Question 1: Should media education have an explicit political and ideological agenda?
Media education should involve politics to help change students’ attitudes about racism, sexism, and violence. Students will be able to form their own views and opinions and learn not to be persuaded to agree with the views and opinions of others.
Question 2: Based on your reading to date in this course, would you teach critical media literacy in the classroom? Why or why not? You must reference three prior course readings to justify your answer to this question.
After reading many different views about incorporating critical media literacy into K-12 education, I believe critical media literacy is an important skill that all students should learn at some point in their education. The first reason I believe critical media literacy should be embedded into curriculum is that incorporating it into your lesson plans is easy and doesn’t have to take several class periods if you don’t want it to. The article “Teaching Media literacy: Are you hip to this” mentioned how a teacher took 10 minutes to incorporate media literacy into one of her lessons. Teachers need to find time to teach what they think is important. The second reason I believe critical media literacy should be incorporated into curriculum is because it is important for students to understand what message is being represented, why that message is used, and what the target audience is. The article “Magazines: What Adolescent Girls are reading and the way they shape body image” explained how companies use images that will sell. These companies are trying to make a profit, not knowing the impact their image might have on individuals. Students need to learn to form their own opinion and not be persuaded by others. The third reason I think it is important that critical media literacy is incorporated into curriculum is because we live in a changing society with technology at the forefront. The article “Toward critical media literacy: Core concepts, debates, organizations and policy” emphasized the importance that teachers need to be ready to develop new curricula and pedagogies. Sometimes our students are more familiar with the new technology on the market, so as teachers, we need to keep up!
Hobbs, R. (n.d.). Teaching media literacy: yo! are you hip to this?. Retrieved from http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/teaching-media-literacy-yo-are-you-hip
Gibbons, S. (2003, October 29). Teen magazines send girls all the wrong messages. Retrieved from http://www.womensenews.org/story/uncovering-gender/031029/teen-magazines-send-girls-all-the-wrong-messages
Kellner, D, & Share, J. (2005, September). Toward critical media literacy: core concepts, debates, organizations, and policy. Retrieved from http://gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/2005_Kellner-Share_TowardsCriticalMediaLiteracy.pdf
I agree that students need to be taught to deconstruct messages, and form their own opinions. We want them to have a voice in their communities and society in general.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! In regard to Question 1, is it politics that would help change students' ideas about racism, sexism and violence? What elements of critical media literacy would you use to help students form their own opinions and evaluate others' views and opinions?
ReplyDeleteI agree that it should be incorporated into the lesson plans. I like the reference you made about it not having to take the whole class period or even a couple days, but 10 minutes.
ReplyDeleteReferring to Question 1 ... I think that students need to understand how the media tries to persuade them to believe or think a certain way. And once a student understands the medias purposes they will be able to discet these advertisments and form their own valuable opinions about the topic.
ReplyDeleteI told Sarah that I didn't think that maybe I understood politically how it could be a good thing. Now I see what you mean. I wasn't thinking about racism, etc.
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