Detect This!

For this phase’s post I want to take us back to Postman and his stern apprehension over the growth of television (and the one-way media channel) and the temptation to “amuse ourselves to death” – what he deems “information glut.” It was surreal to read “Crap Detecting” only to realize his predictions have come true. Throughout the article and the video James posted, I couldn’t help but think of Robert Kubey’s work with media literacy, which entails “critically analyzing media messages, evaluating sources of information for bias and credibility, raising awareness about how media messages influence people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviors and producing messages using different forms of media” (23). Kubey points out that the US seriously lags behind all other English-speaking countries such as Canada and Australia in offering critical media literacy as young as 5^th grade. It would seem that the US is doing a serious disservice to its youth by pumping them full of technology they have no formal training in analyzing and contextualizing and, therefore, designates media literacy as “an entitlement of every citizen” (21). The question is, if the government is not willing to offer such analytical training (and really, why would it, since it would undermine myriad agendas and political manipulations), how do we create (I say create because clearly we are not there yet) and sustain a democratic society in the face of media bombardment (cue Simpsons’ dodgeball-obsessed gym teacher here)?

I’d like to “remix” these two thinkers, who have a thirty-three year time difference in the publication of their texts, and put them in direct conversation with one another to see where we’ve been, where we presently are, and where we should aim to be:

Kubey: “Democracy, it is said, depends on an informed public” (“Media” 69).

Postman: “To the extent that our schools are instruments of such a [democratic] society they must develop in the young not only an awareness of this freedom but a will to exercise it, and the intellectual power and perspective to do so effectively” (1).

Kubey: “But if a school is teaching critical thinking and not linking critical thinking to the media world that so many students are spending upwards of six hours a day with, they are leaving a potential gold mine unexplored” (“What Is” 23-24).

Postman: There are men in power who “would prefer that the schools do little or nothing to encourage youth to question, doubt, or challenge any part of the society in which they live, especially those parts which are most vulnerable” (2).

Kubey: “Politicians have become extraordinarily adept at using the media to their advantage […] to the degree that the media are used to propagandize or manipulate and interfere with the public being well-informed, is the degree to which we need media education to be part of our schools’ civics and social-studies classes” (“What Is” 24).

Postman: “Whose schools are they, anyway. And whose interests should they be designed to serve? […] We believe that the schools must serve as the principle medium for developing in youth the attitudes and skills of social, political, and cultural criticism” (2).

Kubey: “the U.S. educational establishment is still too often mystified as to how to retool and retrain to educate students and future citizens for the new realities of communication” (“Media” 76).

Postman: “Things that plug in are here to stay. But you can study media with a view toward discovering what they are doing to you […] Certainly it is unrealistic to expect those who control the media to perform that function. Nor the generals and the politicians. Nor is it reasonable to expect the “intellectuals” to do it, for they do not have access to the majority of youth. But school teachers do, and so the primary responsibility rests with them” (8, 13).

So, in closing, it would seem that we are not only literacy sponsors, but we are also media literacy sponsors: a tough task to take on. How are you responsibility sponsoring media literacy in your classrooms, and how does our tendency to engage students’ interest with technology and digital texts play into Postman’s concerns?

Works Cited

Kubey, Robert. “Media Literacy and the Teaching of Civics and Social Studies at the Dawn of

the 21^st Century.” American Behavioral Scientist 48.1 (2004): 69-77. Print.

-------- “What is Media Literacy and why is it So Important?” Television Quarterly 34.3/4

(2004): 21-27. Print.

Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. “Crap Detecting.” Teaching as a Subversive Activity.

Brooklyn: Delta (1971). 1-15. Print.