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 
8 
Angel. 
These obstacles also illustrate why close teacher contact with parents is critical to the success 
of media education. Models for the supplementation of media education in the home (e.g., Singer, 
Singer, & Zuckerman, 1981) are valuable, especially given the growing body of evidence that 
parental coviewing and mediation are particularly critical to the development of children’s viewing 
habits, impulse control, and the learning and modeling of TV content (e.g., Desmond, 1997; 
Desmond, Singer, & Singer, 1990; MacBeth, 1996; Masterman, 1997; Singer & Singer, 1983; 
Singer, Singer, & Rapaczynski, 1984).
 
Until there can be better accommodation between the two camps, and it can be seen, perhaps, that 
some inoculatory goals might be accommodated within a more student-centered approach toward 
appreciation and interpretation, a broader acceptance of media education may be very difficult to 
achieve. There needs to be give on both sides. Some inoculationists can see little or no value in 
television or film art, or if they do, they can advocate teaching about it only within the century-old 
tradition of teaching the pantheon and excluding contemporary film and television. As ideologically 
dug-in are some cultural studies media educators who find any notion of inoculatory goals to be at 
complete odds with the very theoretical and ideological underpinning of their pedagogy. One area to 
explore for accommodation harkens back to the foregoing section on the development of media 
education outside the U.S. as a means to combat the alleged cultural degradation brought about by 
the importation of U.S. media product. This trend demonstrates that, in reality, the inoculationist 
view is more pervasive worldwide than some cultural studies thinkers might wish to recognize, and 
that it is actually often present, if only subtextually, in their own work. Recognizing this, perhaps 
there is ground for some greater accommodation than has been seen to date.