Preface to this post: The material that I review below (Media Literacy for the 21st Century) is too long to really do it justice in one blog post. There is so much to unpack! Thus, I will simply comment on the main ideas of the piece, ideas that I find to be well worth discussing and mulling over in one’s own brain.
General Thoughts:
Reading this article was, in a way, sort of scary. A slow realization dawned on me of just how much we really are inundated with media every day, all day. “Media no longer just shape our culture – they ARE our culture” (pg 9). Yikes.
This article emphasizes instilling a strong foundation of critical thinking in students. I believe this to be a fundamental and necessary skill for any well-educated person, though the stakes are certainly higher in today’s society simply because our “critical thinking” hat is one that we can never take off. There’s too much media!
I appreciated that this “Media Literacy Kit” equips teachers to teach their children how to handle the media, not hide from it. One solution to the deluge of media is to hide from it & pretend it’s not there – don’t get a TV, don’t watch movies, limit internet access, etc etc. However, that is really not a practical nor a sustainable solution. Kids must be taught how to deal with the media appropriately & effectively.
Small Criticism:
It seems to me that perhaps too much emphasis might be placed on learning how to find & assess information versus actually learning the information, to the point where it’s committed to memory. Of course (as I said above), I think the former skill is highly important and valuable in today’s society. But I do not think that the ‘assessing’ skill should be elevated to the detriment of the ‘actual learning’ skill.
Kind of like teachers in elementary school insisting that children learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide by hand – not by calculator. Why would they do that if the information is so readily accessible in a useful little machine that fits in your pocket? Students could “look up” the math information anytime they wanted. No. No, it is still very important for students to learn the hard facts of life, such as 2+2=4 and 100/10=10.
Similarly, I think it is still well worth memorizing certain things that contribute to a well-rounded, liberal arts education. In a democracy based on debate & discussion, it wouldn’t work if you had to stop every other minute to look something up. Could you? Yes. The information is there. Should you? No way – can you imagine how long that debate would take?
Learning facts is still important.
On a Practical Note:
I’ll definitely be using some of these ideas for discussion in my classroom!
I agree. And darn it, if I had to memorize those multiplication tables, so do they! I don’t care if it’s antiquated, its fair!
I agree as well. It seems reasonable that a foundation of essentials–in science, math, history, etc–would be expected of everyone….but at some point we would move to higher levels of cognitive activity than recall and knowledge.
In a purely professional sense, a lot of what will be expected of someone hired for a job is the ability to learn as you go–about systems, expectations, jargon, and so on. Yes, it’s important that you can read and write (for instance) fairly well coming in, but one’s ability to evolve and learn is crucial for success (or so it seems to me). Thus school learning would seem to be, ideally, a preparation for continual learning after school.
dc