I have long thought that
I have long thought that a significant hole exists in the education system. Call it tooting my own communications horn if you like, but media literacy is a subject totally ignored in high school and barely noticeable in post-secondary, unless you take courses in mass communications.
Since we are surrounded by mass media all the time, since absorbing their messages ranks up there beside "working" and "sleeping" on the list of what we sentient beings do, ought we not to understand better what goes on behind the camera and microphone? How advertisers hope to brainwa--I mean, persuade us to buy products and services?
Not everyone cares to understand the issues behind gathering the news for a newspaper. But not everyone cares for calculus or dissecting frogs either: education is, on some level, about teaching young people ideas that are a nutritious part of this complete lifetime.
Well, I'm not the only one who thinks this. There is a media literacy movement afoot, although it seems to have more steam in the USA than here in the land of Ted Rogers, Conrad Black and Izzy Asper.
So, good on the ol' stars and stripes, right? Well, not so fast. Media Literacy Sells Out, an article from Stay Free! magazine, asks if media literacy is really all its cracked it to be.
Read it and think about it. Should school remain a media-weapons free zone of traditional thought and analysis? Or should it embrace the brave new world of mass media to ensure that students have a leg to stand on when they are bombarded by TV, movies, and ads, ads, ads.
Previously: “Maybe,” he thinks sheepishly, “I
Subsequently: If you’re going to spread
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