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To thrive in our mediated culture, children must learn to become competent, critical, and literate in all media forms. Here are the key principles and components of this new educational agenda.
In the 1990 movie Avalon, Barry Levinson's film portrait of a World War II-era immigrant family, the delivery of the family's first TV is a milestone. Three generations of Krichinskys squeeze together in front of their tiny new television set and stare vacantly at a black-and-white test pattern. "Just wait," one of the children says, "something will happen."
And it did. Throughout the '60s and '70s, television grew from a diversion in the living room into a national obsession. From moon landings to Leave It to Beaver, a president's assassination to Mr. Clean, media images moved from the background to the foreground of our daily lives.
From the clock radio that wakes us up in the morning to the late night TV talk show that lulls us to sleep, we are exposed to hundreds, even thousands, of images and ideas not only from television but also from newspaper headlines, magazine covers, movies, Web sites, photos, video games, and billboards. Some observers are calling today's young people screenagers (Rushkoff, 1996).
Until recently, few of us questioned the increasing dominance of media in our lives. Those who did were inclined to focus on content issues, like the amount of sex and violence in television and movies. Some advocated censorship, whereas others simply urged families to turn the TV off. But the fact is, though we can turn off the set, we cannot escape today's media culture. Media no longer just influence our culture. They are our culture. Media's pivotal role in our global culture is why media censorship will never work.
For 500 years, we have valued the ability to read print as a way to participate fully in society as educated citizens. Today, the family, the school, and all community institutions, including the medical and health community, share the responsibility of preparing young people for living in a world of powerful images, words, and sounds (UNESCO, 1982). Call it "media literacy."
What Is Media Literacy?
Media literacy is just what it sounds like-the ability to create personal meaning from the verbal and visual...