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From TV Idiot to Media Literate
| Article
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16826 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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9 / 1989 |
1,913 Words |
| Author
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Robert James
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Sixth-grade teacher Alan Lengel realized he was getting through to his students when, in the midst of a classroom discussion about stereotypes, twelve-year-old Matt volunteered his criticism of a popular TV program. Matt disliked the way the show consistently portrayed adults--especially parents. In his opinion, the show always made grown-ups "look stupid." "It doesn't teach you to respect your parents," he complained.
In fact, the program Matt criticizes, "You Can't Do That on Television," while intending jest, does a daily hatchet job on adults. Teachers are presented as foolish and petty bureaucrats, service workers are slovenly and rude, and parents are either feather-brained Milquetoasts or overweight, drunken slobs.
Lengel was pleased because in his classes he had been teaching to combat the effects that the continual presentation of stereotypes--through television and other mass media--have on children's perceptions of themselves and society. "If kids are given the opportunity to analyze and evaluate media, they stand a chance of shaking themselves away from conformity," he says. "If they can learn to evaluate media, they can begin to see how they are so often duped and manipulated, instead of informed."
But there is an active antipathy toward television and other media in many classrooms, according to Marieli Rowe, executive director of the National Telemedia Council, which is dedicated to developing children's "critical viewing" skills. She says that "media literacy" has been inadvertently discouraged due to "the historic warfare against television in the schools." Media literacy means "knowing how to cope with electronic media in your life," says Rowe. For parents, it begins by asking your children serious questions about the media they so avidly consume.
Rowe's organization is preparing a media literacy kit for families. When ready, the kit will offer simple critical viewing exercises for the parents of preschoolers and for day-care providers. "When you teach media literacy skills, you are teaching thinking skills that last all through life," says Rowe.
Are media literacy skills a necessity? Nielsen media research estimates that children watch an average of 3.2 hours of television a day, with some watching as much as 7.2 hours of programming. In addition, he or she is exposed to commercial magazines, newspapers, audiotapes, CDs, videocassettes, videogames, and computer programs. And soon, there will be commercial television in the classroom. Next March, media conglomerate Whittle Communications will begin installing a closed-circuit television network in an eventual eight thousand elementary and high schools nationwide. Each school administration that accepts the free satellite dish and a TV for every classroom commits its students to watching the network's channels for twenty minutes daily, commercials included. (Whittle's revenues will come from the commercials.)
Media presentations are beckoning more and more audience participation. Game designers, hip to the discovery that for the young generation television is a button-pushing experience, are creating new concepts in interactive video games that hook participants in ways we couldn't imagine last year, let alone twenty years ago. Kids will soon be able to battle aliens and Ninjas with pictures and sounds rivaling those now seen and
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