The Media Education
Elephant
Author: Kathleen Tyner
The Rajah spoke, "The elephant
is a big animal. Each man touched only one part. You must put all the
parts together to find out what an elephant is like." from "The Blind
Men and the Elephant," a folk tale from India.
Media educators in the
United States are a fractious bunch. One teacher's definition of media
education is another's heresy. Like the blind men and the elephant,
teachers often practice one small aspect of media education and conclude
that they have the whole picture. When the nature and quality of these
media education efforts are scrutinized, they fall under one of several
broad and overlapping categories: protectionism, technology education,
media arts education, and democratic education. The barriers to media
education in the United States are still formidable, but there are indications
that educators working under these arbitrary categories are beginning
to intellectually cross-pollinate in order to position media education
as an important cornerstone for teaching students democratic citizenship
skills in a complex, technological world.
Protectionism
In the late 1970s the U.S.
Department of Education (then called HEW) funded a television critical
viewing program for teachers in the elementary and secondary grades
in response to research that indicated a link between televised violence
and role modeling behavior in children.*1 The popular wisdom was that
U.S. society needed to "arm" children against the violence on television
so that they would not emulate it in real life.
The critical viewing materials
received mixed reviews from teachers. Although hundreds of thousands
of dollars went into the program, teachers were provided with little
training to use them and, in a "top-down" approach, were not central
agents of their creation. With scant follow-up of their actual classroom
use, it is uncertain how the materials were actually implemented in
the classroom.*2
As a result of a deep economic
recession in the early 1980s, the there was a widespread belief that
students should be trained to compete in the global marketplace. Because
media education was linked in the public's mind with the recreational
technology of television, the critical viewing curriculum was seen as
an unnecessary frill and new funding for computer literacy programs
pushed critical viewing off the education agenda. The "back to the basics"
movement in education subsequently nudged computer literacy to the sidelines.
It is important to note
that this type of kneejerk political response to educational reform
has resulted in a long history of disjointed funding and confused teaching
practices in the United States. For example, computer literacy education,
once the darling of educational bureaucrats, is currently hamstrung
by a lack of teacher training, an emphasis on drill and practice and
shrinking funding for equipment.*3 A review of educational trends in
the U.S. demonstrates that if a curriculum is thrust upon teachers by
those outside the classroom, it will be rejected, either actively or
passively. Media education is no exception. *4
As critical viewing skills
curricula waned in the early 1980s, a climate of industry deregulation
waxed. The federal agencies, followed by the communication industries,
eliminated almost all guidelines regulating children's programming.
Protectionist coalitions are still working with mixed success to restore
minimum regulation of children's programming, especially guidelines
for advertising directed at children.
The protectionist stance
toward media education is a logical extension of the traditional educator's
role of gatekeeper to the curriculum and as arbitrator of taste. Broadly
speaking, the protectionist media educator values fine art--especially
literature--over television and other forms of popular culture and wants
to enable students to use media wisely. This sometimes means that the
teacher would prefer that students turn off the tv (comic books, Nintendo,
radio, etc.) and read, but faced with reality, they usually settle for
encouraging students to watch what adults define as "educational" programming.
Another facet of protectionism
focuses on health issues. The National Institute of Mental Health and
The American Academy of Pediatrics (APA) have formulated some helpful
guidelines on children's television out of concern for children's mental
and physical health. The APA studies indicate that American children
are simply too fat, caused by eating heavily-advertised junk food in
front of the television and by not getting enough exercise.*5
Television seems to be
the lightening rod for a general frustration with the values inherent
in the pervasive consumer culture of the West. Values such as conspicuous
consumption, the supremacy of the individual over societal concerns,
environmental destruction as a cost of progress, and competition as
opposed to cooperation, are thorny, open-ended philosophical issues
in U.S. society. Attacks against consumer culture conflict with a populist
philosophy--reflected in U.S. mass media--that links free market principles
to the democratic rights of individuals. In this context, it is much
easier to denounce the tube, the perfect delivery system for consumerism,
than it is to resolve the inherent conflict of values raised by America's
traditional, fierce, and uneasy grafting of free market capitalism with
democratic principles.
Technology Education
Technology education is
an updated, high-tech version of what used to be called "vocational
education." Most of what passes for media education in the United States
falls under this rubric, because it falls in line with some general
cultural and organizational principles already valued by U.S. society.
The prevailing notion in the United States is that the main purpose
of education is to secure gainful employment. This utilitarian view
of schooling is historically ingrained and reflected in the call for
"job readiness," that is, the readiness of students to become productive
workers in a global economy.
Technology education is
the fair-haired child of the curriculum because it reflects this cultural
value while avoiding the controversy of less-quantifiable programs.
In addition to fitting into the job readiness mold, technology education
also plays off the West's fascination with technology, an obsession
that borders on technological fetishism. While linking this to that
in a quantifiable, teacher-centered classroom, the programs have a penchant
for defining communication in terms of machines and skirting the issues
of technology and society, an arena that explores relative cultural
values as opposed to fixed statements about science and human nature.
Almost every major communications
corporation has educational partnerships with schools, either through
equipment giveaways, educational software, or actually managing on-site
corporate schools. The schools desperately need the equipment, resources
and media access that these partnerships offer. In return, corporations
get two benefits for the price of one: they can influence the education
of future workers and they can establish brand loyalty with consumers
at an early age.
Technology programs in
the U.S. are currently computer-centered, although video is an up-and-coming
contender. They are highly profiled and valued in U.S. public schools.
Educators who teach in them and who control their budgets automatically
accrue higher status than their low-tech, penniless colleagues. When
international visitors ask to observe media education in the United
States, they are shown--with great pride--the latest in high-tech electronics.
No wonder international media educators come away with the impression
that the U.S. does not have the vaguest notion about the principles
of media education! And no wonder U.S. technology education experts
do not know what else international media literacy experts could possibly
expect from them.
Recognizing the need for
some critical thinking about media, technology teachers say that their
students are "learning by doing," but there is usually no formal, critical
component in these exercises, since there is often a conscious effort
to avoid technology's ideological influence on content. Technology education
as it is practiced in the United States is clean, convenient and non-controversial--a
plus in the traditional U.S. classroom--but too often it misses the
opportunity to address the reason these machines were invented in the
first place and that is to further human communication.
At this time, electronic
media hardware and software often fall within the purview of the school
librarian, sometimes called a "media resource specialist." Librarians
have an inherent interest in free access to information, but stress
that access is not enough if students cannot organize, analyze and evaluate
the information available to them. These teachers have been friends
of media education. To enrich their programs, technologists are forming
partnerships with media artists, telecommunications specialists and
media professionals, as well as with business people, to take technology
programs beyond videotaping every school play and football game.
Media Arts Education
Media arts education is
focused on goals of self-expression and creativity. In a bid to develop
sophisticated audiences, museum education has been a strong outlet for
the hands-on approach to media education. Non-profit media arts organizations
are also providing educational models through partnerships with schools
and sponsorship of independent student video production programs.
School residencies bring
fine artists, writers and independent film and videomakers into school
programs to work directly with students and sometimes with teachers.
Hands-on video production is especially popular with those students
who are doing poorly in the traditional classroom, dubbed as "at-risk
students," an odious code term that means they are, among other things,
at risk of dropping out of school. Production classes are highly student-centered
and credited for increasing student self-esteem by engaging them and
providing channels of creative expression.
There is a downside to
programs that center around the goal of self-esteem building. At best,
the esteem accrued through media production is a result of completing
a project from beginning to end with adults who care. At its worst,
the good feeling produced by working in an endeavor that approximates
broadcast media simply is a borrowed esteem that defers true empowerment
in order to keep students busy in activities that are self-absorbing
and that keep them out of trouble in class. True self-esteem that enables
students to give back to their communities, grows out of a mastery of
skills, but also out of identifying, analyzing and overcoming the daily
erosion of human dignity in an unjust society. While the media arts
are a natural adjunct to critical thinking about media and society,
tough social problems can only be tackled as a structured, purposeful
part of media production.
There are other limitations
to straight production programs. Since they are usually conducted by
artists or others outside the school bureaucracy, teachers are confused
about their purpose and about how they fit in the school culture. The
artists are outsiders and as a result, the programs are sometimes marginalized
within the institution. Artists must work hard to be seen as a total
part of the curriculum and successful media arts programs have offered
their artists' expertise and created open dialogues with teachers about
the nature of media education in the curriculum. Just as classroom teachers
are working toward production in a hands-on attempt to teach media analysis,
media artists are starting to structure critical thinking about mass
media into their production programs.
Democracy Education
An informed electorate
is the cornerstone of democracy and teaching students to be good citizens
in a democratic society is the goal of media literacy for many media
educators in the United States. The problem with teaching democratic
skills in U.S. education is that most schools in the country do not
operate like democratic institutions, bearing closer resemblance to
minimum security prisons. This inherent conflict is at the heart of
educational reform and teachers who believe that citizenship is the
goal of education, in at least equal measure with job readiness, teach
around this schism as best they can.
Media educators are working
across the United States, classroom by classroom, to guide their students
to think critically about the information presented to them through
mass media sources. In some cases, this work is provoked by the perception
that the major mass medium in the classroom -- the textbook -- does
not reflect the cultural diversity of U.S. society. As a result, portrayals
of groups, historical narrative of events, visual representation and
even artifacts, such as world maps, are creating widespread, rancorous
debate in U.S. society.
For those teachers who
are comfortable with a student-centered, open-ended classroom this debate
opens an opportunity to teach students critical thinking skills through
dialectic discourse techniques. For educators who believe that the teacher
is the expert and that values are fixed, the cultural studies approach
to media content is far too vague, negative and relative.
Groups working in the United
States from a democratic citizenship perspective include community-based
groups, church groups and those concerned with distorted representation
in mass media. Other professional groups and associations work toward
equal access to communication channels, freedom of speech and presentation
of diverse content in mass media.
Overcoming Barriers
In spite of the efforts
of media educators across the United States, it is safe to say that
there are few organized efforts toward media education in school curricula
and there are still many barriers to its implementation. There is a
desperate need for pre-service teacher training that teaches about media.
The major barrier for those already teaching is a lack of time to learn
to address media in the classroom.
There are other barriers:
the perception that the study of fine arts is superior to popular culture;
the supremacy of print over other communication forms in public schools;
and the entrenched feudalism of discrete areas of study. There is also
a pervasive Yankee disinclination to look critically at U.S. culture,
a first step in media education. Although U.S. media educators could
learn much from our international colleagues, Americans have typically
exhibited a xenophobia about incorporating educational ideas from outside
the country.
The challenge for media
educators in the United States is to steer the debate about literacy
in society in directions which include all forms of communication in
the literacy equation and which leave room for flexibility in policy-making
so that teachers can learn to accommodate rapidly changing communication
forms and literacy needs. One way to approach this problem is to continue
to stress the goals of democratic citizenship as central to U.S. education
and to form coalitions between technologists, protectionists, artists
and media professionals.
At this point, media educators
are still groping around the "elephant," arguing about the nature of
the beast, but there is hope that they are beginning to see past their
blinders in order to forge common goals and objectives, long-range planning
and practical ideas for implementing media education in the United States.
In talking about the failures
of the critical viewing movement in the United States a decade ago,
James Anderson remarked, "In the absence of cataclysmic events, innovation
in social institutions is at best a glacial process," but it is a process
media education must continue to perpetrate.*6 If we cannot work together
to meet the surmountable challenges of media education in the United
States, then it remains to be seen how we can hope to continue the struggle
for anything as daunting as democracy.
End Notes
1. Pearl, D., et. al. **Television
and Behavior: Ten Years of Scientific Progress and Implications for
the Eighties.** (Rockville, MD: National Institute of Mental Health,
1982).
2. Wheeler, P., et. al.
"Formative review of the critical television viewing skills curriculum
for secondary schools,' Final report, vol. 1. (San Francisco: Far West
Laboratory for Research and Development, July 1979).
3. Martinez, M.E. & Mead,
N.A. **Computer Competence: The First National Assessment.** (New Jersey:
Education Testing Service, 1988). See also, Sheingold, K. & Hadley,
M. **Computer Use in the Classroom.** (New York: Bank Street College
of Education, 1990).
4. Anderson, J.A. "The
theoretical lineage of critical viewing curricula," **Journal of Communication,**
vol. 30 no. 3, p. 64- 70.
5. Dietz, W. & Gortmaker,
S. "Do we fatten our children at the television set?" **Pediatrics**,
vol. 75 no. 5, May 1985.
This article first appeared
in Strategies Quarterly Summer 1991.
Reprinted permission of author. Copyright 1991 Kathleen Tyner.