This plan for a freshman-level college writing course can be adapted for almost any grade level. Its core component is something that schools need to do more: students must interact with “real” people to write articles that could very well end up published. Too much writing in school today is done solely for the eyes of a teacher.

This paper discusses an important, but little recognized, problem in American schools: media literacy is not very prevalent. Results of this paper’s survey should be, at least somewhat, alarming.