Give me a few minutes, and I'll teach you somethingWhat is the role of Anime/Manga in education? Is there even a role for it? How could it be incorporated into a classroom? Is there a way that I can incorporate anime and manga into the classroom that would help me reach an entirely new generation of students? Much like how the Wii wasn't even designed with the core gamers in mind, could anime and manga reach into the void of English students who hold a strong grudge against the subject and flip their views on the subject? What societal views would I have to tackle before there could even be any mention of anime and manga in the classroom? These are questions that I, both as an otaku and an educator, think about constantly. I spend a good majority of my day (read: planning period) thinking about ways that I could combine the two things that I love. Cowboy Bebop, how we love theeThe name is Mr. Colgate. That's right, first name Mister, last name Colgate. I no longer have a first name, for I am an educator. I will admit that I'm not yet a fully certified teacher, but I'm getting close. I'm currently two months away from my Master of Arts in Teaching and my initial teaching certification. Along with the field work that we partake in, the teaching candidates at the University of Louisville are also involved in learning teaching theory. What I'm going to do here, in this blog, article, feature, what-have-you, is take anime/manga and try to discover how it could be incorporated into the classroom. Ready? 3, 2, 1, Let's Jam.MangaManga is not something that one would have to go to great lengths to find an application on a classroom. It is still, for all intents and purposes, a book. It has characters, setting, plot, conflict, and any other part of a book one could think of. Some people might say, "but, Mr. Colgate, where are the words?" I would but simply ask you, what are words? Before you could answer my question, I would respond for you in the form of a question: "Is not a word in a book simply ink on a piece of paper that is meant to represent something? When this ink is set in a certain way on a piece of paper, does it not become something which evokes a response from the person viewing it? How then can we say that a picture is 'less-than' prose?" As the old adage goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words."Let us think about its application. One of the main focuses of an English classroom is getting students to read. The more you read, the better of a reader you are, the better you are at identifying different textual elements (theme, conflict, setting, etc.), and the better your comprehension skills are. The application of manga is fairly simple at the surface level: let students read manga in place of pure prose texts. Students can indeed become better readers by reading manga, it can help them identify textual elements (might even be easier to do so when the wordy descriptions are taken out of the equation), and students can comprehend a little better.In the classroom I'm currently teaching, here are a few ways I am currently, and could possibly be, incorporating manga. When students come into the room, they are expected to read for a set amount of time (generally 15-20 minutes) before the lesson starts. The reading that students do here is part of the Independent Reading Project, in which students are expected to read 4 books (at least 125 pages per book) throughout the semester. This is a place where manga can easily be incorporated, and it's something that we already engage in with students. Students have the option of reading 3 volumes of manga in place of a prose book. Though our selection isn't really varied right now (we have Evangelion, and that's it), the student response to it has been good. Emo is as emo does... and emo kids love to read about other emo kids. Thank you ShinjiStruggling readers. This is probably the most important place that manga could appear in. Manga is the saint for struggling readers all over the nation, and there’s research that suggests a reason for it. Now, childhood brain development, the way I understand it, revolves around a use-it-or-lose-it school of thought. If you don’t utilize certain brain processes as it’s developing, the brain will determine the synapses responsible for those processes as irrelevant and get rid of them. This accounts for the fact that as people grow older, they lose the ability to hear and pronounce certain phonemes (think of the click languages in Africa). Now, as kids grow up, we are given all sorts of visual stimuli, be it movies, video games, or comics. Since we are given all of that stimuli, research (I have no sources, sorry) suggests that we lose the capacity to create the visuals within ourselves; we lose the capacity to imagine. So when we read, we cannot visualize the images being conveyed by text. This is where reading manga comes in. By reading manga, struggling readers do not need to worry about creating an image in their head. It is done for them. Many readers, from personal experience, get hung up on the details that prose text presents. Since they lack the ability to competently picture what the prose is suggesting, they tend to get hung up on what most readers take for granted. They sacrifice understanding other important textual elements to try and get a grasp on the images portrayed. Tell me I'm not worth reading, and I'll show you a real monsterA problem that people pose with this is that manga doesn't include “great books”. This is, of course, entirely untrue, but let us explore it for the sake of argument. Let's start with an argument of definition, namely, “What is a 'great book'?” Who determines that something is better than the other options out there? Rather than looking at the presentation and things like that, we should look rather at the themes. Is it well written? Doesn't really matter. Twilight, a book that I hold an incredible distaste for, has created an entire new generation of readers. Is it a great book? I'll let you decide on that. Do kids read it and learn from it? Certainly. In the world of manga, we have many adaptations and reformulations of “great books”, and many series that could very easily be defined as “great”. Read Monster, and tell me that you didn't find anything worth-while or redeeming about it, and I will stand corrected.Manga doesn't have to solely be a tool to help struggling readers. There is an activity I have planned for a class involving manga, but I've not been able to teach it yet (I will one day, I swear!). Students will take a page of manga, maybe even a single frame, and write out the text that the images convey, the details that would turn this page into pure prose. This little exercise, though, can be used to increase the reading and writing abilities of all kinds of students.Now, let's think of this the other way around: turning words into manga. One of the best ways to show mastery over material is to change it into another form: writing a poem about The Great Gatsby, Writing Monster out as prose, or even turning a book into a manga. We call this text reformulation, and it's not even English-centric. It's something that could work in almost every subject. You could allow students to create a history of the world- manga style, you could draw a conversation between two people speaking a foreign language, or you can even allow students to create a manga version of a chemical reaction (though this will take some AMAZING creative ability).I feel that I've talked enough about manga, though, so let's move on to...AnimeLuckily for you, the anime section will be a lot shorter than the manga section since most of the things I would normally include here has already been covered. That being said, anime does have its uses in the classroom.Think about any episode of anime you've watched recently. Chances are, it was subtitled. Just think about it; how many words did you read? How fast did you read? How quickly did you need to comprehend what was being said? Just think about the applications this could have for struggling readers in the classroom. Granted, most of them might say, “Whatev, man, anime be stoopid” (trust me, they do talk like that), but there might still be a few we can reach through this method. True love is a timeless themeLet's talk again about the text reformulation idea. What better way to illustrate to students what you mean by text reformulation than by showing them Gankustuou, or Romeo X Juliet, or the World Masterpiece Theater series (not sure if that's the actual name). These should not be in any way used in place of the original books, due to some discrepancies made for TV's sake, but they can still be great educational tools.Certain animes can be used in some cultural studies classrooms to teach about culture. Think of Utena and how it shows examples of shadow play and takarazuka theater; it's perfect for a drama or theater class. Revolutionary Girl Utena will revolutionize your mindWell, my cat has nestled herself into my lap, and has begun begging for pets. This feline alarm clock alerts me now that it is time to stop typing, but I hope you'll take some of this into consideration. Anime/manga is not something sole for the fan; it can be a great educational tool if utilized correctly.Let me leave you with some questions: How would you feel if anime/manga was introduced into the curriculum at your school? If it were simply available? Would you be any more invested in the school work? What other ideas do you have for how it could be incorporated?~ Dustin Colgate (Baku_Sensei) is a student teacher in Louisville, Ky. He has a B.A in English, and is currently pursuing his Masters in Teaching.
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