What is
the role of art education (or art educators) in teaching students to be media
literate digital citizens?
Art education should play a major role in teaching students to be media
literate digital citizens as it is an opportunity to teach visual literacy and
engage students in critical thinking. It also, from an art advocacy standpoint,
makes art education more valid in the eyes of the community. Visual literacy is
a skill that all students need to be equipped with living in a world bombarded
with thousands of images and messages every day.
After watching the documentary Killing
Us Softly, the power and manipulative tendency of advertising was
reinforced in my mind. Advertising and media are deciding what the “ideal”
looks like and then packaging it up and selling it to the world. The problem
here is not only that millions of people are being (possibly unknowingly)
manipulated, but also that one of the main targets is children. I was unaware
before watching Consuming Kids of the
laws that were once in place to protect children from advertising. I am shocked
that advertisers are not restricted in the messages they send children. For
this reason, it is important that visual literacy starts at a young age. If
children are being sold ideals through the media they consume, it is our job as
educators to teach students to see past the product being sold to them.
Kuan Chung and Kirby’s article was very interesting to me as I have
created a unit plan in the past teaching students about advertising. It is not
only relevant as a career in the arts, but also as a major component of visual
literacy. It would be very valuable for students to have the opportunity to
deconstruct the media and advertisements they encounter throughout daily life.
I think it would be very interesting to have students take a picture of every
advertisement that they see throughout the day, for one day. I would imagine
that we could learn something about the student by looking at their collection
of images and the advertisers attempting to influence them. We live in a day
and age where advertisers know more about the consumer than ever before, and it
is important for young people to understand this concept.
Another form of media students could deconstruct is entertainment media.
Students seek a variety of media types for entertainment in their free time,
ranging from gaming and television to the Internet. It would be interesting to
ask them to play a spin-off of hide and seek, looking for any references to
products or services in the entertainment they consume. Often we are not
consciously aware of the messages we are receiving as they have become so
ingrained in our daily lives.
Media literacy could expand to a conversation about news media and the
ways in which they intend to manipulate the public. News sources are known for
slanted views and the intention to influence the public. Students should
recognize that it is often difficult to see the whole picture through only one
lens. This relates to VTS as it teaches students to recognize the differing
perspectives of others.
I think that media literacy is an opportunity for integration with
curriculum from other classes as well. For example, it would be a great
opportunity to study history through imagery, architecture, advertisements and
any other historical artifact. Students could study civil war through the
prints that were created of battle scenes or the monuments erected in the name
of fallen soldiers. Art history is an opportunity to combine visual literacy,
the arts, and the context of world history. It is not only useful to a visual
learner, but to all students as we live in an image driven world.
A 21st century art education should without a doubt teach
students to be visually and media literate citizens. Our students need to know
how to deconstruct and interpret text that has crept into every moment of their
lives. It is also a platform for arts advocacy as it is an essential skills for
21st century learners.
Kate,
ReplyDeleteI really love the idea of your student taking a picture of all the advertisements that they see in one day. What would you have the students do with that data collection? I was thinking a stop motion project would be really cool or some kind of digital collage work that reconfigures the images into a culture jamming project. And what kind of media literacy lessons plans would you use to frame these art projects?
Thanks for sharing how you would put media literacy into action!
Kim
I like that you mention awareness, because I think that is a big, resonating theme among this topic. However, an awareness of what media/advertising is portraying requires students to be informed, which can't happen unless we teach them to look critically at imagery. I have never understood why there are teachers who are against this topic.
ReplyDeleteKate, you mention the manipulation that occurs between advertisers and their viewers, and one comment that specifically resonated with me (among about a million others) from "Killing Us Softly" was when Kilbourne summed up her documentary by saying, "the obsession with thinness, the tyranny of the ideal image of beauty, violence against women are all public health problems that affect us all. And public health problems can only be solved by changing the environment." For this reason, I completely agree with Sadara's comment about students taking a critical look at imagery, and I think we would probably all agree that that can and should include imagery that might be considered "controversial." It might be hard to bring these topics up with our students, but unless we do and facilitate open and honest discussions with them, we will never change the environment that Kilbourne has brought to light.
ReplyDelete