Opinion If schools want to teach values, they have to talk about
media
By STEVE BAIRD
We are awash in media these days, much of it aimed at the most
vulnerable among us -- our children. To date, efforts to help kids cope have
been fairly anemic, relying on technology to solve the problem -- the V-chip,
for example, or Net Nanny.
But no technological fix will give young people the maturity and
wisdom to handle media appropriately. At best, it will simply delay the
inevitable.
A better answer, but one that has been slow to rise in our nation,
is media literacy. Like other forms of literacy, the goal of media education is
to give kids a base of knowledge that allows them to make their own judgments
about what they see, read and hear in popular culture.
Over the past 15 years, the notion of media literacy has gathered
some steam, and more materials are available today for schools and teachers.
The goal is to create intelligent and critical utilizers of the media -- kids
who understand how advertisers try to manipulate them, kids able to make moral
judgments about the choices popular characters make on TV or in the movies.
Some believe that introducing media literacy into an already
overcrowded school curriculum would further blur the focus on academic basics.
That criticism relies on a false notion of what media studies is about --
nobody in the field is advocating an undemanding, feel-good
approach. More important, if schools are serious about educating for character,
they must address the crucibles in which todays character decisions are
likely to be forged -- and for Americas children, that means serious
attention to the mass media.
Values are key for those coming to media literacy from a religious
perspective. Many believers want the values portrayed in the media to reflect
those of their own tradition and beliefs. But our culture is composed of many
different value and belief systems, so it is not always easy to find media that
correspond to ours. We have to accept the fact of diversity, that our kids will
routinely encounter media images that we believe send exactly the wrong moral
messages.
We can protest those messages all we want, but theyre not
going away. The only responsible course is to equip our kids to deal with them.
If media literacy was introduced into our Catholic schools, children could
learn from an early age how to view, assess, understand and be empowered by the
media through the Christian, Catholic tradition.
If we want children to accept the values and beliefs of the
Catholic tradition, they must be taught how to live and hold those values and
beliefs in our culture. They need to be taught that the media is a tool to
understand our values and why we hold them. If all they hear is that the media
is evil and to be shunned, they will continue to think adults do not know what
were talking about.
In 1992 the Vaticans Council for Social Communications
published a pastoral letter on media and values, Aetatis Novae,
described as a Pastoral Instruction on Social Communications. While
it stresses the importance of the media for re-evangelization and new
evangelization, the pastoral says that even as the church takes a
positive, sympathetic approach to the media, seeking to enter into the culture
created by modern communications in order to evangelize effectively, it is
necessary at the very same time that the church offer a critical evaluation of
mass media and their impact upon culture. The pastoral also stresses the
need for media education for those in pastoral ministry; encourages Catholic
schools and universities to offer programs and courses related to media and
values; and stresses the necessity for planning and carrying out programs in
media literacy for teachers, parents and students.
Media literacy should be an integral part of any school
curriculum. But as members of a religious tradition that holds certain values
and beliefs sacred, we should be even more concerned that those values and
beliefs are expressed to our children in a language and culture that we all can
understand. Media literacy is the tool that can not only help us understand our
culture and its values, it can help us use media to faithfully transmit our
values and beliefs to future generations of Catholics.
Jesuit Fr. Steve Baird is director of the Gabriel Media Studies
Center in Sedalia, Colo. He may be reached at
sbairdsj@gabrielmedia.org
National Catholic Reporter, September 18,
1998
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