Media Education in the Primary School

Carol Craggs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134922987
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Media & Communications Industry
• Index: Business

Essential guide to new subject area at primary level Appendix on National Curriculum Attainment Tests will help teachers in planning and keeping records

Chapter 1

Starting points

The actual learning depends on children experiencing the consequences of their own action rather than those of the teacher’s instruction.¹

Even though the reader may accept the rationale for primary schools developing media education, arguments alone are inadequate. We need to be aware of precisely what is entailed, what mistakes need to be avoided, which approaches are the most effective in the classroom and what kind of pedagogy is compatible with the philosophy of the subject area. In my experience of in-service work with teachers, in the wake of the initial requests for suggestions for classroom activities usually comes an interest in knowing something of the theoretical principles and historical background to media education. There is a need to see practice in the light of theory and theory in the light of practice. Therefore this chapter intends, firstly, to furnish the reader with a brief overview of the literature and research findings, secondly, to clarify the major underlying key issues for primary school media education today and, thirdly, to identify the criteria which contribute to a conducive pedagogy. All three issues need to be on the agenda for examination and discussion if we are to promote the evolution of sound classroom practice.

AN OUTLINE HISTORY: FROM DISCRIMINATION TO DEMYTHOLOGISING

Literature specifically advocating or describing primary school media education has, up until very recently, been scarce, but it has been produced in relation to the secondary curriculum since the 1930s. It is worth knowing just a little about the evolution of these educational approaches so that the pitfalls and misunderstandings of the past can be rejected.

1930–1970: popular culture versus school values

Half a century ago any official educational reference to the media was always disparaging and the influence of popular culture was only grudgingly acknowledged when it could no longer be ignored. This influence was regarded as ‘subtly corrupting the taste and habit of a rising generation’² and the directive to the teacher was to inoculate the pupils against its depravity. This message was echoed in 1959 in the Crowther Report³ when the teacher was urged to treat the media ‘with the discrimination that only education can give’.

An earlier embodiment of this thinking was proposed in 1933 by the Cambridge academics F.R.Leavis and D. Thompson in the book Culture and Environment,⁴ which was to influence the teaching of English for the next three decades. This book was a battlecry for established literary culture to be used as a sword to humiliate and suppress the popular cultural values transmitted by the media in the interests of ‘maintaining continuity’ of traditional standards, and teachers were recommended to label the media with a caveat. It could not be envisaged that popular and traditional literary tastes could coexist without value judgements and comparisons. Rather the pupil was to ‘be trained to discriminate and resist’ the mass media which offered ‘satisfaction at the lowest level’.⁵ Fundamentally it was this mode of thinking that prevailed in educational establishments until the early 1960s, although it was now acknowledged that media influences had educational implications.

The academic, if not the official, tide was beginning to turn with publications such as Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy in 1957,⁶ and in 1964 Hall and Whannel’s The Popular Arts⁷ helped to wash away some of the contempt for the culture of the mass media. The prevailing attitude was now becoming, not total resistance, but discrimination, and this attitude was discernible in the Newsom Report of 1963,⁸ which strongly advocated the study of film and television. The report, however, asserted that the values of the media were often at variance with those of the schools and suggested that ‘we need to train children to look critically and discriminate what is good and bad in what they see’ (§475). In this document there were undoubtedly signs of progress in the development of attitudes to media studies but the criteria were still firmly rooted in established literary values. These evaluative criteria hung on the subject like second-hand cumbersome and ill-fitting garments and so media education stagnated in spite of an urgent need for a more positive and realistic approach. In addition it was likely that there was some reticence amongst teachers to acknowledge that the popular tastes of children could have any value in the school curriculum.

1970–1990: a change of heart

There were few positive official responses in the following decade and the next constructive advice came in 1975 in the Bullock Report.⁹ It applauded the ‘serious study of the medium of television’ but despite such enlightened proclamations there was still the vestigial presence of the earlier discriminatory approach. From the 1980s onwards publications advocating media studies in the secondary sector were beginning to emanate from insightful educators and academics,¹⁰ but nothing more hopeful was published from official sources until 1983 when the Department of Education and Science produced the report Popular TV and Schoolchildren.¹¹ This document was refreshing in that it sought to clarify and describe attitudes and representations and, although it collected data on viewing patterns, it made no pretence at having produced empirical evidence of television’s effects. Although the tone of the report was occasionally judgemental, its final pronouncement was that ‘Schools…must review their responsibilities with reference to young people’s experience of television…specialist courses in media studies are not enough: all teachers should be involved in examining and discussing television programmes with young people’.

Before proceeding to consider the requirements of the National Curriculum, I feel that, although this is merely an overview of the history of media education, something must be said about the immense influence of Roland Barthes—the French semiologist and philosopher of culture, whose essays Mythologies were first published in 1957.¹² (An English translation was not available until 1972.) Barthes’ writing is trenchant and radical. The essays were first published in popular magazines and they accorded equal importance to a wide variety of cultural artefacts. He describes wrestling, soap powder advertisements, cookery advice in magazines, the Citroen car and so on in ways which invite us to reconsider their cultural significance. Each essay is an attempt to account in detail for how petit bourgeois culture is transformed into a universal nature. However, it is in the last essay—‘Myth Today’ — that Barthes explains that it is language itself which mystifies our perception and cloaks it in what he terms ‘myth’. Although this essay is by no means easy to understand, it is of great importance to all media teachers, because it explains how myth represses politics and changes history into nature. As Barthes said in the preface to Mythologies, history and nature are ‘confused at every turn …in the decorative display of what-goes-without-saying’ and he wanted to ‘explain these examples of the falsely obvious’. He considers that language, which is the expression of our culture, has already parcelled up meaning for us and he argues that it is our taken-for-granted acceptance of everyday culture which often blinds us to our real political and social position. Barthes wrote his Mythologies before the era of television as we know it, but when we reflect on how the smooth flow of this medium denies the complex selection processes which are involved in the manufacturing of its images, it is clear how television speaks in the language of myth. Media literacy requires us to rip away the taken-for-granted, to describe afresh what we see in the media and then analyse, confront, question and challenge it if necessary. The relevance of Barthes’ work cannot be dismissed as academic—it illuminated the way ahead.

The document English for ages 5–16 of the National Curriculum¹³ adopts the most enlightened approach to media education of any official document. The authors ‘considered media education largely as part of the exploration of popular culture, alongside more traditional literary texts’ and accepted that it ‘aims to develop systematically children’s critical and creative powers through analysis and production of media artefacts’. Media education as described in this document is in the mode of demythologising not discriminating.

RESEARCH: HELP OR HINDRANCE?

There has been a plethora of empirical studies which attempt to chart the effects that the media have on young minds. Clearly they must have an effect on the way children relate to their environment but the media are influential only in conjunction with other socialising agencies, so, whilst teachers cannot ignore empirical evidence of effects, a trust in statistics perhaps ought to be tempered by a pragmatic scepticism. Most of the established research in this area tends to focus on the adversely imitative and aggressive effects,¹⁴ and the results of these studies are necessarily inconclusive by virtue of the social impossibility of controlling the variables. It is this type of effects research which appears to have motivated the design, implementation and evaluation of many experimental media literacy courses in North America.¹⁵ Mostly these courses are highly prescriptive, take no genuine account of the cognitive or social development of the children and generally fail to acknowledge that the viewer/reader is an active participant in the creation of meaning.

Although this does not mean that all of the material in these courses is unhelpful, it does indicate that we need to look elsewhere for more constructive advice. Australian educators have a tradition of primary media education and several comprehensive schemes of work have been produced which may be useful for readers who are new to media education.¹⁶ Whilst it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss their research methodology at any great length, it is worth mentioning that the following notable Australian researchers, having rejected the ‘effects’ model, produced findings which are useful to those of us working in the classroom. Hodge and Tripp¹⁷ took a semiotic approach to reveal how young people derive meaning from television. They found that although children interpreted television programmes in a highly complex way it was quite different from the manner in which adults interpreted them. In this respect their findings support the earlier studies of the psychologist Noble.¹⁸ From this knowledge it follows that, as teachers, we must not presume, for example, that our interpretation of a cartoon resembles that of the child. Another Australian, Patricia Palmer, used symbolic interactionism to study children’s consumption of television in a familial environment.¹⁹ Like those of Hodge and Tripp, her data revealed that children participated actively whilst watching television and were not the slack-mouthed, glazed-eyed zombies which we have been warned that television creates. Rather she found that the medium is an important contributor to the learning process.

KEY ISSUES

It must be stated at the beginning that media education’s subject matter is to a great extent ephemeral and dependent on the current interests, social needs and cognitive abilities of the pupils. Therefore the content must be negotiable and cannot be planned far in advance. The subject matter does not lend itself to right and wrong answers but rather seeks to enable young people to learn to question the processes which shape media messages. There is no need to build up fixed bodies of knowledge because the focus is directed towards the promotion of critical practices and intellectual functioning. Consequently prescriptive schemes of work may be unhelpful. However, this process-orientated approach is not an excuse for being vague; media education is too important to be left in a nebulous Utopia. Whilst accepting that there will always be room for debate and development, I would suggest that there are four key areas of investigation which underpin what is taught in media education at primary level. These are:

1. Selection and construction
2. A sense of audience
3. Representations of reality
4. Narrative techniques.

These are to be regarded not as mutually exclusive but rather as interrelated and reciprocating areas of concern which help govern practice. The quintessential needs are, firstly, to identify what understanding the children bring to their interpretation of media products and, secondly, to provide experiences which enhance their critical abilities.

Selection and construction

Establishing that what is seen on television, read in newspapers or heard on the radio is essentially selected and constructed by media professionals rather than a faithful, impartial representation of the truth is at the pinnacle in the hierarchy of media education’s concerns. Deconstructing the economic, creative and technical processes through which media products pass en route to the consumer exposes the fact that decisions are unavoidably imbued with the ideologies and values of the creators. All too often the viewer’s or reader’s clarity of vision is blinkered by cultural and media conventions. We do not disagree with what is seen to be the norm because we perceive no conflict. For instance, we expect the managing director of a leading industry to be interviewed in a booklined study, whereas his striking labourers have to give their views on the situation against the roar of the traffic on the pavement outside the factory. The positioning of a microphone to pick up selected voices, the angle of the camera which gives prominence to chosen images, the juxtapositioning of particular television news items, and so on, are all conscious decisions which contribute to an overall viewpoint.

To question what determines the multitude of choices which are involved is the next logical step. Advertising often has an overriding influence on the selection of material for commercial television programmes and advertising revenue is an important factor in the viability of newspapers. A simple exploration of commercial and economic, political and legal influences on media decisions causes one to ask the questions: who controls the media and in whose interests are the selections made? As soon as these questions are posed, the apparent neutrality of mediation crumbles and inevitable partiality is seen as an integral component rather than as a sinister additive. Teaching about the notion of bias may be unhelpful if it presupposes the existence of impartiality, although it is important to recognise and distinguish between the integral partiality and that which is added as an extra and conscious ingredient.²⁰ If the concern of media neutrality is approached from how selectivity is built into media representations, children can explore for themselves how the dominant social values often innocently influence media choices and guide viewers and readers into accepting what are sometimes described as ‘preferred meanings’.²¹

The very existence of a caption for a newspaper photograph frequently proves that the image is not self-sufficient in communicating the photographer’s message, so exercises which strip words from pictures or which attempt to create commentary for ambiguous or ‘neutral’ images reveal that the ‘text directs the reader through the signifieds of the image, causing him to avoid some and receive others’.²² By analysing the way meaning enters an image and through exploring how these meanings are circulated and whose viewpoint they represent, the children can understand how any media text will inevitably be the product of value judgements. Therefore it is helpful if these texts are read actively in the knowledge of the editing techniques and conventions of the transmitting medium.

A sense of audience

To imagine that the messages encoded in media texts are imparted to an audience which simply and uniformly absorbs them is to ignore both the interaction of the communication processes and audience diversity. The notion that the same message can be received with a variety of results is as old as the Biblical parable of the sower and the seed.²³ Like all communication it is a two-way transaction: it consists of what the medium is representing to the child and how her experience actively operates on the material to make sense of it.

Stuart Hall²⁴ suggests that there are ‘three hypothetical positions’ from which to decode. The first of these is an unquestioning acceptance of the text, which he calls ‘the dominant-hegemonic position’ and this conveys the dominant values of society. Secondly he suggests that there is ‘the negotiated position’, which accepts as legitimate the basic established definitions but recognises that there are exceptions to the general rules. Thirdly he proposes that there is ‘the oppositional code’ in which the receiver ‘detotalises the message in the preferred code in order to retotalise the message within some alternative framework of reference’. In this code the reader may interpret ‘national interest’ as ‘class interest’. Hall is arguing that no television programme’s meaning is entirely closed, but which of the codes the viewer adopts depends on her own framework of knowledge and the conditions of her existence.

Placing the child in the position of the media producer can enable her to understand how she is positioned as a viewer. Maybe she is being addressed as a member of a family, as a child, as a member of the white middle-class society, as an ethnic minority, as a female, and so on. Categorising an audience in this way makes it apparent that some social groups are rarely addressed by the media—groups such as the very old, the mentally disabled, members of certain religious or political persuasions, and so on. This realisation, together with an understanding of scheduling policy, will demonstrate that television’s obsession with audience research and rating figures is ultimately concerned with economic factors rather than the viewers’ intrinsic pleasures and opinions. If a video camera is available it is possible for upper junior pupils to create a television magazine programme for a group of infants or maybe for some elderly people they know. The children will need to consider: the attention span of their audience, their current interests, where and when they will be watching and with whom, whether advertising would support the programme, how the viewers may respond, and so on. Through using media technology children can develop their awareness of how a sense of audience is inscribed within the text and how the producers objectify their audience by presenting it with a very particular space to occupy.

Representations of reality

Because television selects its sto...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Starting points
• Chapter 2: Teaching visual literacy
• Chapter 3: Learning about news
• Chapter 4: Some approaches to teaching about advertising
• Chapter 5: Representations of reality
• Chapter 6: Media institutions
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Primary media education and the National Curriculum
• Notes
• Bibliography