Obstacles to the DeveloPm~t of Media Education in the United States

Obstacles to the Development of Media Education in the United States, by Robert Kubey, PhD 
 
First published in the 
Journal of Communication 
Winter, 1998 / Vol. 48, #1 
2 
Media Literacy was convened by the Aspen Institute. It brought 25 educators and activists together 
to establish a “definition, vision, and framework for developing media literacy programs” in the U.S. 
(Aufderheide, 1993). U.S. media education leaders have recently met with President Clinton and 
Vice President Gore. The fact that the term 
media literacy 
is now increasingly recognized by 
citizens and political leaders marks a substantive advance in the U.S. Still, most calls for formal 
media literacy training in the United States have gone unheeded, often for decades (see Anderson, 
1983; Ford Foundation, 1975; Lewis, 1948; Munsterberg, 1916; UNESCO, 1964). 
If a simple criterion measure of the state of media education development is the average number of 
hours of media education per student, then there is little doubt that the U.S. lags well behind other 
English-speaking countries. Still, an accurate comparative estimate is extremely difficult, if not 
impossible. As educators know, mandate and delivery are not one and the same. 
Isolated Effort and Organization: Geography Matters 
In smaller countries (e.g., Israel and Scotland) it is relatively easy for many interested parties in 
media education to meet regularly. A great percentage of these countries’ media teachers can arrive 
at a central site within 2 to 3 hours. In these countries, and in physically larger countries such as 
Canada and Australia, strong local, provincial, and state efforts were built from substantial 
grassroots organizing by teachers, often in close contact with administrators and academics. 
Teachers feel closely connected to the leadership of these provincial movements, because teachers 
are 
the leaders in Western Australia and Ontario. There has also been more collegiality and a more 
even playing field between teachers and university scholars than typically occurs in the U.S. Having 
50 states spread across 3.6 million square miles, all with different educational authorities, and each 
with scores of local school boards, has led to greater isolation of media educators in the U.S. than 
has been the case in smaller countries or in those with fewer provinces or states. Unlike other 
English-speaking countries, the leading media literacy advocacy groups in the U.S-- the National 
Telemedia Council, the Center for Media Literacy, and the Center for Media Education-- are 
“outside the educational ‘establishment” (Considine, 1990, p. 29). U.S. media educators are prone to 
saying that they have to “reinvent the wheel.” On a more hopeful note, however, U.S. teachers now 
make contact with such organizations much earlier in their careers.
Media education has yet to obtain popular support. Far more parents, for example, will say that they 
want their children to be computer literate than will say they want their children to be media literate. 
Parents believe that computer expertise can equal a leg up in the job market. Such workplace 
concerns have long shaped American education (Cremin, 1988). Curiously though, at the very 
highest levels of education-- at elite universities, for example-- the received wisdom is that 
sophistication in the arts, popular culture, and the media is very important, and constitute a sort of 
“cultural capital” (Bourdieu, 1984). At the middle and lower levels of the social structure, education 
in the arts and media are frills that consume time and money-- add-ons that can only come after the 
necessary subject areas are covered.