The Visual Learning Factor

 The Visual Learning Factor

I am a visual learner. I’ve known this for most of my life. Without even being aware of multiple learning styles, or episodic memory, I always knew I had a visual mind. I don’t know if this is a result of my constant TV and movie viewing as a child or if my brain is just wired this way—I just know that it is a fact. A fact, that once my high school teachers fully recognized it, resulted in projects and assignments that tapped into my special abilities and helped me to be a better student.

In the public middle school system in Westfield, MA I was seen as an ADHD kid. This was very common for the time. This was in 2000. Students were being tested for learning disabilities and prescribed medication such as Effexor, which was what they gave me.

While the school psychiatrist diagnosed me with ADHD, my primary care physician had a different diagnosis. I am fortunate to actually have copies of my medical evaluations from that time, because my mother had been given copies. My primary care provider, as listed in the documents, was named Dr. Franczyk and my evaluation was done by a mental health specialist named Dr. Rosen who wrote in his report:

Bryan is here today with his mom. He is an almost fourteen year-old Westfield middle school student who I have seen previously because of his problems with social relatedness, attention and emotions. I have felt that he met criteria for a mild form of pervasive disorder called Asperger’s syndrome…

On page 2 of this document is the sentence:

He will be applying to Pioneer Valley Performing Arts next year.

Dr. Rosen suggested I apply to Pioneer Valley Performing Arts (PVPA) charter school. He told my parents it would be, “right up his alley.” Which was something that every teacher and adult would say at the time when I was applying. “That’s right up his alley!” They all said.

I got accepted into Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School and started in 2001. It wasn’t smooth sailing right off the bat though. I wasn’t the only student struggling, either. It was a tough transition from public school to charter school for all of my classmates as well. I was not the only student with ADHD or Asperger’s. It was common for many students to be inattentive or uncooperative—and being  prescribed medication was also the norm. Getting students to buckle down and focus in our first semester of Language Arts class was a chore that resulted in our teacher Molly (we used first names at PVPA) holding a select few underperforming students back from entering her second semester. Including me.

The co-founder and assistant administrator of PVPA, Ljuba Marsh, taught the film critique class and suggested a solution to get me on track. I was let into film critique in the second semester and Ljuba worked with Molly to create assignments to help me improve my reading comprehension while studying film.

There were three essay assignments total, but the one that stood out to me was on the Stanley Kubrick film ‘A Clockwork Orange’ which was based on a novel by Anthony Burgess. This was my second assignment after a report on Ray Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451’ and it would be followed by a report on William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’. For all three projects the goal was to read the book, watch the movie and report on the themes presented, comparing and determining whether the films were successful adaptations.

A key theme of our first year Language Arts class was societies and dystopias. ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was dystopian and presented a society that had degenerated. The novel was a first person narrative depicting a rapist and a gang member—but the explicit violence and disturbing content, in my opinion, was just there for the sake of drama and provocation. These were simply tools meant to keep the reader or the viewer engaged. The one main point I decided to focus my study on was conditioning and free will.

I did not have a textbook understanding of classical conditioning or ethics—but what was clear to me was that Alex, the protagonist of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was a troublemaker and a criminal as a result of a degenerated society. Rather than fix the issues of a broken society, the justice system’s answer was to experiment on the criminal Alex, giving him drugs to make him nauseous every time he was triggered. The trigger would come every time Alex was exposed to sex or violence. This quick fix to ‘rehabilitate’ criminals, was morally and ethically wrong, because a human being, however reprehensible, is still a human being. That was my main argument.

Alex was a fake character in a fake story, I thought, which was why I was never disturbed by the violent nature of his actions in the book or the movie. I was only focused on the idea of him being a trouble maker. The hyperactive, ADHD kids of the world, in public schools, were seen as ‘disruptive students’. The public school system’s response was to have these kids tested by school psychiatrists, resulting in prescription drugs which would make them more tolerable and less disruptive in classrooms. This left the individual child (as I knew first hand from being on medication) numb and unmotivated and didn’t fix the underlying emotional issues. The child only ‘behaved’ better. 

The film gave me images to keep and remember in my head, that supplemented the story as told in the book. The third ingredient was my actual observations from what was going on with me and my other classmates. To organize all these thoughts, I had help from tutors in academic support. I was given individual attention and was taught how to outline and format a proper academic essay. It didn’t give me a college level understanding of sociology and psychology but it was a big step forward. The final paper was only three pages and not nearly as impressive as something I would write today—but it showed an understanding of issues in society that went beyond the comprehension of a fifteen year-old.

There are some important things to keep in mind when looking at this memory. Consider the type of individual attention I was given at the charter school, which was something I would not have gotten in a public high school. My teacher’s keen observations of my love of movies, resulted in an individualized plan that leaned into my focused visual attention. Movies were an ideal learning tool for me, because they provided a visual factor. My inner thoughts were very detailed and photographic. The visual aspect of my brain was highly developed. 

I learned how to understand literature and other art forms better with visual guides. I was already an avid reader, but I hadn’t been looking deeper into books and exploring themes and social issues until I was given the right tools as a high school student. When I became an adult and my dream of becoming a film director was not realized, I was able to fall back on my backup plan and focus more on writing. For most of my teenage years, poetry and movie scripts were my main forms of creative expression. I shifted goals to focus more on practicing prose. Studying literature more closely, I became a better prose writer over the next few years after high school. 

I was analyzing books the same way I analyzed film and studying the tools and methods of the written word, just like I did movies. Movies that I imagined and made up that I hoped to direct instead would be written as short stories and novels. I had the visuals in my head, I just needed a way to put those visuals into other people’s heads, since I did not have access to physical sets and actors. It was because of the ongoing independent study of film adaptations that I was assigned to in high school that I was able to understand and comprehend reading on a different level and be a better writer myself.