A Broader Literacy

I have been guilty of the attitude that David Buckingham is detailing in Chapter One of Media Education. He says, "All these media are equally worthy of study, and there is no logical reason why they should be considered separately. The claim that we should study 'literature' in isolation from other kinds of printed texts, or films in isolation from other kinds of moving image media, clearly reflects broader social judgments about the value of the different forms..." (4). I defined my desire to be a teacher by wanting to teach literature. And what I meant was the classic books that I love to read. Only in the latter half of my career at CSUN have I realized that literacy in today's world means so much more than classic books, it means contemporary works as well as other media. I agree with Buckingham that educators need to stop trying to moralize about the media because as he says, they "are at least redundant, if not positively counter-productive (33). Educators used to be upset about paperback books. They assumed that if it is a cheap mass market book it must be sleazy. Now paperbacks are ubiquitous and are published in all types of titles, from classic books, historical and philosophical books, to contemporary books. It seems funny to us that paperbacks were considered inappropriate reading material for children. This mindset is again enacted in the idea of different types of media being appropriate, and beneficial, to students. Intertextuality and transmediation help foster creativity and build critical thinking skills. By broadening the minds of our students, they will be able to use the analytical skills they have developed to decide if the input they are receiving is of value or not. Teachers need to not hinder this process, after all, this is the purpose of teaching. Technologies and other types of media are not going to go away. It is time for educators to embrace them and use them to teach kids a deeper, more practical kind of literacy. Buckingham says, "For literacy clearly involves both reading and writing; and so media literacy must necessarily entail both the interpretation and the production of media" (49). This is hard for me to accept, but ultimately I want to be an effective teacher, and to do that I have to embrace what is going on in our world and form my students to be literate in all kinds of ways so they can be a participating member of society.