Yerbolat Dosbayev

ENG-101-402

Ms. Kelley

12 October 2003

Media literacy in Kentucky.

Mark Twain once said: “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky because it's always twenty years behind the times”. Now we see the end of the world of traditional forms of communication. Instead, we see new forms of communication we call media. Today, media changes everything - it brings new ways of thinking, learning and teaching. Students are no longer taking notes in class, “hearing that a new Internet company is now posting free notes for core courses” (Gitlin 427). Media has become the most powerful tool of politics and culture. The media not only shapes our culture, it becomes a significant part of it. The media teaches us how to live, how to dress, what to eat, how to behave. For teenagers, the media becomes the main carrier of the culture. What does the media industry carry?

With the few exceptions like “Discovery” channel which offers great educational features, we see animated cartoons, old blockbusters, sports, soap operas, entertainment shows, governmental ads in the form of daily news, and commercials. All that multiplied by the number of channels. $47 billion was spent on television ads alone in 1996, while Medicaid was only $39 billion for the year (Johnston 139). Even the slowdown of the US economy could not slump the advertising market. Instead, it introduced new ways of presenting ads to the public, like in the Rosie O’Donnell Show, where Rosie happily eats Wendy’s salad as part of the show’s segment on dieting (Colander 108). Such television ads are belived to cause adolescent eating disorders, malnutrition or obesity.

Rushkoff’s video The merchants of cool shows in its sheer evidence how teens are becoming easy targets of businesses. Those who are eager to enter the big world outside mom and dad’s house are confronted by thoroughly designed marketing strategies, one of which is to sell back “an image of himself made glamorous” (Berger 1007) or fancier thus using the natural desire to be independent from adults by being different.

Regardless of content, the information that the media carries is often aimed to manipulate consciousness or subconsciousness of a viewer and the media industry has become highly proficient in this regard. Today, we observe rapid development of new forms of media like television or Internet. This business employs hordes of well educated professionals who implement new ideas derived from sociology, psychology and other fields. Technology advances at an even faster pace: bigger screens, better sounds, computer animation and other innovations just to take more control of our senses. Flashing images and sounds, “like express trains on their way to some distant terminus” (Berger 1006), take the audience to one place after another not giving any chance for awareness of where you are and whether or not you should belong there. There is no dialog there - the audience is faceless and silent and does not ask any questions at all, there is no brain activity. Try to mute sound – the mind will start verbalizing the images, turn off the visual – the mind will start drawing imaginable pictures in your head. See how quickly the way of perceiving and evaluating the broadcast information changes as our mind relieved of just one form of media pressure gets power to analyse the other one.

On television, everyone sees the same picture and thus has the same point of view by definition. Someone else has devised solutions and opinions. Who is that someone else? How would you evaluate credibility of a television screen? Not only do we not see the actual speaker there but also the speaker does not broadcast his own opinion and not even the opinion of the television station. Like in the movie The Insider, when a journalist tried to tell to the public that tobacco companies were adding addictive compounds to the cigarettes. Television company owners did not allow him to do that just because they did not want troubles.

If such is the situation on television, why do people still watch it and how would you explain the possible dangers of television and other forms of media to a kid? Today, the amount of time an average kid spends in front of the screen is getting closer to the time he spends at school. It is the generation of “screen-agers because their media use is not distinguished specifically as television, video games, movies, computers or even telephones, but simply as a series of screens which they both access and manipulate in a constantly evolving stream of shared communication” (Thoman 2). The media thus becomes the big player in the educational process, and watching television is very different in the way that a kid can easily switch channels if he does not like what he sees. In school, he cannot. He would rather just stop paying attention to the teacher in class. “More kids recognize Budweiser frogs and the tobacco industry emissary Joe Camel than recognize the vice-president of the United States” (Johnston 141). Do kids need to know that? What do they need to know? And what can be done about it?

The first thing that comes to mind is to turn television off or prohibit “bad influence” programs. We see that already happening. However, better strategy should be the one of active defense, meaning that we should not skip it but use it because without learning how to use the media we are used. And it is easy to get used if one is not smart or literate enough to analyse the information.

Other countries like Canada, England and Australia had the answer long time ago – media literacy. The media industry uses greatest innovations in the fields of sociology, psychology and many other fields to study audiences or even create audiences. Why should we not study the media? In the United States, almost all the states adapted one or the other sort of such educational program during the last ten years. Kentucky remains one of the two exceptions.

What is media literacy and how can it help? When I tried to find something about it in the Internet I found very little. UNESCO created the following definition some thirty years ago: “Media Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms” (Center for Media Literacy). What is it, again? It is too difficult to imagine the unknown just by reading the definition. Let us take a closer look at the problem.

Center for Media Literacy, one of the main organizations researching and promoting media literacy in the US, published a five point system to analyze media:

a) Who created the message;

b) What tools were used;

c) Who are the target audience;

d) What opinion did they try to express;

e) What is this message for;

(Thoman 3-4).

This approach is very similar to argumentative writing that we are practicing in today’s class. To create an essay, we first establish an opinion and specific purpose, taking into consideration target audience, then we use certain tools to better express that opinion and serve our purpose. This skill also helps us with critical reading and analyzing writings of other people. That is why the introduction of media literacy first started as an addition to English composition classes.

Written word appeared in the history of mankind long after speech was invented and was available to only few at first. Now we ended up with millions of books so we need to study how to be a critical thinker when reading. When I was trying to find sources of information to write this essay, I started looking for books, selecting the ones I needed and then reading them with the thought that I needed to extract some very specific information. We can do the same while watching television or browsing the Internet, that is we can find credible sources and filter the information. Mass media, unorganized as it is nowadays, still can be a useful source. Information literacy will help us find information and media literacy will help us analyze the information.

Do people really want to analyze media and become media literate? If we try to recollect the childhood we would probably remember the great interest in media, how we used to go watching new movies or television shows with friends and then discuss what we had seen, how we started using new phrases from the movies, mocked the characters or actors. Now imagine that we could do that in the class. Someone might have already tried amateur cinematography, or journalism or public speaking in school. When a kid first tries to draw a smiling face on a scrap of paper, he starts learning visual literacy because he tried to express his thoughts in painting and put some meaning behind the picture. In kindergarten, almost everyone played games based on famous cartoons, pretending to be a Superman or Lord Dread. It was only a game but that is how we learn things and that is how we were becoming media literate.

That is why such education should start at a very early age, just when kids start speaking, understanding things and showing interest in television, radio and other forms of media. “How children develop mentally and what the media offer them is important to a wholesome environment. Kids between ages three and nine can be very influenced by television. This is because until age six or so, they are interested in copying adults. Between six and eleven they are looking for role models” (Johnston 76). What happens next is that the kids, having been raised by the media culture, start creating new forms within the frameworks of that culture. The urge for self-expression breaks the boundaries and finds its way in graffiti or new music styles. There are those who understand that trend and take initiative to guide kids through the world of media and there are those who try to teach media production, at least as an elective course.

As with any other innovation, there are few enthusiastic individuals or groups at first. One of them is Appalachian Institute of Media. It supports young creative people who wish to express their culture and heritage in music, movies or documentaries. When cheap video cameras and computers become available, only few realize that everyone can actually not only consume media but also create it and the only problem is how to find a person who would guide and help and teach.

Today, when computers and other electronic devices offer endless possibilities of self-expression and creativity in media field, Program of Studies for Kentucky Schools offers to “use a variety of media (crayon, pencil, paint, fabric, yarn, clay, paper, paper-mache [should be papier-mâché]) and art processes (e.g., drawing, painting, collage, weaving, pottery, sculpture) to produce two- and three-dimensional works of art” (75). It also suggests that students “analyze and interpret media (e.g., paint, fiber, ink, clay) and/or processes (e.g., ceramics, painting, sculpture) various artists use to create works of art” (131).

The current curriculum is already overloaded with study material and finding free space for a new subject can be a big problem. But imagine this: your kid learns some “boring” Shakespeare at school, then comes home and happily watches Beavis and Butthead. How much longer time does he spend on that? What does he know about the cartoon? Does he try to analyze it? Does anyone at school ask him what he thinks about the film? What if we try to let teachers choose such material to teach kids how to analyze media? How much more interesting and motivating for kids would that be? It is very possible to study some new movies, new Internet web sites, even soap operas or sitcoms instead of just bursting through several old x-teen century books. Today’s goal of education is not getting packed with knowledge but it is rather learning how to find the knowledge and developing critical thinking skills on analyzing contemporary material.

People in other countries face the same problems, though they may not study Shakespeare but something else instead. Will that knowledge help people compete in the world of future globalization? Is there a common approach in education, the way to find out what is essential and what is not? It appears that the knowledge and content become less important and more important become the practical skills of which the most valuable ones are to be able to think, to analyze and to understand. One of the educational goals in Kentucky is to give the students “skills to enable them to compete favorably with students in other states” (The Kentucky Department of Education 7). “A curriculum, based on Kentucky's learning goals and academic expectations, should be designed to promote relevancy to real life” (The Kentucky Department of Education 10). Since the media has become a big part of the real life, it would be relevant to include media literacy in the study program.

The changes will not happen immediately. Print literacy, too, was first available to only few and now everyone or almost everyone studies to be print literate. No one would want his kids to suffer “the misery that millions of adult illiterates experience each day within the course of their routine existence” (Kozol 372). Today, most of the people in the U.S.A. are print literate because otherwise it would be extremely difficult to survive. Tomorrow, will it be possible to survive being media illiterate?

The problem of protecting people from media influence intensifies each year. The solutions range from preventing kids from watching certain things to trying to introduce educational television programs. Media literacy, integrated with humanities and natural sciences, will fulfill the unique function of teaching kids how to analyze and interpret media, helping them get ready for the life in the world of information, teaching them how to swim instead of hiding them from open waters. Ignoring media literacy is not just sloppiness - it is sheer inhumanity.

The countries that quickly introduced media literacy have centralized systems of public education. In the United States, each school district has its own program and each state forms its own policy. No one is going to promote media literacy nationwide. The people living in the state should demand changes.

Works cited

Appalachian Institute of Media. <http://www.ci.appstate.edu/programs/edmedia/medialit/>

Berger, John. “Publicity”. The Arlington reader. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom, Louise Z. Smith. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

Center for Media Literacy, 2002-2003. <http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/rr2def.php>

Colander, David C. Microeconomics. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Irwin, 2004.

Gitlin, Todd. “Disappearing Ink”. The Arlington reader. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom, Louise Z. Smith. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

Johnston, Carla B. Screened out: how the media control us and what we can do about it. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000.

The Kentucky Department of Education. Program of Studies for Kentucky Schools. 2003. 15 Oct. 2003 <http://www.kde.state.ky.us/KDE/Instructional+Resources/Curriculum +Documents+and+Resources/Program+of+Studies.htm>

Kozol, Jonathan. “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society”. The Arlington reader. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom, Louise Z. Smith. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

The Insider. Director, Michael Mann. Videorecording. Walt Disney Video, c1999.

The merchants of cool. Director, Barak Goodman; writer, Rachel Dretzin. Videorecording. Boston : WGBH Educational Foundation : PBS Video, c2001.

Thoman, Elizabeth. “Screen-Agers… and the Decline of the ‘Wasteland’”. Federal Communication Law Journal May, 2003.

Essay outline:

I. In the new world, the importance of media content is very high.

II. Today’s media present a big problem.

a) Television carries junk that can also be dangerous.

b) Media uses teens for business.

c) Media takes control and does not demand thinking.

d) Media has less credibility.

e) Media educates kids whether we want it or not.

f) Government tried to help kids but it did not work.

g) We need to learn how to analyze media to use it.

III. The world has already come up with the answer to the problem.

a) Media literacy will help study media.

b) We need to look behind the definition.

IV. Introducing media literacy has its problems.

a) There is a mainstream academic approach to studying the media.

b) Media literacy and argumentative writing are similar.

c) Media literacy supports and enhances the concept of information literacy.

d) Kids show natural desire to become media literate.

e) It is important to start such education early.

f) People in Kentucky already do it but not enough.

g) Kentucky offers out-of-date approach.

h) We can find space in the curriculum by changing the educational approach.

j) Kentucky educational goals and principles justify the need for media literacy.

k) We still have print illiterates and they suffer.

V. Media literacy is the best solution to the media problem.

VI. People should demand media literacy.