The Fuller-Berger controversy: teaching Visual Literacy to Students of Social Sciences

This paper discusses the difficulty of teaching visual literacy to students of Communication whose visual skills are compromised by an overexposure to images rather than a lack of visual experience. Traditional arts and literature are nowadays not only a humanistic background for educated people but a necessary therapy in order to acquire knowhow of audiovisual ecology. To illustrate that point, this paper draws on the views expressed by Peter Fuller in Seeing Through Berger (1988), a strong critique of John Berger's bestselling work Ways of Seeing. Fuller argues that Berger undermines the importance of the study of traditional arts subjects (albeit only implicitly), and that the lack of such study weakens students' visual skills, above all, in terms of critical consideration and response. Fuller's remarks, which address the challenges facing those teachers involved in teaching fine arts, are of equal relevance in communication, field in which I am concern at the moment.