Before the dawn of the Information Age, academia was the fount of most "knowledge" - not Google. Back when thousands of alternate possible answers were not a mere click away, it was easier for the so-called knowledge holders to position the truth as binary - one singular "right" and one singular "wrong".
As a result, society on the whole had less opportunity to be broad-minded than we do today. People were more inclined to believe that there was one, definitive answer to every question; one distinct and complete point of view to every story. After all, that's what we were taught. The truth was "black and white". To be educated was to know these binary answers.
When knowledge came mainly via books, if you could spout facts from the study books, you were considered educated and, conversely, if you could not - or if you strayed any distance from the accepted point of view - you were considered ignorant.
Today, the average person has so much knowledge available to them that the limited mode of binary thinking is outdated and becoming increasingly discredited. With every argument for, there are as many arguments against, and both can be presented convincingly with "irrefutable evidence". Does that make both wrong, or both right, or is not that simple?
For example: the profound question of how our world began has baffled scientists and spiritualists since the beginning of time, with each side convinced their theory was correct beyond a shadow of a doubt, which meant that everyone else had to be wrong. In this era, we are intelligent enough to recognize that every answer is a point of view - science fiction, more than science fact. In some cases we even recognize that there are scenarios, such as in quantum physics, when two different answers can both be right (or wrong) simultaneously. Mark Twain, a radical thinker of his time, put it eloquently when he said: “Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”
Historically, story-telling has also suffered the plight of binary thinking, such as the "heroic" story of Christopher Columbus: a great pioneer who discovered the new world. Yet, in the same way that the binary walls of knowledge are crumbling so too are some of the stories we have been lead to believe. Today, the story of Columbus the hero is accepted as a dominant point of view, but not the unequivocally correct one. There is also a strong case to be made for the view that he was a tyrant who committed genocide.
In our time, to be considered educated one is expected to know both these points of view and also, to be open to even more possibilities. Yet, ironically this mode of thinking is not reflected in the current education system adopted by most learning institutions. Despite knowledge being at even a child's fingertips, education is still taught in a narrow and rigid way, more reflective of the old ways, than where this generation is heading. For this generation to be open-minded and inspired by the length, breadth and depth of knowledge that we can access, education needs to encourage expansive thinking and curiosity.
Which is what brings us to film; where education is narrow and rigid, films are the opposite. Film makers constantly strive to be groundbreaking in both their substance and their style.
It is this novelty of film substance and style that we relish, and because it is classed as entertainment, we do not automatically assume that the point of view of the narrative is singularly and definitively correct - that the conclusions are binary, or binding - we accept that if another filmmaker had made the film, the end result could be quite different.
And this is why, to keep pace with the world’s ever-expanding thirst for, and access to, knowledge, it is Mastertude’s vision to pioneer new knowledge channels by merging education and film through the Mastertude Edutainment eXperience (MEX) system.
People are often scared of learning, because traditionally it has been synonymous with feeling like a failure in front of our peers. But no one is scared of watching a film (unless it's a horror!). Shared viewing experiences, such as in cinema or in the home, provide a non-threatening and non-competitive environment, where the audience is there to share in a group experience, rather than be ranked from best to worst.
From an education perspective, for this concept to take hold, Mastertude's edutainment films must have mass-market appeal and be readily accessible all over the world. This is why we are using the enduring, globally revered Hollywood film-making "machine" to launch this new way of learning.
With the release of our music learning feature film Polymath, we will demonstrate that edutainment films are the future of education. Our students will become students for life, because one never tires of watching films, especially not ones that stimulate, inspire, provoke and demonstrate, and most of all, get one thinking from a different perspective. It is our dream, that as more and more films that teach from multiple viewpoints and entertain, are released, this phenomenon will herald in a new kind of student: a student that will never stop delighting in the glory and joy of learning.
