The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), along with education technology associations ISTE, CoSN, SIIA, and SETDA, have been pushing for the passage of HR 2449 and S 1996, the Achievement Through Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) Acts.

These bills, if enacted, would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 by renaming Title II part D, Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT), to ATTAIN as part of No Child Left Behind reauthorization until FY2013. So essentially they would rewrite the technology education portions of the NCLB.

The bills would require states to create content and assessment standards to ensure that students are “technology literate” upon finishing grade 8. States would be allowed to include technology literacy testing into existing performance assessments, or to conduct them through other valid and reliable means. Technology literacy testing would not be used to measure adequate yearly progress (AYP) under Title I of ESEA, however.

The bills also require states to use the bulk of their ATTAIN Act (ESEA part D) funding allotment for two new “subgrant programs” for local educational agencies (LEAs), devoting

• 60% for formula subgrants to improve teaching and learning through technology (up from 50% under EETT), and
• 40% for competitive subgrants for systemic school redesign through technology integration (up from 25% under EETT, and competitive subgrants in EETT were unrestricted to school/district school reform)

The bills require LEAs to

• include a new or updated local long-range strategic educational technology plan in their applications,
• use a specified percentage of each subgrant for teacher training, and
• use each subgrant to acquire and apply technology to identify individual student learning needs and support individualized learning.

The bills allow LEAs that receive funds for both programs to use all the funds for systemic school redesign through technology integration program activities.The bills direct the Secretary of Education to:

• conduct an annual national study and report on the extent to which student technology literacy is attained by grade eight and publish the results of the study each year, and
• implement, and update every five years, a National Education Technology Plan.

Finally, the bills require the Secretary to award a competitive grant to an education technology research entity, or a partnership comprising such an entity and one or more educational, nonprofit, or research entities, to establish a National Center for Achievement Through Technology that will identify and disseminate promising practices and exemplary programs that effectively use educational technologies.

Many support these piece of legislation because they place greater emphasis on the professional development and needy schools and school districts than EETT has done. They are also seen to increase the pressure on states to develop assessments to measure technology literacy — each state would have its own tests (some already do), so it wouldn’t be a centralized form of measurement.

Beyond the fact that this program would develop technology literacy without a deeper media literacy that increases critical thinking, I am still unclear on two things.

One: how would this program affect digital divides among schools? The advocates of these bills (see above) have argued that they put greater emphasis on schools in need of improvement. This means competitive subgrants would favor schools with a large percentage of students not proficient in English and students with disabilities, and formula subgrants would favor schools with students who are least proficient in technology literacy. How does this translate into school district income levels and other disadvantages?
Two: how would this be enforced? If testing would not be reflected on a school’s AYP (which is good thing), through what other measures would a school be impelled to meet testing criteria?

At first glance, this generally seems like a good effort. But I remain skeptical until further notice. Partially because P21 is also partnering with education departments at the state level. It seems convenient to push for the enactment of federal legislation on technology literacy programs that are to be administered by state ed departments, and then join with those same state ed departments in the management of state technology education programs.  The whole thing just seems like too few players in too large of a game.

It should be noted that while researching this issue, I haven’t found any sources addressing the ATTAIN Acts other than the advocates mentioned above, or the Congressional sponsors of the bills (who assumably construct their understanding on these issues through information provided by the advocates mentioned above).

Also should be noted that I am making an implied connection between P21 and the rest of these organizations on lobbying these bills. P21 itself hasn’t spoken out directly on these bills, but the five organizations work together regularly on other issues, and P21 has told me that they also push for federal legislation (without telling me the specific bills).

Anyway, investigation is ongoing, more on this later.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t posted in the last month, it’s because I’ve been finishing my thesis. I just submitted my final draft to my committee. I defend on March 24.

Nothing to do? Want to read about media literacy? Read my final draft here. Comments are welcome! Don’t be shy.

I’ll get back to posting very soon.

I recently learned about the Progressive States Network. I hear their general belief is that state policymakers often have little experience with issue areas they are working on, so corporate lobbyists can often come in and serve as a veritable “brain,” pushing legislators to implement policies that favor big business. PSN was created to counteract the corporate voice and create policy solutions that better serve the public interest.

I mentioned the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) in my last posting. Today, I want to go into greater detail about the group’s work — and point to a place where we desperately need some serious PSN help. Like, right now.

P21, founded in 2002, calls itself “the leading advocacy organization focused on infusing 21st century skills into education.” It is the only group today that regularly lobbies state legislators to make changes in curriculum and assessment to address “21st century skills” development. This expression, “21st century skills,” summarizes the group’s general message — and, in itself, it sounds pretty admirable. Indeed, students do need to develop their skills to cope in the modern world, and most people would agree on the general principle that education in the United States today remains quite backward and resistant to change. P21’s push to promote technology and media literacy, in this context, feels like a breath of fresh air.

But there are two issues to consider here. First, while P21 supports the development of young people’s technology skills for success in their career, as I discuss below, it neglects to nurture their critical thinking about the world in which they live. Second, and more important, suspicions understandably arise when large media and technology companies begin to push for the integration of technology (i.e., their products) into classroom education.

P21 has targeted several different areas within education. In its first two years of existence, it developed its “six key elements of 21st century learning,” published in the 2003 report Learning for the 21st Century. At the time, it collaborated with numerous, mostly business-friendly information, media, and technology organizations, such as the Alliance for a Media Literate America, the Center for Media Literacy, the Aspen Institute (which held a well-known media literacy conference in 1992), the Cato Institute, and others. It defined as its main goal the promotion of education with an emphasis on using modern communication and technology tools to aid learning. In the 2003 report, P12 placed itself in an amicable, non-threatening position, supporting the use of core subjects (i.e. not aiming to reform existing educational structures drastically), applauding the passage of No Child Left Behind as an “excellent start,” and assuring educators that its methods do not introduce additional burdens on an already tightly-packed curriculum. The group was here to help.

In 2005, P21 published its second major report, introducing a new focus on assessment. In Assessment of 21st Century Skills, P21 reviewed existing assessments in five issue areas that it created (global awareness; civic literacy; financial, economic, and business literacy; learning skills; and ICT literacy); it promotes the development of more rigorous assessment tools in these five areas; and it lists key organizations that work on issues relating to the five areas.

The important point here is that P21 defines these issue areas in a specific way, and critical media literacy doesn’t actually belong within any of its five categories. You’d think it would belong in ICT literacy — but that’s more focused on technological education. Then you’d think it may belong in learning skills — but that’s more about communicating and problem solving. And the other three topics are way off. So critical media literacy kind of gets lost in the shuffle, and awareness about the structures of media system that is the conduit of information delivery, conveniently, doesn’t get mentioned in any of these issue areas. Turns out P21 doesn’t think this kind of knowledge is part of necessary 21st century skills, and doesn’t believe it needs to be assessed. (Wonder why?)

In the 2005 report, P21 states its long-term goal: “Challenge every state to adopt a system that assesses the full range of 21st century skills and 21st century content knowledge by 2010″ (p. 11).

The group is very much on track.

Today, six states have “joined” the Partnership by adopting its curriculum and assessment materials and education policy recommendations. In chronological order of membership, these states are:

1. North Carolina
2. West Virginia
3. Wisconsin
4. Massachusetts
5. South Dakota
6. Maine

Ken Kay, P21 president, says he expects to have as much as five more state partners by this summer.

Today, education departments in some of these states have incorporated P21 rhetoric to a degree that is almost eerie. In 2007, for instance, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and West Virginia all patted their own backs for receiving the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ Practice of the Year award — when only those three states were partnering with P21!… And let’s not forget about North Carolina Governor Mike Easley’s Center for 21st Century Skills, located in the North Carolina Business Committee for Education. Yikes.

Progressive counter-voices, help us!

Did you know that Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon all support media literacy education? It’s true! The public interest community has been portraying them as big bad wolves, but really they are just a bunch of nice, friendly guys and gals who want the best for you, your family, and society as a whole.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself:

AT&T’s Knowledge Network: http://www.kn.att.com/wired/21stcent/media.html

Verizon’s Thinkfinity: http://www.marcopolo-education.org/about/about_index.aspx

The Comcast Literacy Fund: http://www.comcast.com/corporate/about/inthecommunity/literacy/literacyfund.html

In fact, these and numerous other large media organizations have joined together as members of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, an advocacy organization that promotes media literacy education by lobbying departments of education in a number of states around the country (currently ME, MA, NC, SD, WV, and WI).

Impressed? Don’t be. These are marketing tactics. Neither the Partnership’s, nor the three companies’ own initiatives come close to discussing the importance of media ownership and the structure of the media system in defining the boundaries for media content — instead they keep kids busy with using each company’s products. Check out all the cool things each Partnership member can do to improve classroom technology! The possibilities are endless, and meanwhile your children, too, can become indoctrinated into the consumer mindset at an early age.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is no flimsy initiative, either. As of today, it is the only group promoting media literacy education that is approaching educational administrators on the state level to push for policy and curricular change. “Grassroots” media literacy advocates have not been able to do this kind of lobbying of their own so far. This gives a major advantage to corporate media to impact the face of media literacy education while it is still in its infancy in the United States.

This is what happens when the meaning of a concept like media literacy is left unclear. What is media literacy? Is it only about discussing media content and learning to use computers and software? Or is it also about learning to think critically about the source and the conduits of the information we receive as citizens and independent thinkers? We are still in disagreement. Meanwhile, this slippery definition leaves all the more room for Big Media to create its own story.

The National Communication Association (NCA), a Washington, DC non-profit organization, created the most prominent national standards on media literacy in the communications field.

NCA’s first set of national learning standards on language arts and media literacy were developed in 1998 with the help of educators, academics, and media literacy advocates. Standards on media literacy within this document are numbered 16-19, and among them, standards 18 and 19 discuss the political economy of communications. Standard 18 states, “[m]edia literate communicators demonstrate knowledge and understanding that media content is produced within social and cultural contexts.” So “media communicators

- identify the production contexts of media content and products.
- identify the social and cultural constraints on the production of media.
- identify the social and cultural agencies that regulate media content and products.
- evaluate the ideas and aesthetics in media content and products.
- demonstrate how media content and products are produced within social and
cultural contexts.
- demonstrate how social and cultural regulations affect media content and products.
- are motivated to examine the relationships among media content and products and
the larger social and cultural contexts of their production.”

Standard 19 says, “[m]edia literate communicators demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the commercial nature of media.” It states, “media literate communicators

- explain how media organizations operate.
- identify the social and cultural agencies that regulate media organizations.
- compare media organizations to other social and cultural organizations.
- demonstrate the relationships between media organizations and media distribution
practices.
- are motivated to analyze the historical and current ways in which media organizations
operate in relationship to democratic processes.”

These standards have a clear political economic component. They promote education about media organizations, telecommunications regulations, and even the history of how those media organizations developed.

Unfortunately, these standards were poorly promoted from the very beginning. NCA mailed out a copy of the standards to state boards of education and local school districts after their publication in 1998, but has not pushed for their adoption since that time.

NCA recently updated its standards in collaboration with The College Board — but these new standards no longer emphasize the importance of media structures. Neither of the three major learning standards on media literacy discussed in the document (”Understanding the Nature of Media,” “Understanding, Interpreting, Analyzing, and Evaluating Media Communication,” and “Composing and Producing Media Communication”) talk about issues of media ownership or the political/business side of creating media messages. I spoke with a few individuals who participated in the creation of these new standards, and they are unsure why the structural focus has been dropped.

[Citations: National Communication Association, K-12 Speaking, Listening, and Media Literacy: Standards and Competency Statements (Washington, DC: National Communication Association, 1998); The College Board, College Board Standards for College Success: English Language Arts (New York: The College Board, 2006).]

National Standards for Civics and Government
The Center for Civic Education (CCE) is a nonprofit organization funded in part by the federal government. The group published its National Standards for Civics and Government in 1994. The standards have not been updated since that time; according to a person I spoke with at CCE, a presidential administration that favors national standards would have to give its mandate to the organization to overhaul the existing standards.

These standards define what students should know and be able to do at the completion of grades 4, 8, and 12 (so CCE splits standards into three categories, designed for the grade levels of K-4, 5-8, and 9-12). At every grade level, the overriding themes of these standards are constitutional values, civil rights and liberties, and freedom of expression within American democracy.

On the K-4 level, the standards describe the various texts that set the stage for liberal ideology in the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance, and so on. The three branches of government -executive, legislative, judicial- as well as the responsibilities of state and local goverments are explained. Finally, discussions begin on what it means to be a citizen within the United States (public representation, voting to elect leaders, etc). Communications/media are not specifically mentioned in any significant way.

In grades 5-8, students are to continue to learn about the meaning of civic life. The difference between a limited (constitutional - democratic; legal limits on political power) and an unlimited (totalitarian or authoritarian - power is within the hands of a small group, with no effective limits to power) government is explained, as are the purposes of a constitution. By the end of 8th grade, students are also expected to know about how media and communications interact with politics:

Grades 5-8, III. F. 3. Political communication. Students should be able to evaluate, take, and defend positions on the influence of the media on American political life.

To achieve this standard, students should be able to

• explain the importance of freedom of the press to informed participation in the political system [...]
• evaluate the influence of television, radio, the press, newsletters, and emerging means of electronic communication on American politics
• explain how Congress, the president, the Supreme Court, and state and local public officials use the media to communicate with the citizenry
• explain how citizens can evaluate information and arguments received from various sources so that they can make reasonable choices on public issues and among candidates for political office
• evaluate opportunities the media provide for individuals to monitor actions of their government, e.g., televised broadcasts of proceedings of governmental agencies, such as Congress and the courts, press conferences held by public officials
• evaluate opportunities the media provide for individuals to communicate their concerns and positions on current issues, e.g., letters to the editor, talk shows, “op-ed pages,” public opinion polls

This is an excellent way to begin discussing the relationship between media and politics. It talks about the importance of a freedom of the press, and lays out how media coverage can affect politics and public participation.

If you look again, however, a few key issues are not mentioned. What does it mean to have press freedom, and how does that relate to media ownership? How does the government influence press freedom and the means to achieve freedom of public expression (i.e. telecommunications policies, laws)? Where do business and economics fit in with freedom of the press and political influence over freedom of expression? These are not current but timeless issues, just as much as any other topic discussed in the standards.

Moving onto grades 9-12, we run into a similar problem. Definitions of civic life and the roles of government continue, expanding on the topics from grades 5-8. The standards again talk about how the media affect politics and public opinion, but not how politics and policy can affect the media:

Grades 9-12, III. E. 3. Political communication: television, radio, the press, and political persuasion. Students should be able to evaluate, take, and defend positions on the influence of the media on American political life. To achieve this standard, students should be able to

• explain the meaning and importance of freedom of the press
• evaluate the role of television, radio, the press, newsletters, and emerging means of communication in American politics
• compare and contrast various forms of political persuasion and discuss the extent to which traditional forms have been replaced by electronic media [...]
• explain how Congress, the president, and state and local public officials use the media to communicate with the citizenry
• evaluate historical and contemporary political communication using such criteria as logical validity, factual accuracy, emotional appeal, distorted evidence, appeals to bias or prejudice, e.g.,
  • speeches such as Lincoln’s “House Divided,” Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?”, Chief Joseph’s “I Shall Fight No More Forever,” Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms,” Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream”
  • government wartime information programs, campaign advertisements
  • political cartoons

Once again, these are quite extensive learning standards. Refreshingly extensive, perhaps, for a single field. (Remember: they are voluntary, not mandatory - especially for social studies, which is not even tested on the national level.) They do not, however, require students to know some important issues relating to communications and media. While they point out the existence of persuasion in media programming, they don’t discuss how policymakers can influence media through ownership rules, for instance, and how the ‘business’ of telecommunications can impact news reporting and entertainment media.

When these standards were written, the political economy of communications was just beginning to blossom as an academic field and had not yet become a widely popular notion within the grassroots. This is reflected in the lack of participation of representatives from the communications field (both academic and grassroots) in the development of these learning standards.

Today, however, reports about media policy and developments in the telecom market are regularly making mainstream news - yet these topics are still missing from an otherwise quite comprehensive set of national learning standards in social studies. While I don’t doubt that it would be very difficult, now might be a good time for communications and education to start conversing.

As a not-so-side note, the Center for Civic Education has at least one office in every state in the U.S., and regularly interacts with state educational administrators to impact curriculum and instruction at the state level.

[Citation: Center for Civic Education, National Standards for Civics and Government (Calabasas, CA: Center for Civic Education, 1994).]

To find out how much students in public schools are expected to know about media issues, it’s important to look at curricular standards in education. For the next several posts, I will weed through a number of national learning standards to find out whether topics like media structures, media ownership, media policy, etc. are defined as subjects to be taught in schools. This task is a bit tricky, because learning standards exist in countless subject areas, created by organizations that are either federally funded or are working outside of federal mandate.

Briefly, national content standards are important because they set the baseline for curriculum within each subject area in education. State departments of education look to national standards (among other sources) when they define curriculum for their state. Then, local school districts must meet or exceed content standards set at the state level. So states have the strongest role in setting curriculum, but they take ideas from frameworks set on the national level.

As most of us know, K-12 public school curriculum is pretty structured, divided into categories like English/language arts, science, social studies, geography, history, mathematics, physical education, and so on. Curriculum professionals today generally aim to fit curriculum within these subject areas. Since media education is currently not considered a separate subject area of its own, we can either look at how media literacy advocates have tried to define content standards for media literacy, or we can look at how (if) media literacy has been included within content standards for existing subject areas.

Curriculum professionals (this is a term I use often to describe those employees of school boards of education who define curriculum for a state or school district) are generally more familiar with standards for existing subjects. In Illinois, more example, social studies curriculum was defined with the help of the National Standards for World History, the National Standards for United States History, the National Geography Standards, the National Standards for Civics and Government. Each of these standards were set by organizations who work within these particular subject areas.

For example, the National Standards for Civics and Government was defined by the Center for Civic Education, a group funded by the US Department of Education. CCE created the standards in 1994, and continuously pushes for their adoption in state departments of education around the country to this day.

Since curriculum professionals use a certain group of standards more frequently, we’ll take a look at those standards first, and then move onto how media literacy has been defined within academic circles.

Generally, media literacy has been taught within English/language arts and social studies, as well as some technical/career education and health classes. For now, I’ll look closer only at English and social studies. If you think about it, including media studies within English and social studies makes sense — in English, students get to analyze media texts of various formats. In social studies, students can learn about issues of freedom of expression within historical contexts, for example.

Some popular standards that relate to media literacy are::

• Standards by the National Council for the Teachers of English (for English language arts)
  • originally funded by the federal government, until disagreements on standards ceased funding
• Standards by the Center for Civic Education (for civics and government)
  • is and has always been federally funded
• Standards by the National Council for the Social Studies (for broader social studies)
  • not federally funded (the government only requires standards for civics, not social studies more broadly)

Next we’ll take a look at each standard individually.

The U.S. education system is quite decentralized, meaning that the federal government has consistently stayed away from direct involvement in regulating education. At least until the 1990s and the standards movement.

It all began with the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk…

At the time, public dissatisfaction with the U.S. education system (or what was deemed as such) led the Department of Education to conduct a thorough study of all aspects of education, including how much time was spent on particular subjects, how much students seemed to be challenged by course and textbook content, and how much local and state curriculum across the country reflected some general foci in each subject area. The results of the study were overall very negative, placing the effectiveness of the U.S. education system far below that of many other nations. The study was conducted under the oversight of then president Ronald Reagan, and its recommendations came under serious scrutiny by some members of the public, such as scholars David Berliner and Bruce Biddle. In their book The Manufactured Crisis, they disapprove of the blame the study placed on the ineffectiveness of teachers and other circumstantial issues, rather than focusing on the serious inequalities among school districts around the country and the crucial importance of increased federal funding.

Nevertheless, there was general agreement on the need for fundamental changes to the education system, and the publication of A Nation at Risk gradually led to a movement to establish national learning standards for the country. In 1989, Pres. George H. W. Bush and state governors around the country agreed to create national goals for student achievement and standards for competency in a number of subject matters at the completion of grades four, eight, and twelve.

The standards were designed to be not mandatory but voluntary, so as not to take too much power away from state and local educational institutions. They were also deemed national as opposed to federal standards to keep direct oversight of curriculum and assessment outside of the federal government and in the hands of non-state actors.

Still, the federal government did keep some connections between itself and the development of these standards. The Department of Education chose and funded certain nonprofit subject matter organizations to develop standards in the fields of mathematics, English, science, history, geography, foreign languages, the arts, and civics. Since standards for some other subject areas (such as, say, communications and media literacy, or even social studies) were not federally required, numerous other groups have since created standards within their own respective fields.

How does all of this relate to media literacy, you ask?

Despite decades of support within the academic community for media literacy education of some kind, the topic is still not an established portion of curriculum within the U.S. education system. “Media” can relate to many different subject areas within education, so to find national requirements for education about media, we have to look within a number of different national learning standards and look for ways that each of them relate media to their own topic areas. (A brief note, to be discussed later in greater detail: in contrast to the U.S., the U.K. education system was completely revamped recently to include education about ICT, or information and communication technology, in every portion of its national curriculum, with the exception of physical education.)

Over the course of the next several postings, we’ll look through a number of national content standards, attempting in each of them to find some relation to media literacy. Then, it’s off to looking at state learning standards. Then, we’ll do other things.

This blog has been started to document the lack of education in U.S. public schools about media, or what has often been labeled “media literacy.” But more specifically, it aims to discuss how issues like media ownership, telecom policy, and the influence of business on media have been largely disregarded topics of discussion within public schools across the country.

More than anything, this is place for me to collect information. Although the author is currently writing a thesis and will continue onto writing a dissertation on this topic, I claim to be no expert on the subject. At least for the time being (I hope). All I have to work with at the moment is some experience with the major players of the media reform community in Washington, a nine-month stint at a Congressional office on the Hill, and a good amount of research and reading on the topics of communications, media reform, and media education. I can only hope that this ‘blog’ will inform myself and others on existing curriculum and learning standards on the subject of media literacy more broadly, and media policy/political economy more specifically.

I hear there is some disagreement within “the field” on whether media literacy as a concept and a subject matter within education should include issues addressing the source of media content, specifically media policy, history, and economics. Perhaps for this reason, or simply due to a difference in focus, many scholars of media literacy have left out a discussion on where media content originates, talking instead about how students can learn to interpret what they see and hear around them. Issues of advertising, persuasion, race/gender/class relations arise in these contexts. Academics advise that students should be taught to discriminate between media messages that aim to sell, and media messages that aim to educate. Many have called this “critical thinking,” or alternatively, “critical viewing skills.”

While I aim not to condense this blog into a tight box within which it cannot breathe and grow, at this point I think I can safely say that this blog will avoid closely addressing these discussions for the most part, at least as its main focal point. Instead, I will approach the study of education on the political economy angle. I do not mean to say that other aspects of the study of media literacy education are not equally valid. That would be an outrageous and absurd claim. I find myself confused and emotionally exhausted on a daily basis from what I see and hear in the media, both in news and entertainment. I think “media multitasking” is pushing and pulling us in endless directions all at once, both in positive and negative ways, if we allow it. So I will be the first to acknowledge that talking to students about critically reading the media is immensely important.

However, I wholeheartedly believe that without knowing, at least a little bit, about why our media system exposes us to certain kinds of programming and not others, students, and the public in general, cannot truly understand and evaluate media content.

Most people have no idea that decisions in Congress, the FCC, the federal government, state governments, the courts, and closed meetings between industry lobbyists and political decision-makers have an incredible, fundamental influence over what kind of information arrives at each person’s doorstep in the morning, in people’s television sets on every channel, on each portion of the radio dial, and, increasingly, throughout the Internet.

WordPress owns and operates my blog. What does that mean? I can write the blog, but it’s not really mine. I’d have to run a server, owned by another company who I pay a monthly fee to, and publish my work through another blogging software I also do not own. Unless I stick with old fashioned HTML or whatever programming (boy I’m behind on that stuff), but I’d still be working within the boundaries of my Mac and all other components of Internet lingo, a framework created - not by me. The lines of ownership begin to blur endlessly.

I am not aiming to go into some overly theoretical, Marxist critique of communication technologies and new media. I am not about to take all modern media forms for granted and say that technological evolution is wrong, destructive. Actually, its development and existence and myriad of uses are fascinating. I only want to draw attention, strangely perhaps, to the importance of precisely those underlying frameworks. Understanding what makes media what it is allows people to gain immense perspective about the flow of information that surrounds and encompasses their everyday lives.

Many nonprofit advocacy organizations in Washington and around the country are pushing for more democratic telecommunications policies that would create a media system where the public has greater ability to draw the underlying frameworks. Where investigative journalism would truly inform the everyday citizen about the countless issues that currently remain unmentioned in mainstream media. Where entertainment media’s main purpose would be entertainment, not advertisement.

And many groups are working on advancing media literacy education by coming up with ways to teach the media in the classroom. But there is no significant effort, to my knowledge, to bring media education, especially education about political economy, directly into K-12 curricula both at the national level (through national learning standards) and through state boards of education through direct, public interest lobbying. This blog will prod this issue at greater length and hopefully learn more about why such little work has been done in this area, despite several decades of academic support of media literacy education. It will also try to come up with ways that such changes in curriculum can begin to take place.