Types of learners: Music or film?
Yes, it’s a stupid question. No, you’ll never have to decide.
But, it’s pretty fascinating listening to people’s answers. Of course there are those that give you a disgusted look, “film over music?! NO chance”, and those who look really tormented trying to decide.
Obviously I’d scrap music, quite easily in fact. However, what I find most interesting about the ridiculous music vs. film debate (because it is a bit ridiculous and it did turn into a debate), is that in many ways it harks back to what kind of learners we were all told we were back in our school days.
Now I hope I’m not the only one who was forced to take the “what kind of learner are you?” test at school every year, which put you in an auditory learner, visual learner or kinesthetic learner camp*. Of course the teachers didn’t pay very much attention to the results and used the little quiz as a slightly more academic alternative to getting the board games out, but all of my answers still ring so true all these years later.
The main one being I just don’t really connect with audio and never have. Anything that solely relies on me listening is guaranteed to switch off my concentration in less than a few minutes. Sure I do love music in my own special way, but I find the tracks I listen to the most and have the deepest connection with were used in a film or TV show that I loved and work together with the memory of what it looked like while the music just played in the background.
So there you go, in my eyes music is a nice to have (and arguably necessary for most movies to work, but let’s ignore that small point for now), but in a battle to the death film will always win in my eyes.
What about yours?
*See part of this online book about how to teach different types of learners for more information on each.
