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 
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so you’d look a little better on TV” (Withrow, personal communication, March 3, 1993). In time, 
contracts were canceled and lawsuits ensued. The BU project officially ended on July 31, 1981, just 
6 months after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration and after his campaign to abolish the Department of 
Education (see Brown, 1991; Piette & Giroux, 1997, for histories of these and other projects).
Discussions with U.S. education schools reveal that some believe that media education need only 
involve experience threading a 16mm projector, running a VCR, and perhaps having students 
complete an assignment where they produce a multimedia presentation. There remains little 
recognition that language arts instruction in such standard topics as foreshadowing, representation, 
character development, and symbolism-- or that the means of information dissemination in our 
society-- might extend beyond print. The U.S. educational establishment refuses to recognize this 
fact, or is mystified as to how to retool and retrain in order to educate students and future citizens for 
the new realities of communication. By contrast, in the Australian language arts curriculum, teachers 
are 
required 
to teach nonprint as well as print media. 
In and around London and Glasgow, there are buildings that house large rooms completely 
dedicated to media education materials. These provide space for interested media teachers to 
assemble after school, to hold seminars and workshops, preview materials, and simply find support, 
encouragement, and instruction from one another, and from master teachers. The funding comes 
from the local education authority. According to the teachers, these centers have been among the 
most crucial factors in the development of media education in their countries. 
By contrast, U.S. teachers often arrange and pay for their own media training through private 
workshops. Many eager would-be media literacy teachers in the U.S. are young, untenured, and lack 
the power to make significant changes (Kubey, 1991). Some teachers fear that engaging in media 
education could tag them as being political (B. Duncan, personal communication, June 26, 1992). 
It’s telling, too, that, to date, media education in the U.S. has advanced much further in private and 
parochial schools than in public schools. Private schools do not need to look over their shoulder at 
local and governmental authorities if they use media education as a way to teach values, or engage 
in educational innovation or experimentation. The public school teacher often needs to be much 
more vigilant. 
With few states or local school districts having mandated a need for media education, and with most 
education schools turning out teachers no better equipped to do media education than was the case 
20 years ago, the U.S. situation is one with no, or precious little, formal training. 
More pressing needs are often cited. First, students must be able to read and write, an argument not 
easily rebutted. One can legitimately argue that media teachers around the world regularly report 
that nontraditional students often thrive in media education courses, and that reading and writing are 
necessarily a critical part of their video or radio productions. However, in the current U.S. 
educational climate this is an uphill battle. Another problem is that teachers wonder how just one 
more thing is to be added to an already burgeoning curriculum. Curricular additions over the past 15 
years include drug education, AIDS prevention, anti-bullying and peer support programs, and 
computers. It is within this very crowded environment, with teachers being largely unsupported and 
overburdened, that media education innovations must compete. 
Teacher attitude can be particularly critical when adopting a student-centered approach, something 
not easily done by many traditional teachers. Perhaps the most common mistake that inexperienced 

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