1, adopts the teaching mode of combining in-class and out-of-class, and deliberately combines photography with the study of various subjects to play the role of photography in auxiliary course teaching.
The operation mode of combining in-class and out-of-class makes photography deeper and more vivid. The technical knowledge popularized in the classroom makes children know more about photography; Extracurricular colorful practice makes children full of enthusiasm and hands-on interest in photography. In practice, full-time teachers in photography class not only explain photography knowledge, but also integrate knowledge. For example, when they meet an insect, they will guide their children to learn. When they meet a landform, they will explain it to their children, including nature, geography and history.
Photography teaching adopts the mode of combining in-class and out-of-class, deliberately combining photography with various subjects, and giving full play to the role of photography in minor courses teaching. Photography, as a modern culture and technology, is a frontier science integrating optics, electronics, chemistry, politics, news, fine arts, music, literature and many other disciplines, and it is also another form of visual language. Photography education in primary and secondary schools has played an important auxiliary role in the teaching of fine arts, aesthetics, Chinese, music, politics and related science and engineering disciplines.
For example, in the art course of Baijiazhuang Primary School in Chaoyang District, Beijing, photography is taken as a school-based course, and the analysis of photography works in class is combined with extracurricular practice and shooting activities. Photography has become an expanding tool for art classes, which provides great help for students to collect all kinds of materials. Beijing Sanlitun Primary School set up a photography school-based curriculum research and development team to compile school-based curriculum. They have a set of photography education strategies-"based on small classes, going into nature and facing the whole society". The school-based curriculum of photography in this school has built an open classroom, which links classroom, nature and society together. Sanlitun primary school carries out photography education and plays its auxiliary course teaching role. In the teaching of other courses (art, aesthetics, Chinese, music, etc. ), photography plays an indispensable role in the production of multimedia materials and courseware and the collection of materials.
2. Develop teacher training and popularize photography knowledge.
Photographers in society can undertake part of off-campus photography education or off-campus photography education, but the education of photographers in schools is more important, so it is very important to carry out teacher training. At present, photography teachers in schools are mainly composed of small reporter tutors, art teachers, audio-visual or information teachers and teachers interested in other subjects, while photography teachers from real classes are not common in primary and secondary schools at present. Professional teachers are very important to photography education in primary and secondary schools, so it is very important to carry out photography teacher training and improve the existing teachers' level.
At present, some local education administrative departments (such as some districts and counties in Shanghai) have attached great importance to photography education in primary and secondary schools, and have a very clear work schedule for placing photography in the same important position as music and art in the field of art education, and have begun to organize special training for photography instructors on a large scale.
3. Take activities as the carrier to improve students' interest in learning photography.
Education should conform to children's character. In order to promote photography education, the school can hold various activities, such as field investigation of young journalists, scientific and technological investigation, news interview and so on. Every summer, a series of activities, such as holding photography summer camps, participating in various photography competitions at all levels, organizing photographers to go sightseeing, interviewing leaders, and taking photos of the elderly in nursing homes for free, not only make students enjoy it, but also improve their photography skills during the activities.
Lin Ting Primary School in Jinshan District, Shanghai, as a characteristic school of photography in Shanghai, not only explains theoretical knowledge, but also pays more attention to photography practice and carries out various photography activities in photography education. Lin Ting Primary School has set up a photography interest group since 1984, and has regular classes every week. In addition, Lin Ting Primary School also organizes extracurricular practical activities such as youth photography competition, creative collection in winter and summer vacations, and social activities of photography creation. Beijing Baijiazhuang Primary School carries out school-based photography courses, and takes children out (in the streets of Beijing) for photography on weekends. The children personally experienced the culture of Beijing and explained their understanding of Beijing culture with vivid photos. Through the practice of photography, their interest in photography has been stimulated, with surprisingly good results and rich connotations. This is much more effective than learning theoretical knowledge in class.
4. Create a photography learning atmosphere.
In order to meet the needs of students, the school can make the best use of the situation, set up a photography team in each grade, and set up a "photography corner" in each class to display students' excellent photography works. The school holds a big photography class every week, regularly invites experts to give school-wide lectures, and regularly holds various forms of photography competitions and exhibitions. From these exquisite works, people deeply feel that children are harvesting happiness, growth and care in photography. Behind every work, people can feel love, desire, vitality and culture, not only the photography skills (the teaching of techniques and the extensive content of framing), but also the influence of culture. Students in the photojournalist group can also use weekends or winter and summer vacations for off-campus collection.
Generally speaking, photography has great potential in primary and secondary education and curriculum-assisted teaching. The photography industry should give full play to its professional advantages and talent advantages, and support and promote photography education for more teenagers, schools and classrooms.