Why Americans are not media literate

I think I'll augment my use of the label “media literacy” to describe the field of media education. I thought about it after talking with Robert Kubey, Rutgers professor and director of The Center for Media Studies. Kubey is the editor of “Media Literacy in the Information Age: Current Perspectives.” The field now seems to be so much more than those two words suggest.

Kubey’s book is a collection of the best writing on what he calls “an extremely broad and unfocused area” of academia. He used to teach a course on the subject at Rutgers but no longer does. The best way to study it, he recommends, is by immersing yourself in the literature and in attending conferences where the best minds in the field are gathering.

Kubey explained that the phrase “media literacy” has lost its sparkle in the field. “It doesn’t really have good cache – it sounds babyish,” he said. Instead, scholars around the world are using terms like media analysis, media and politics and media symbolism.

He also points out that the United States has some catching up to do in media education.

“Australians are the best,” he said. “I’ve published how far behind the Americans are. They ‘re teaching kids semiotics (in Australia). It’s based on symbolic images. There are meanings attached to things like glasses and you go out from there.”

In his collection of essays, Kubey includes “Media and Arts Education: A Global View from Australia.” It’s written by Peter Greenaway, a world-renowned media education scholar who endorses the teaching of popular culture. He and others refer to American pop culture as the “Coca Cola Culture.”

The rest of the world is way ahead of Americans in media education because the rest of the world has been forced to grapple with the saturation of the “Coca Cola Culture” in their own countries. They have begun looking at ways to equip their students with tools to identify popular culture texts and their influences. We Americans, meanwhile, have very little exposure to outside cultural texts, so we’re not concerned about their effects. And we're not critical of our own cultural texts.

“Australians have been subjected to enormous amounts of information about America, whereas Americans’ exposure to Australian culture is in comparison miniscule,” Greenaway writes. He quotes another scholar, Patricia Mellemcomp, who says, “The most profitable export, the biggest industry, of the U.S. is representation.”

Kubey points to two approaches in media education. One is the protectionist approach, in which we seek to keep kids away from what we perceive as harmful media. The other is the cultural studies approach, where we teach them how to interpret meanings and effects of media texts.

“If you’re worried they’re being bamboozled by political ads, that’s not protectionist,” Kubey said. “You’re trying to teach them how to ask the critical questions – what’s left out, what isn’t said, what’s the motivation … all of that is critical in a message, in advertising …”

Kubey’s book offers some concrete starting points for the teaching of media and popular culture. Two other Austrialians, Robyn Quin and Barrie McMahon, offer a framework in their essay, "Living with the Tiger: Media Curriculum Issues for the Future." The purpose of media literacy education is to give kids an informed and critical understanding of the media, its techniques and impact," they write.

Some important discoveries that I took from their work:
• I must keep in mind that their media are a source of pleasure for kids. The last thing we want to do is denegrate their media choices.
• Data is not information, information is not knowledge and knowledge is certainly not wisdom, Quin and McMahon write. These are all distinct points on a continuum. The information explosion showers us with data, but we're getting very little wisdom. Kids need tools to move along the continuum.
• Kids are not passive recipients of media texts. They, as audience members, are active in the construction of the message's meaning. In other words, we all bring our own knowledge, prejudices and resistance to the construction of a message. Part of the teacher's job is to make students aware that their attitudes and positions help to construct the meaning of a message, and that we could all derive different meaning from the same message.

The most important discovery for me is the realization that I must change my teaching style. I must guide my students. They must make these discoveries on their own, with my help. With further research, I'll be ready to begin writing my lesson plans.