My first impression of this article was that it felt a bit condescending towards younger people, by saying that we don't have the intelligence to recognize and analyze digital images. According to the author, "the current generation of children and young people are very familiar with the expressions of our visual culture due to spending more time watching TV programs and interacting with their computer stations than attending school. Yet, as Felten rightly points out: “Living in an image rich world…does not mean students (or faculty and administrators) naturally possess sophisticated visual literacy skills, just as continually listening to an iPod does not teach a person to critically analyze or create music.” Considering that we have probably spent the most amount of time on the internet than any other generation, I actually sort of disagree with this statement. I think that we have gotten so good at recognizing visual symbols that we have in a sense, created our own language with them (i.e memes, gifs, emojis, templates etc). In addition to this, we have the unique ability to notice deception in pictures and visual media, such as if something is photoshopped, or "faked for views." We also have the emotional intelligence to instantly call out when people may be lying, or creating a false personality, or statement on the internet, simply by how something is produced, or spoken. Granted, there are some people who may lack this sort of critical thinking, but I think most young people already carry a foundational amount of Visual Literacy. Regarding it's comparison to listening to music, as a music student myself, I would never discount someone's analysis of music, simply because they do not know theory. There are so many aspects of music that can be explained without an education, such as, how it makes you feel, or what kind of sounds, or textures you hear. It is also entirely possible to create music without prior knowledge of music theory and in fact happens all the time with great musicians. While I think that theory and visual literacy is important, I do not think it's necessary. Although, I also do not disagree that it should be a part of our education. I think it should definitely be taught alongside internet safety and fact-checking tools, because the internet is a wild place where children could easily go to dark, inappropriate, or misleading places. Overall, I believe that Visual Literacy is not necessary in order to "survive" the internet, but is a helpful tool for navigating, or creating images.
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