Is there a difference between media literacy and media education?

Media education is the process through which one learns to become media literate. There is no limit to how "media literate" one can become!

How widespread is media literacy in U.S. schools?

There isn't one group keeping statistics, and it would be impossible to survey every classroom in 16,000 U.S. school districts! Although media literacy is still a new idea for many teachers and schools, we see signs of media literacy growing everywhere, for example:

• The National Middle Schools Association named media literacy one of three "hot topics" for its 2002 national conference attended by over 8500 teachers. Media literacy workshops at the conference were standing-room-only.
• Reports from major foundations and educational agencies are calling for media literacy as a critical component of education for the 21^st century.
• The McREL national educational standards database has added two new strands: "viewing" and "media" to English/language arts for kindergarten through high school. Standards are also beginning to appear in social studies, health, art and lifeskills education in all 50 states.

There are several terms — digital literacy, information literacy, technology literacy — which seem related to media literacy. Are there differences?

There are slight but important differences. "Digital literacy" promotes competency with computers and software. "Information literacy," used primarily by the library community, emphasizes the ability to access information, whether in print or electronically.

CML believes that "media literacy" is a more encompassing term in that media literacy embraces the entire process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating media. With media technology becoming so prevalent in homes, and with multi-media education more possible now with student access to computers and the Internet, "media literacy" expands the basic concept of literacy (i.e. "reading" and "writing") to all forms of communication — from television to T-shirts, from billboards to multi-media environments.

Why are other countries so far ahead of the United States in adopting media literacy in their schools?

As Kathleen Tyner writes in Literacy in a Digital World, "International media education programs in Canada, England and Australia have an advantage because they work from a central education ministry that disseminates resources, training and information on a regional or national scale. The downside of the centralized approach is that bad educational ideas can be spread as easily as good ones. Nonetheless, the mechanisms for wide-scale educational change are in place when a centralized national structure serves as a clearinghouse for concepts and resources."

In the United States, on the other hand, there are 50 states and 16,000 independent school districts! Plus private and parochial school systems. No institutional mechanism exists in formal educational structures to promote a national framework for media education or to require, for example, that large educational publishing companies incorporate media literacy into textbooks. This puts the onus of support for media literacy on individual teachers or schools, on innovative districts or states, such as Maryland, Texas or North Carolina, or on entrepreneurial local or national initiatives such as the Center for Media Literacy.

Is there federal or state funding for media literacy?

There has been very little government funding for media literacy either at the state or federal level. Often there is funding for teacher training or to support programs that might incorporate media literacy skills – for example, smoking cessation, citizenship education or nutrition awareness. Increasingly states are recognizing the need for the professional development of teachers especially for areas like "critical thinking" or "information competence," which can be indirectly related to media literacy. With a little creative grant-writing, funding is on the rise!

At the federal level, despite national headlines about concern over violence in the schools or the need for technology in education, there has not been significant allocation of funding for media literacy training or programs by any federal agency. In 1993, the final report of the National Consultation on Safeguarding our Youth recommended that "Broadbased media literacy education needs to become a priority in the U.S. and implemented in an interagency, interdisciplinary approach." It was embraced verbally by Secretary of Education Richard Riley but it wasn't until 2000 that $1 million/year for 3 years was allocated to the Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts to provide grants for school projects relating media literacy to violence prevention and the arts. Compared to the billions routinely budgeted by Congress for other areas of education much less for the military or health research or highways, $3 million is miniscule. Much, much more is needed.

The allocation, however, is currently providing support for 17 demonstration projects around the US, including Project SmartArt, a collaborative project between CML and the Education Division of the Music Center of Los Angeles County, AnimAction, Inc. and Leo Politi Elementary School, which is part of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

In 2002, CML also received a grant from the Orange County (CA) Health Agency to provide a smoking cessation program featuring media literacy.

What can be done to further media literacy in the U.S. education system?

If I mention media literacy to my childrens' teachers, they say they don't have time to add another subject to an already crowded curriculum. What do I say?

It is important to clarify that media literacy is NOT a new subject to add to the school day. Rather it is a set of skills that can be learned through other subject/content areas.

For example, language arts standards expect that children, by middle school, will be able to understand the point of view of an author of a text. This skill can be introduced to children and practiced by them in many ways. One way might be to examine different versions of the same news event — a story from a daily newspaper, from a national news magazine and from a TV newscast. What is the point of view of each version? Children thus learn not only how to recognize point of view but they also learn important concepts about the media world they live in — that different media forms can tell the same story differently.

Similarly in social studies there are many ways to integrate media literacy activities such as having students in American history prepare and conduct a "talk show" to investigate the pros and cons of whether the colonies should secede from England? Such project-based teaching creates learning on many levels and covers important curriculum content in a way that engages children in their own learning process.

Teachers who want to integrate media literacy across the curriculum can find a wealth of resources, curriculum connections and even sample lesson plans throughout this website and in our online catalog of teaching resources. Ask your child's teachers to invest just 15 minutes to perusing this website. We guarantee they'll find lots of ways to integrate media literacy skills into curriculum they are already expected to teach!

Shouldn't we just tell kids to turn the TV off? Or the computer?

Watching too much TV has been shown to be related to health problems for some children, including obesity. But it's almost impossible to ignore TV's role in most families' lives, and even if children don't watch at home, they watch at their friends' homes or learn about media characters from the playground. Media no longer just shape our culture; media ARE our culture!

Just as we teach children, as they grow, about good nutrition and exercise for their physical bodies, we need to also guide them in making choices about what they take into their emotions and brains. Parents need to embrace media literacy, because when they do, they can make conscious choices about how to balance media use with family time and physical activities, as well as help their children learn to analyze media experiences as they mature. Children today will spend all of their lives in the 21st century mediated culture; their future health and well-being depends on media literacy!

How can I stay in touch with what is happening in the media literacy field?