1: INTRODUCTION
In 1922, Lewis Selznik,
the Hollywood producer, is reported to have said: "If Canadian stories are
worthwhile making into movies, then companies will be sent into
To understand
Canadian media education and communications, we must first recognize some of
our special collective character traits and our relationship to our neighbour
to the south. Former Prime Minister Trudeau likened our living next to the
As a country
whose population of 30 million [there are more people in the
state of
Canadians have
tended to define themselves by what we are not.
The result is an amorphous, low key entity that resembles McLuhan's
notion of a cool medium, poorly defined, and encouraging us to fill in the
gaps. McLuhan also noted “The calculated ambivalence of Canadians
is the most efficient way of
maintaining a low profile, as a
receptive ground for other people’s fantasies.”
Our
semi-detached relationship with the
The segue to
Canadian media education is easy. All of our provinces have mandated media
education in the curriculum, compared with only a dozen or so of the
2: THE
HISTORY
In
In 1991, a group of educators and media professionals met in
In 1994, CAME signed a contract with the Ministry of Education to
produce a Conceptual Framework of Media
Education. This framework was made
available to the curriculum review committees that met with instructions to
incorporate suggestions for media education into all curriculum areas. It is
prescribed in BC curricula from K-12. The framework was also given to the
Western Consortium - a group that has written a common Language Arts curriculum
for the four western provinces and three territories. This curriculum includes
a mandated segment on media education, which differs from province to province.
In 1996,
Since the early 60s Media Education in
In 1993, based on the success of a 1991 media education conference, a
group of educators and media professionals
formed the
Since 1993, AAMA has continued to promote media awareness and to
organize workshops each year, but the level of activity has been modest due to
significant local, provincial and federal government financial and human cutbacks. An AAMA achievement has been to
provide continuing critical and developmental input to the
In the neighbouring province of
Media education is a part of the common essential learnings and one of the supporting domains
of the basic Language Arts structure. In core-content English courses, media
studies are now required: video in Grade
10, radio in Grade 11 and print journalism in Grade 12.
Saskatchewan Education has mandated three options for Grade 11 English
besides the required credits in English:
Media Studies, Journalism and Creative Writing. There is enthusiasm and
a realistic attitude about ongoing updating of media studies resources by
teachers but there is a great need for formal teacher training.
For a number of years
The
The
Atlantic Canada - Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island,
Newfoundland, The Yukon, The North West Territories
In 1995 an
In 1992, a group of teachers, parents, librarians, media professionals,
and environmentalists formed the Association of Media Literacy for
The Literacy section of the Nova Scotia Department of Education and
Culture together with AML-NS have co-sponsored a media education project for
adult learners. Written by AML-NS founding president, Pat Kipping, the kit
consists of a workshop manual, a collection of resources, and an annotated
guide.
The
In
graduating students since 1990. In 1992, the provincial Department of
Education began to allocate resources and curriculum suggestions for those
teaching the Grade 12 course. Where the teaching staff is not available, or the
enrollment of students prohibitively small to offer the course, the Department
of Education offers Media Studies 12-0 as an on-line option.
When the
Social Studies courses.
The Department of Education has included media literacy courses in its
summer Professional Development courses for the past two years. The
literacy applicable to either undergraduate prospective teachers
and to more experienced teachers.
In November 2000, a group of media educators met began formation of
NB-AML. It is expected to be in place by the time the spring Professional
Development Days in May, 2001.
Over half of
In September of 1990, a group of French and English speaking secondary
teachers, university academics, and others interested in media education formed
the Association for Media Education in
The primary purpose of AMEQ is to provide information, lesson plans and
ideas, expertise, and professional development regarding media education. AMEQ contends that media education should be
included both in the kindergarten through grade eleven curriculum and in all
teacher training programs.
AMEQ has sponsored student media festivals, media education conferences,
day long workshops for teachers and parents and parent information evenings.
AMEQ members regularly lead workshops at provincial education and parent
conferences, school board professional development programs, and guest lecture
at McGill University’s and Bishop’s University’s Faculties of Education.
In 1991, the Montreal-based, Centre for Literacy, which maintains an
open resources collection on every aspect of literacy, began to receive a large
number of requests for resources on media education. The Centre has increased
the media component of their collection.
Ontario, where over one third of Canada's population lives, was the
first educational jurisdiction in
In 1995, the Ontario Ministry of Education outlined what
students are expected to know and when they are expected to know it. From
Grades 1 through to 9 in Language Arts there are required strands - Listening
and Speaking,
One group above all is responsible for the continuing successful
development of media education in
In 1986, the Ontario Ministry of Education and the
Prior to the release of the Resource Guide, the Ministry seconded the
AML authors to give a series of in-service training days to teachers across
The
The AML publishes MEDIACY which updates AML members on what has been
happening, lists new publications in the field, announces speakers and topics
for quarterly events, and publishes articles on related topics.
In 1989, the AML held an invitational think tank to discuss future
developments of media education in
In 1992, representatives from Canadian
provincial media education groups met in
The AML was one of the
organizers of the very successful
3: THE
THEORY
Canadian
teachers are, like most informed media educators, participating in an eclectic
circus. We are enthusiastic pragmatists,
selecting from a rich menu of critical, cultural, and educational theories and
filtering them for classroom use.
Because of the small number of trained teachers, the majority use only
snippets from a variety of sources: a
few quotes from McLuhan, English studies, a diatribe from Neil Postman, a bit
of Noam Chomsky ‘s and the rest culled from resource guides, mass media text
books, articles, television documentaries
and news programs.
As a
generalization, there seems to be a world wide consensus about contextualizing
media education within the frameworks of the British inspired ‘cultural
studies,‘ an Interdisciplinary approach to the construction of knowledge which
problematizes texts and foregrounds representations of gender, race and
class. The critical premises behind our
resource guide ( strongly influenced at the time by
Contained in
the
Key concept
#1: All media are constructions. Media are not simple reflections of external
reality. They present productions which have specific purposes
Key concept
#2: The Media Construct Reality. The
media often come with observations, attitudes and interpretations already built in
Key concept
#3: Audiences negotiate meaning in
media. Each of us interacts in unique ways to media texts based on such factors
as gender, age, and life experiences.
Key concept
#4: Media have commercial
implications. Media literacy includes an
awareness of the economic basis of mass media production. The issue of
ownership and control is of vital importance.
Key concept
#5: Media contain ideological and value
messages. Media literacy involves an
awareness of the ideological implications and value systems of media texts.
Key concept
#6: Media have social and political implications. Media literacy involves an awareness of the
broad range of social and political effects stemming from the media.
Key concept
#7: Form and content are closely related in the media. Making the form/content connections relates
to the thesis of Marshall McLuhan that “The medium is the message.”
Key concept
#8: Each medium has unique aesthetic
forms. This enables students not only to decode and understand media texts, but
also to enjoy the unique aesthetic form of each.
There are
several important dimensions to audience studies:
i.)
Understanding the formation of audiences is especially important in
understanding the dynamics of youth culture.
ii.) When
social and cultural issues are mediated through gender, culture and race,
investigations of audiences help explain how and why we position our
selves and others in responding to media
texts.
iii.) Audience
study has foregrounded the importance of the pleasures of the text. It has helped us conceive of viewers as social subjects with multiple
subjectivities. Similarly, texts are now
seen as being polysemic - they convey many meanings. and hence elicit many
different readings
iv.) Audience
study can lead us to learn about interpretive communities - Electronic Bulletin
Boards on North American television programs, web sites containing information
and gossip on day time soaps, the
X-Files, the Simpsons etc.
When teachers
examine their students’ cultural practices
through knowledge of audience
theory, they can not help but change the
dynamics of their classrooms. The
emphasis on finding out what the students already know about media and how they
make sense of it should be the starting points for all media teachers. The work
of
The increasing trend towards globalization of
culture has been fueled in part by
transnational media corporations and recent mergers. These trends
suggest some important theoretical and practical challenges to our notions of cultural
sovereignty and democratic citizenship.
Educationally,
the right wing conservative governments in several Canadian provinces are
fearful of critical thinking practices, cultural criticism and knowledge of the
formation of values and ideology. Media educators need to have informed
perspectives on our right to democratic access to information, especially that
which is constructed by governments and corporations. In 1994, Len Masterman
recommended a new paradigm for media education: teaching critical marketing.
The new and converging communication
technologies have left many media educators behind as the computer and
technology departments in our schools have tended to dominate the discourses of
technology. Educators and technocrats tend to resort to our old paradigms of
thinking borrowed from traditional media thereby blinding them to new possibilities As Marshall McLuhan reminds us, “we are
driving forward while looking through the rear view.” The key concepts of media
are certainly quite relevant to the digital technologies and the new
literacies.
4: THE PRACTICE
There are
several approaches and roles for media education in Canadian
classrooms. One of these is an ontological function in
which students'
relationship
with fantasy, reality, one another and
the world can be
sorted out.
Media
education can also serve to enhance consumer awareness. Through an
understanding of marketing concepts such as psychographics, demographics
and market share, students can come to an understanding of the role that the
mass media play in their lives and their roles in the socioeconomic
system.
Another
perspective served by media education deals with citizenship,
particularly
as it compares to consumerism. Students
can consider the
roles of
citizenship and how understanding media messages can help them be more
effective citizens.
A cultural
perspective to media messages can be especially powerful. Considering issues of
Canadian identity and American identity can further students' understanding of
who they are and how they fit into their local and global communities.
Whichever
approaches are taken, authenticity is the key to relevant
learning. Authenticity means that the media texts
studied have interest
and relevance
in the students’ lives.
There are four
main ways of approaching media education in the classroom. Whichever is
pursued, the deconstruct/construct continuum is always useful.
Here the
characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of a particular medium are focused
upon. This may begin with a naming of
parts, in which the parts of a newspaper and a newspaper page are identified
and labeled.
A theme-based
study involves several media. An issue -
such as gender representation - can be identified and examined in terms of how
it is communicated in a variety of media.
For many
teachers, a media studies unit is a stand-alone unit within an English
course. This means that they will choose
a genre or theme and study it exclusively for up to two weeks.
Integrating
media studies into other classroom activities can be beneficial for creating
some of the most authentic study, and also connecting the newer media, such as
television or the World Wide Web, to older forms of communication, such as
print or speech.
Media education
can be especially useful in helping students and teachers
make sense of
sensitive issues such as representation, sexuality, and
violence. As the dynamic roles of males and females
change in the
evolving
concept of the family, media representation provides an excellent
springboard
for discussion and analysis. Discussions
around the representation of ethnic groups are especially useful for students
trying to understand these issues and their own role in Canadian life. By
comparing the media representations with the values honored in their homes and
classrooms, they can make sense of these issues.
As in all
curricula, assessment is a key component for implementation and
authentication. AML's Chris Worsnop has made media assessment
an ongoing theme of his study and writing.
His book, Assessing Media Learning
(Wright Communications - worsnop@path.com), is helping many teachers understand
authentic media assessment.
At the
classroom level, the implementation of media education skills has
been uneven
from school to school and District to District. Some school boards have
established media education as a priority and have supported it with ongoing
in-service and the appointment of media consultants. Other school boards have left implementation
to the individual teacher.
The dedication
of the individual teacher greatly influences the extent and quality of media
education in the classroom. Associations
such as
There are a
number of excellent media education texts written by Canadians since 1987. The more recent ones include the second
edition of Mass Media and Popular Culture
(Harcourt Brace, Canada, 1996) by Barry Duncan et al. And Media Sense (Harcourt Brace, Canada, 1998) by David Booth et al,
which is in three parts – one for each of Grades 4, 5, and 6.
While their
Australian and American colleagues can tape video off air and rent videos at
the corner store for use in the classroom, Canadian teachers must purchase
videos at a price which includes a public performance license, and suffer a
rather sparse choice for off-air taping.
For example, professional sports
broadcasts and
sit-coms are not among those eligible for use in the
classroom.
There have
been several innovative ways of dealing with this. The Media Awareness Network
(www.media-awareness.ca) was formed
to become a clearinghouse for educational resources. The Network has become extremely
successful. As well as a large database
of sample teaching materials from many sources, both Canadian and international,
the network has also developed some of its own resources, especially for
helping children become media wise on the Internet.
Scanning
Television (
Although much
younger than its American cousin,
CHUM
Television, which operates a number of national speciality channels, works
closely with media education. CHUM is the first network to appoint a vice
president of media education – Sarah Crawford (sarahc@chumtv.com).
CHUM's music
channel - MuchMusic provides programs
each month dealing with media education issues.
These programs combine music and social or marketing issues. Such a combination makes the programs highly
attractive to adolescents, a further bonus for teachers looking for authentic
texts. Recent programs have dealt with
the impact of HIV on the families of victims, the sponsorship of musicians and
concerts by cigarette and beer companies, and sexism and violence in music
videos.
Bravo!,
An ongoing
concern about media violence and its effect on children gave
rise to a
Violence. This book is
designed to support Kindergarten to grade 6
teachers'
efforts to help their students makes sense of influences of
violent
behaviors they may witness in the media.
CBC Newsworld,
an all-news cable network affiliated with the CBC national
network, also
provides a youth-oriented newscast, as well as Street Cents,
a
youth-centered consumer-awareness program.
Canadian
teachers are especially fortunate to have a growing wealth of media
education
support on the internet, on TV, and from the private sector. Marshall McLuhan
said that people in the 20th century trying to understand media are like
fish trying to
understand water. Possibly those of us
who benefit from
the fresh eyes
of youth find it easier, with their help, to see the water.
A study of media
education around the world, shows nine factors which appear crucial to the
successful development of media education.
1: Media literacy, like other innovative
programs, must be a grassroots movement and teachers need to take a major
initiative in lobbying for this.
2: Educational authorities must give clear support to such programs by
mandating the teaching of media education within the curriculum, establishing
guidelines and resource books, and by ensuring curricula are developed and
materials are available.
3: Faculties of Education must hire staff capable of training future
teachers in this area. There should also be academic support from tertiary institutions
in the writing of curricula and in sustained consultation.
4: In-service training at the school district level must be an integral
part of program implementation.
5:
School districts need consultants who have expertise in media literacy and who will establish communication
networks.
6: Suitable textbooks and audio-visual material which are relevant to
the country/area must be available.
7: A support organization must be established for the purposes of
workshops, conferences, dissemination of newsletters and the development of
curriculum units. Such a professional organization must cut across school
boards and districts to involve a cross section of people interested in
media literacy.
8: There must be appropriate evaluation instruments.
9: Because media education involves such a diversity of skills and
expertise, there must be a collaboration between teachers, parents, researchers
and media professionals.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
For further
information on Canadian Media Literacy, consult the CAMEO web site -
http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/CAMEO/index.html
Authors:
Neil Andersen, head of English at Toronto’s
Cedarbrae Collegiate, author of Media
Works, writer of study guides for Scanning
Television, Scanning the Movies, and MuchMusic programs.
Barry Duncan, past president and founder of
Ontario’s Association for Media Literacy, author of Mass Media and Popular Culture, teacher and media education
presenter.
John Pungente, SJ, co-author of More Than Meets the Eye, producer of Scanning Television, producer and host
of Scanning the Movies, teacher,
president Canadian Association of Media Education Organizations (CAMEO).