A case for the importance and relevance of media literacy can be made from a variety of perspectives. Experts in many fields recognize the dominant role media have in our lives and have offered their reasons for why media literacy should be part of every student's education. Feel free to use these statements in proposals, workshops, and other presentations that call for a strong statement about the need for media literacy education.
ORGANIZATIONS
American Academy of Pediatrics
Given the volume of information transmitted through mass media as opposed to the written word, it is as important to teach media literacy as print literacy.
– Media Education Committee (1999)
The AAP Media Education Committee also recommended that:
- Pediatricians should encourage their state and federal governments to explore mandating and funding universal media education programs with demonstrated effectiveness in American schools.
- Pediatricians should encourage the government and private foundations to increase the funding available for media education research.
American Psychological Association
...resolved that the APA encourage academic, developmental, family, and media psychologists to teach media literacy that meets high standards of effectiveness to children, teachers, parents and caregivers to promote ability to critically evaluate interactive media and make more informed choices.
– Resolution on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media, August 2005
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
- "Children spend many hours watching television at an age when they are highly impressionable. Schools should teach good viewing practices and encourage other ways to use leisure time." (1981)
- "Information literacy - the ability to locate, process, and use information effectively - should be part of every student's educational experience." (1991)
Catholic Church
Popes and bishops call for media literacy principles to be taught al all levels.
Kaiser Family Foundation
KFF has produced a comprehensive fact sheet outlining key information pertaining to media literacy, along with an extensive list of resources.
National Council of Churches
There can be little doubt that what we see on television and in movie theaters, hear on recordings and on the radio, and read in newspapers and magazines affects the way we perceive our personal and community situations. It is through media that much of our cultural understanding – or misunderstanding – is developed.
www.ncccusa.org/about/comcompolicies.html#media-education
National Council of Teachers of English / International Reading Association
Calls for "broadening the concept of literacy" to include "print and non-print" texts are infused throughout the English/Language Arts standards promoted by NCTE/IRA, including the recommendation that "Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions, media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non-print texts."
For more information see www.ncte.org/about/over/standards/110846.htm
Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies-from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms-are multiple, dynamic, and malleable.
Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies
Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee, February 15, 2008
In today's world literacy means–in addition to interacting with print texts–recognizing how texts are produced and understanding how multimodal forms of representation convey meaning. This means that students engage with a variety of texts, both print and multimodal, as they learn.
For more information see www.ncte.org/edpolicy/multimodal
National Issues Forum
A National Issues Forum [News Media and Society: How to Restore the Public Trust, Feb. 10, 2006] panel concluded that "Media literacy is one of the most important factors for building public trust in the news media." Specific comments included:
- Media literacy can help educate people to become more powerful consumers.
– Lori Bergen, Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications
- People should have the skill to discern fact from opinion.
– Jeff Zakarakis, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership
Reported by the Kansas State Collegian (March 10, 2006)
For more information see www.nifi.org
Partnership for 21st Century Skills
A simple question to ask is, "How has the world of a child changed in the last 150 years?" And the answer is, "It's hard to imagine any way in which it hasn't changed." Children know more about what's going on in the world today than their teachers. . . They're immersed in a media environment of all kinds of stuff that was unheard of 150 years ago, but if you look at school today versus 100 years ago, it is more similar than dissimilar.
Peter Senge, senior lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Learning for the 21st Century: A Report and Mile Guide for 21st Century Skills
United Nations
Appreciating how and why mass media constructs and distributes information, requires skills that are not readily available to adults, let alone children and young people. Such knowledge - acquired through disciplines like media literacy, media education, media studies or vocational training - has now become an important life skill.
UNICEF MAGIC (Media Activities and Good Ideas by, with and for Children) project -- an outgrowth of the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child
www.unicef.org/magic
World Health Organization
Member States should form alliances to convey appropriate and effective messages
about healthy lifestyles, including diet and physical activity. Health, nutrition and physical activity education and media literacy skills, starting in primary school, are important to counter food fads and misleading dietary advice.
– Report of global strategy on diet, physical activity and health, section 40; 57th World Health Assembly - Plenary meeting, May 22, 2004
INDIVIDUALS
Media literacy is a relatively new approach to helping young people make good decisions about their health.
– Jane Brown, Ph.D., James L. Knight Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Journal of Adolescent Health 39 (2006) 459-460
The more I grasp the pervasive influence of media on our children, the more I worry about the media literacy gap in our nation's educational curriculum. We need a sustained K-12 media literacy program-something to teach kids not only how to use the media but how the media uses them. Kids need to know how particular messages get crafted and why, what devices are used to hold their attention and what ideas are left out. In a culture where media is pervasive and invasive, kids need to think critically about what they see, hear and read. No child's education can be complete without this.
– FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, speech given at forum sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the New America Foundation, June 7, 2006
We live and work in a visually sophisticated world, so we must be sophisticated in using all the forms of communication, not just the written word...If students aren't taught the language of sound and images, shouldn't they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read or write?
– Director George Lucas, in Edutopia, September 2004
Develop media literacy: Provide girls with the language and tools to be critical of the things they watch, read, and hear.
– Lyn Mikel Brown, psychologist & Colby College professor, from "12 Ways to Prevent Girl Fighting and Build Girl Allies"
The truth is often ambiguous. That's why you need to be informed consumers of the media. You need to understand what you read and watch.
– CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante (Loyola Academy, 4/29/04)
We live in increasingly complex times, and unless we teach our children how to read about, watch, interpret, understand and analyze the day's events, we risk raising a generation of civic illiterates, political ignoramuses and uncritical consumers, vulnerable not only to crackpot ideas, faulty reasoning and putative despots but fraudulent sales pitches and misleading advertising claims.
– David Shaw, columnist Los Angeles Times (November 30, 2003)
Schools must begin teaching children how to watch TV news. Specific courses should be taught so that our future citizens can hopefully avoid the pitfalls that the television news monolith will continue to lay before future generations. If not, our democracy may not survive.
– John W. Whitehead, Founder and President, The Rutherford Institute, June 2005