There is a missing piece, a critical omission, from the discussion and delivery of violence prevention education today. That piece permeates our lives, provides us with the information we use for our decisions, helps set our norms of behavior, often glues us together or tears us apart, and provides a context for our co-existence. It is a vital piece. That piece is the role of media in depicting violence. Addressing that piece by teaching children and adults to swim in the river of media around them is called media literacy.
The controversy over violence and the media has gone round and round for 50 years yet there is hope for the possibility of change. CML's acclaimed program, Beyond Blame: Challenging Violence in the Media is designed to address that oft-missing ingredient in discussions and approaches to violence and media: media literacy.
While we can't take the media out of the culture nor would we want to! we can put our culture into the media by influencing the media depictions that come invited and uninvited into our lives each and every day. By helping audiences make new meaning from the depictions of violence in the media and by creating a demand for responsibility and understanding on the parts of media makers as well as media viewers cultural change is possible indeed.
Beyond Blame provides the seeds for the long-term cultural change necessary to elevate the effectiveness of the debate around violence and violent depictions in our society. A community and school-based program that provides for parent and teacher training, Beyond Blame features five curricular units Elementary, Middle School, Teen/Adult and Parent/Caregiver, and a Community Outreach component. This program qualifies for Title IV Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities federal funding.