“In my opinion, there is very little instruction about and for media literacy in schools. While some classes do receive newpapers to examine, how much classroom time is really available to analyze the newspaper’s content critically?…..” -Joanne.
The first part of Joanne’s quote from Paul R. Carr’s investigation about Critiquing the Mainstream Media as a Form of Democratic Engagement really stuck with me while I was reading the rest of the article. Joanne’s quote really speaks a lot of truth especially in today’s world where newspapers, I believe, are becoming more obsolete. Only a handful of people I actually know have the opportunity to sit down and really read the newspaper from cover to cover as well as having the time to “analyze” the articles from a critical viewpoint.
About a month ago at the beginning of the school year, my cooperating teacher thought it would be a wonderful idea to have her 8th grade Spanish students do a written assignment telling her why they think language learning is so important to teach at schools, but also to them. I thought it was a great idea to do because it was setting up for what I hoped was going to be a meaningful, fun, and interesting last year for the students at middle school before they went off to high school, but instead it turned out to be the complete opposite of what we both, my cooperating and I, expected. Majority of the students didn’t even know where to begin when it came to looking for sources on the web. They immediately thought Wikipedia was a good source to cite and even said, “we will just type the topic into google and the first thing that pops up about language learning is good enough.” I was completely shocked and taken aback by how lazy. easily manipulated, and careless these students are by what they see or “read” in the media.
It’s a sad cry when we hear students nowadays not being able to figure out what is fact and what is fiction in the media. I really liked the suggestion that was presented at the end of Carr’s study where this is a community based issue at schools and every teacher needs to be on board in order to be willing and able to teach media literacy and how it can be incorporated in every subject area for example, Social Studies and English as well as Math and Science. This is just one measure that can be taken in consideration when teachers are lesson planning.
“…….I do think students need to receive instruction about how the media operates, along with using critical thinking skills to decipher what motives are behind news presentations.” -Joanne
Hi Sara,
I completely agree with you. Adolescents are far too easily manipulated by the media into thinking what they say is right. Sadly, the media reports a lot of fiction among the fact and it is difficult to decipher which is which, even for adults – so how can we ask the students to do it if we cannot even do it ourselves? All we can say is that we will try and raise awareness and spread the message that not everything you see on the Internet (or the media in general) is true.