Next to parents, television is a child's "most persistent and most influential teacher," according to the late Ernest Boyer of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. David Hamburg, former president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, calls television "a vast school ... whether so intended or not". Through repetition, certain elements of television programming constitute an informal curriculum taught at home to all children, beginning at an early age, with the following themes: Consumption, sex, violence and anti-intellectualism. Says National Telecommunications and Information Director Larry Irving, "The discourse is getting coarser and coarser. People aren't paying attention to the needs of our children or what America needs as a democracy."

Children only spend five or six hours a day, five days a week, maybe 30 weeks a year in school. In the average home, however, TV is on six or seven hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. As the first arm of organized society that children meet, it has the effect of "sanctioning" or socially certifying whatever and whoever appears on the screen. Its compelling complex of sound, pictures and text largely determines which issues, people and actions, we regard as "real" or important.

Even before we have fully comprehended the nature of this force, the scope of its effects, or the economics of its multi-billion-dollar outreach, a tidal wave of new technologies has hit us, delivering even more information and a new set of implications to evaluate. As educators, we know we must harness the power of emerging technologies like the Internet, but we have a lot of catching up to do. Now that "TV" is more than broadcast and cable, now that it is merging with the telephone and the computer, it is becoming even more pervasive and more powerful.

Historically, the inability to exchange ideas through text has denied nonreaders and non-writers full access to the richness of their own culture, has limited educational, social and professional opportunities, and has hampered informed participation in local and national policy decisions. Does the same hold true for those who are "media illiterate" -- who cannot decipher the cultural, political and economic implications of the myriad messages they encounter daily? More than 50 years of research says yes.

The problem is not if they see it on TV, they'll do it. The problem is if they see it often enough, they'll see it as part of the norm and it becomes part of their repertoire of possible behavior. Few scholars would deny that TV's influence colors all kinds of transactions in the United States, from grocery purchases and fashion trends to language patterns, political choices, religious practices and daily exchanges among family members, friends, co-workers and strangers.

In brief, investigators have found that "heavy users" of TV feel the greatest "need" for advertised products and feel inadequate compared to the seeming perfection shown in TV ads. They adopt a distorted view of sexuality and tend to believe "everyone is doing it except them". They are more fearful and anxious about the "scary world" seen on TV, are "desensitized" to other people's feelings, and exhibit more violent and criminal behavior. And, not surprisingly, they often regard school as a backward, irrelevant, or violent place, as commonly portrayed on TV. Among school-aged children, those who spend the most time watching television generally do least well in the educational system, according to the National Assessment of Educational Performance. More likely to "believe" TV implicitly, a majority of heavy-viewing, underachieving students also live in poverty, have only one parent or guardian and belong to a cultural minority.

For these children in particular, the "real world" is defined increasingly by what they see on television. But what they see only minimally hints at the kind of preparation and skills they need for social development, responsible citizenship, further learning and productive employment. When people cannot decipher, produce, or exchange information in the language that others use regularly, they tend to suffer psychological effects akin to those stemming from traditional illiteracy -- feelings of anxiety, isolation, powerlessness, inadequacy and persecution.

Most commonly, media illiteracy can lead to cynicism. The least understood of these effects, cynicism is the result of a reversal from "total belief" to "total rejection" of media messages. That is, if it's not all true and real, it must be all false and irrelevant. It's useful to distinguish here between cynicism and skepticism. Fatalistic, inflexible and predetermined, cynicism says everything's phony, nothing's important. Students and educators alike would do well to avoid cynicism while promoting skepticism, which is the ability to question, judge, make distinctions and recognize motives and techniques. Skepticism requires more work ... and that's where media literacy comes in.

In 1992, conferees at the Annenberg School for Communication agreed upon this definition:

Media literacy is the ability to choose, to understand, to question, to evaluate, to create and/or produce and to respond thoughtfully to the media we consume. It is mindful viewing, reflective judgment ... an ongoing process, requiring parents and teachers who are themselves media literate and are nonjudgmental, reflective, yet rigorously valuative in their teaching.

Media literacy is a new, expanded view of traditional literacy, which acknowledges and includes the role and the impact of the mass media. Underlying it is the idea that electronic and other popular media are "texts" that require comprehensive understanding. Reading printed text requires more than simply decoding letters into words or sounds, it involves finding meaning, motive, structure and affect. The same goes for "reading the electronic text".

Media educator Elizabeth Thoman, Executive Director of the Center for Media Literacy in Los Angeles, cautions, "Media literacy is not just being critical of the media; it's learning to appreciate the power of the most powerful medium that the world has ever known".

We may consider the swiftly expanding media environment beyond our control if we continue to teach just the old "basics" -- reading, writing, arithmetic -- as though they were somehow unrelated to the world of information in which we are immersed. Adults and children must be colearners of a whole new language, made up of sound, image, text, and data bits, with its own grammar and syntax. Rather than standing alone as yet another subject to claim a spot on the school curriculum, media literacy is an extension of traditional literacy, to be integrated into each of the disciplines we teach in the schools; language arts and communications, social studies, civics, mathematics, health, etc. In 1997, media educators largely concur on the following basic tenets of media literacy:

Access: The use of the full range of media and new technologies for receiving and sending information, through broadcast, cable, interactive and other media forms.

Analysis: The ability to decipher the elements of media messages and media systems; -- to understand their forms and functions, ownership and management structures, economic and policy implication, message, content, intent and effects; and decoding and re-contextualizing their meaning.

Evaluation: The ability to make judgments about media, assess and apply journalistic ethics, critique aesthetic elements, and compare and contrast the values of media messages and systems to those of other individual and community value systems.

Production: The ability to create messages, in a variety of media, including text, video and computer, with a view toward sharing the results of this production with the larger community.

Since children are immersed in the television experience, everyday schooling or parenting that omits an examination of TV's curriculum also ignores the word that children know. The challenge for American education is to help young people navigate the sea of messages flooding into their lives daily through TV, movies, radio, music, video games, magazines, newspapers; even billboards, bumper stickers and T-shirt logos. The complexity of the relationship between what we see and hear, what we believe, and how we interact with one another underscores the need for across-the-curriculum teaching of critical thinking and critical viewing skills, that is, media literacy.

In October 1996, the On Television Project at Rutgers University-Newark and the New Jersey Network held a video conference on media literacy. Benjamin Barber of Rutgers' Walt Whitman Center said during the conference, "The term 'media education' is redundant; media education is education. The challenge ahead involves nothing short of a revolution for American schooling and, at the same time, a return to the fundamental principles of public education; helping young people learn to ask questions, gain access to information resources, analyze and evaluate media messages, and create their own messages through mastery of the tools of modern communication."

In Television and America's children: A crisis of neglect, Edward Palmer asserts that we have failed to use the world's most powerful informational tool to address the nation's educational problems. There is a wealth of programming on public TV, cable and satellite TV, interactive multi-media systems, and commercial TV that we can use selectively at home and in school as a valuable adjunct to instruction in all disciplines. Teaching critical viewing skills bolsters students' skills in traditional disciplines, combats problems of youth apathy, violence, and substance abuse, and improves students', parents' and teachers' attitudes toward school.

Exercises designed to extend understanding of the content, context, impact and social roles of TV foster critical thinking, reading, writing and comprehension. Jerome and Dorothy Singer of the Family Television Research and Consultation Center at Yale University, who have developed curricula for elementary and secondary levels, find that "media literate" students show decided gains in traditional scholarly skills. They learn to analyze material; interpret messages; note details; understand sequencing; integrate aural and visual elements; distinguish fact from opinion; identify emotional appeals, reactions and motives; and recognize inferences, make predictions and draw conclusions.

The application of these skills to young people's television experiences helps abate their "need" for advertised products, puts TV images of sexuality into perspective, tempers fears about a violent world and improves students' attitudes about education. Further, the teachers, families and community members involved in critical viewing activities with children increasingly regard school as an important center for communication and connection. Most important, media education orients young people to the role of communicator -- as "sender" rather than merely a "receiver" of information, as analyst and maker of media rather than simply a "believer".

As in any new approach to teaching, there is always a risk. The teacher who points out the disparity between the content, intent and impact of such messages and the ideals on which our society was founded may not achieve instant popularity. Nonetheless, if the teacher opens up discussion for students to evaluate the implications of such messages and the possible motives of the message-makers, a surprising range of viewpoints will emerge as young people begin to connect the world they know well -- commercial media -- with concepts and principles inherent to traditional educational standards.

From these discussions, assignments involving research, writing and production by students often result in displays of initiative and insight that eclipse students' prior academic achievements. Student work products -- in the context of almost any traditional discipline or course -- may include written reviews of TV shows, movies, books, music; letters to the editor of local and national publications; self-published magazines; public service announcements on audiotape or videotape; multi-media features or news reports on a full range of investigations. Distribution of these works through school newsletters, local newspapers, libraries, radio and TV broadcasts, and cable access channels helps students see themselves as part of the community and as viable candidates for the increasing number of professions that require communication skills.

America is sound asleep. This is not the way to be treating one-sixth to one-seventh of the American economy. This is the bill, and we are taking it up at midnight?! Ladies and gentlemen, this is about more than how many gigabits one company or another might provide. This is about how we transmit ideas in our society -- how our children's minds are formed.

Since this nation's founding, preparing young people for effective participation in their own governance has been a primary purpose of education. From the beginning, liberty and literacy have been twin articles of American faith. Our First Amendment freedoms depend upon an informed, responsible citizenry able to share ideas through reading and writing. Today, the electronic media have to a large degree replaced print -- even school, government and the family -- as the primary sources of information. Information Age freedoms hinge upon a new basic -- our ability to read, write and comprehend the media of our time. Only an individual with access to, and mastery of, the tools of modern communication is adequately prepared for responsible citizenship.

Veteran TV journalist and media literacy activist Hugh Downs says, "If democracy is to survive, people who vote must have access to the facts so they can sort out biases, they can know whose ax is being.ground, they can know the political climate, they can know the economic considerations of messages that are hurled at us all the time."

Media educator Renee Hobbs of Babson College explains, "Being able to critically analyze media messages turns us from being spectators into citizens. Of course, we have evolved into a kind of democracy where we watch other people do democracy. And that's very dangerous, turning a democracy into a spectator sport is absolutely the way to lose your democracy."

Kathryn Montgomery, Director of the Center for Media Education in Washington, DC, observes, "Most people don't have a sense of what the institutions are that determine what comes into your house, what the policies are that govern the whole shape of the media system; and, generally, the media, with some very few exceptions, don't deal with these issues either. So, it's sort of an invisible part of the picture. And I think that's why one of the key roles of media education is to reveal to people what those structures are; how networks and cable systems are structures. Who owns them? Why do they put the programs on that they do? What relationship does the policy environment have to all of that? And then to really be aware of why it is we see what we see --and what we need to do to change that."

One of the critical issues for a media literate person to understand is the ongoing conflict between commerce and culture, between the public interest and market interests.

Although television has played a major role in American life for almost half a century, and although the United States produces more and consumes more TV than people in any other country, we teach less about who is communicating, for what purpose, with what effect, on behalf of which individuals. Unlike other developed nations, the United States has not yet established media education as a priority for everyday schooling. Great Britain's David Buckingham and Canada's Barry Duncan describe media literacy in their countries as an integral part of all traditional disciplines -- language arts, social studies, science. "Even in math, we deal with polls, ratings and the like," says Duncan. "There's got to be a feeling that everybody is making a difference. That's the turning point, when everyone understands the term 'media literacy' and, as it is in Ontario, media literacy is taught on all levels. When that happens, it's part of the school culture and it's part of the educational system." Ontario requires media education in all schools for grades 7-12. For more than 20 years, Australia and Great Britain have also offered media education as part of schooling on every level.

The United States lags behind the rest of the world both in teaching about TV and using it for education. Whereas the U.S. government spends only one dollar per person a year on public television, Japan spends $17, Canada $32, and Great Britain $38 per person. Even in Asia and Latin America, as well as throughout Europe, some nations devote 12 or 15 percent or more of their broadcast schedule to educational programming for children, while U.S. commercial TV devotes only about one percent. Although the Children's Television Act of 1990 requires that every broadcast licensee "serve the educational and informational needs of children" with quality programming, the fact remains that some stations claim re-runs of The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Saved by the Bell fit the mandate.

There is a growing media literacy movement in the United States, but there are many obstacles, including our general attitude toward education itself, cuts in school budgets and what one observer calls "rampant technophobia". While U.S. teachers have made some laudable efforts, they are unconnected, of varying quality, with limited communication about priorities, goals, effective methods and available materials.

Here, except in New Mexico and North Carolina, and in selected cities and districts, schools are not required to provide media education. Most of our academic curricula take into account neither the problems nor the opportunities television presents for the education of students. The vast majority of U.S. teachers surveyed by the California-based Strategies for Media Literacy reported that they would like to teach about media more often, but were inhibited by lack of time and teaching materials.

Arguably the most urgent issue of our time is systemic education reform that effectively prepares young people for citizenship in the Information Age. An effort of this scope requires a seachange in public understanding of the functions and impacts, and educational potential, of the media. It's not a job that can be done easily, or alone; but it can be accomplished as a collaboration by teachers, administrators, family members, business leaders -- and media literate children -- who are similarly motivated and uniquely positioned to make a difference.

The following must happen if the promise for national literacy -- that includes and in large degree requires media literacy -- is to be realized:

• Federal support for model programs and multimedia materials for teacher education and in-class use by students
• State support for preservice training on college level, or technological enrichment, and staffing for maintenance
• District and school support for inservice training
• Community collaboration with industry leaders in media production and communications technologies, including challenge grants and matching programs
• Community demand for better media coverage of schools, reports on school alms, successes and achievements
• Selective and creative personal use of media within individual homes.

This last action means that all of us must learn more about the Internet and other new technologies, set an example for members of our families, communities and schools. We must encourage those around us to get the most out of every media moment as well as to produce their own messages in the media of their choice. If the promise of the new technologies for education is realized, the voices and messages of students, teachers, principals, families and other members of the education community must be an integral part of the new information environment.

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By Mary Megee

Mary Megee is director of the Media Education Laboratory of Rutgers University-Newark College of Arts and Sciences, and Executive Producer of the On Television Project, Ltd. Documentaries for PBS. This and other curriculum reports are available from the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Voice: (703) 860-0200; <http.//www/nassp.org>.