Note: I wrote this as a graduate student in Mass Communication at Texas State University. This paper was accepted for presentation at the school’s annual Mass Communication Week Conference
Introduction
As American mass communication media become increasingly complex, scholars continue their calls for better attention to media literacy in the nation’s schools. James Potter, for example, points to a story told by Sherwood Schwartz, producer of the television classic Gilligans Island. After the show had aired for its first few weeks in 1964, Schwartz reports, the U.S. Coast Guard began receiving serious complaints from people angry that the agency was unable to rescue the show’s fictional characters who were stranded on a pacific island. (1998)
“Hearing a story like this, we are likely to smile and think that those people must be extremely media illiterate to be so influenced by the media that they could not tell the difference between reality and fantasy. We smugly feel that we don’t have that problem – but remember… we are constantly faced with the challenge of controlling the media’s influence on us, and the difference between us and the viewers who contacted the Coast Guard is only a matter of degree. All of us must continually decide how closely media messages reflect real life. Sometimes these decisions are relatively easy … Other decisions are harder to make accurately.” (Potter, p. 22)
Sissella Bok, carrying forth the same overall theme, points to many studies in which media violence has been found to have at least some negative effect on audiences, particularly children. (1998) Like Potter and dozens (at least) of others, she promotes media literacy education as one way to counteract the negative influences. Media literacy, she says, “views all media as offering scope for participants to learn not to submit passively to whatever comes along, but instead to examine offerings critically.” (p. 141)
The literature of media literacy is, perhaps, overstocked with points such as these. Likewise, there are plenty of suggestions such as those from Hepburn (1999) and Dugald (1999) for ways in which media literacy can be incorporated into all levels of school curriculum. And there are a number of case studies such as that by Manzo (2000) which discuss how media literacy has, indeed, been successful in some American schools.
The success stories are relatively rare, however, and therefore nearly every writer on the topic finds himself, for at least a moment, being frustrated. Media literacy proponents routinely take jabs at an American educational establishment that seems curiously slow in adopting media literacy in its schools. Renowned journalists Walter Cronkite and Hugh Downs have even weighed it, joining dozens of other media experts in bemoaning that “the United States lags behind other countries when it comes to media literacy.” (Magee, 1996) Taken as a whole, media literacy literature seems to scream from the most progressive of mass communication intellectuals “Americans have a problem adequately understanding the media to which they are increasingly being exposed. We know how to fix that problem. Why is it that so few people take us seriously?!”
But in 1999 two of America’s leading media literacy exerts found that media literacy does seem to be taken seriously in American schools — at least on paper. (Kubey & Baker, 1999) In light of a 1998 New York Times report which said that only 12 states at that time had curricular guidelines for media study, the pair took a detailed look at the official curriculum statements in all 50 states. “We have found to our own surprise – and that of all the media educators with whom we’ve spoken – that at least 48 state curricular frameworks now contain one or more elements calling for some form of media education,” they said. (p. 56) In particular, they found that “Texas unquestionably presents the most developed and comprehensive media education framework. Florida’s and North Carolina’s are also impressive. Kansas and Kentucky were the only states we found that did not include nonprint media education, at least in the educational frameworks we were able to locate.” (p. 57)
At first glance, then, the Kubey and Baker study seems to indicate that media literacy proponents have quietly — even unconsciously — won their case. Could it be that media literacy is a significant part of the American education experience after all? This paper investigates that possibility.
The following pages report on a study designed to find out what some Texas college students think and know about some of the media literacy concepts the Kubey and Baker study indicates they should have been exposed to — in one way or another– during their first twelve years of school. Media literacy proponents should not be satisfied with a simple “paper-tiger” showing that schools are teaching media literacy while, in fact, that teaching is largely ineffective. This paper asks if, perhaps, that is just what Kubey and Baker uncovered.
