We have been tasked to write about media education. As a teacher and as someone trained as a scientist, my first instinct is to consider what that term means. Jenkins (2006) wrote that there is demand for schools to “foster a critical understanding of media as one of the most powerful social, economic, political, and cultural institutions of our era.” That’s both full of detail and highly vague.

What I mean is, it can be interpreted many ways. Foster? That seems to mean something like encourage or promote. Surely schools should instead (or at least primarily) be teaching critical understanding, not just reinforcing the idea that students should have it?

What is a “critical understanding of media”? Is it critical analysis of the media themselves, as in the deconstructions we have done? That is, is it analysis in the manner of a film critic, or literary critic, or music critic? Surely those are all worthy things to teach in schools. Presumably this form of critical understanding would involve analyzing video in terms of scene, acts, acting, and more technical matters such as lighting and scoring, where such analysis of games would involve matters like gameplay, victory conditions, enjoyment, repeat playability, etc. Almost any media analysis on this level would include things like theme, comprehensibility, influences by past works, and such.

Is a critical understanding meant as analysis using critical thinking skills? Sumner (1940) defines critical thinking as “… the examination and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not.” I’m a member of the skeptical movement (I belong to the James Randi Educational Foundation and have done videos for the Skeptics Guide to the Universe) and no one can favor critical thinking education more strongly than I do.

But Jenkins wants (or he thinks other people want) us to have students understand “… one of the most powerful social, economic, political, and cultural institutions of our era.” First of all “media” is plural and using “one” to refer to a plural is incorrect. (I am also the owner of nitpicking.com.) More seriously, he’s lumping “media” into a single homogeneous “institution.” I don’t accept that blogging is identical in any way, much less all ways, to ballet, or that either is identical to Vines videos. Looking at the quote in its context might be helpful:

As media literacy advocates have claimed during the past several decades, students also must acquire a basic understanding of the ways media representations structure our perceptions of the world; the economic and cultural contexts within which mass media is produced and circulated; the motives and goals that shape the media they consume; and alternative practices that operate outside the commercial mainstream. Such groups have long called for schools to foster a critical understanding of media as one of the most powerful social, economic, political, and cultural institutions of our era.What we are calling here the new media literacies should be taken as an expansion of, rather than a substitution for, the mass media literacies.

It seems Jenkins is referring to groups wanting education on mass media, not the “new media” that perhaps would be implied by a course in “new media and new literacies.”

So now that I’ve over-analyzed this, let me state my position on Jenkins’s (or again, on his referred-to “media literacy advocates”) desire for students to learn “critical understanding” of new media. First, I narrow my field to primary and secondary education. In that area, I believe that what needs to be taught are broadly general principles (such as recognizing invalid reasoning) and methods (such as analyzing any sources for credibility) that apply across media, not something limited to one or a few media. Certainly, where it’s economically possible schools can and should make available direct education in and about specific media, but “media” is such a broad term that this includes everything from web design courses to dance classes to working at the school’s radio station. It’s simply not possible to supply formal education in the specifics of everything, so (as in most areas) the job of childhood education is and should be providing foundations,.

In post-secondary schools, the sky(scraper) is the limit, building on those foundations. Philosophically I would continue to build general skills in a core curriculum–critical reasoning skills (such as recognizing formal logical fallacies), familiarity with cultural touchstones from Aristotle to Zynga, and such, but this is the time when a person selects specific areas of interest (or of perceived value) and specializes. Here’s where the first type of “critical understanding” above can become fully-fleshed. A person can graduate with say, a film degree and write knowledgeably about films, or study game design (there are several such majors available now) and go on to a career writing (or writing about) games.

This is a rather long blog post to have dealt with such a basic issue, but I believe that one must know what direction to run in before starting the race. Now that I’ve defined an answer to Jenkins’ question, I can begin to think about implementing any of these ideas.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. An Occasional Paper on Digital Media and Learning. John D. And Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation, (accessed July 14, 2015).

Sumner, W. G. (1940). Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals, New York: Ginn and Co., pp. 632, 633.