Why Is Media Education Important?
You may have been wondering if I would ever get to this part of my story. The basic question about media education is “Why do it at all?” It is the same question Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby and father of Matthew, faced in the 19th century when he wanted to revolutionize the British secondary school curriculum to include the study of English literature. Until that time, cultural studies for secondary students were restricted largely to the Roman and Greek classics. Arnold's argument was that contemporary culture should form an important part of the school curriculum.
We need to apply Arnold's logic to today's education system, and to bring it up to date with the dominant forms of cultural expression of our own time. We need to insist that culture is not the sole domain of literature -- or even of books. Culture is now carried largely in moving images on screens in cinemas, on televisions and computers, in sound waves from stereos and radios, and in a thousand other forms of expression -- from T-shirt messages to display ads projected on the sides of buildings.
Media education is not a plea to incorporate more technology in schools. The technology itself simply has to do with the manner in which information for learning is delivered. What is important about classroom information delivery is the quality of the information itself, and the ways that information is influenced by the technology and the processes of transmission and reception. Instead, media education is a plea for students to be allowed to study the culture and the cultural engines of their own society and of the world, just as Dr. Arnold wanted his students to be allowed to study the literature of their own culture and time.
The media are now so much a part of our cultural, political, and economic environment that not to study them in detail and depth in schools compels students to bury their heads in the sand of an out-of-date curriculum.
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted November 2000
© 2000 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232