Dear Students, Staff, and Parents:
As your
children grow older, your influence on them, for a while, gets drowned
out by the influence of their friends and of popular culture.
This can be
a bit terrifying, because the messages your children hear from
television, advertising, music, and movies, is probably near opposite of
what you have been trying to teach all these years. In advertisements,
sex is often detached from commitment. On television and in the movies,
violence is often portrayed as one of the best ways to resolve
conflicts. In some popular rap music, women are insulted and demeaned.
To make matters worse, these negative influences may be amplified by
your children’s friends, who are also under the influence.
It is hard
to know what to do about this problem. Even if you could keep your
children from watching television, they would still hear many of the
same messages from newspaper, magazine and billboard ads, from music,
from video games, and from their friends. You may be able to turn down
the volume a notch, but it would be nearly impossible to turn it off.
There is,
however, something you can do. Make your children media literate.
Media literacy is understanding how the media affects us, and why.
Becoming media literate does not eliminate the influences of the media;
it just makes us aware of them.
To
understand why this is so important, think about what we normally call
“literacy.” It is not just the ability to read the words on a page. It
is also the ability to evaluate an author’s version of reality. This
requires understanding the author’s craft, and it requires concentrating
on what has been written.
With
television and other media, we often cannot evaluate the author’s
version of reality because we do not know the producer’s craft, or
because we are concentrating on something else while we are being
exposed. Your children see hundreds of advertisements each day. They
are on billboards, park benches, television, radio, and in newspapers
and magazines. These influence your children even when they do not pay
much attention to them.
This is why
media literacy is so important. If your children are going to be
exposed, then they should at the very least develop the skills necessary
to understand what they are seeing, how it was made, and why.
Understanding the Media
One of the
best ways to help your children understand the media is to get them into
the habit of questioning it. Take some time to watch their television
shows, and listen to their music with them. You can ask:
-
What is the
message? Every advertisement, television show, or song has at least
one message. Sometimes the messages are obvious. Sometimes they
are subtle. The obvious message of a TV show, for example, might be
that crime does not pay. Its more subtle messages might be that
crime is exciting and that the male criminals are fools for pretty
policewomen. Sometimes your children will agree with a show’s
messages. Sometimes they will not. The important thing is to
encourage your children to recognize the messages.
-
How is the meaning
created? Media producers use techniques we are all familiar with,
even if we never stop to analyze them. A soundtrack may tell us to
be frightened. A soft focus lets us know a scene is romantic. A
low camera angle can indicate that a character is large and
powerful. Pointing these out with your children enables them to
understand how the authors want them to respond.
-
Where is the
money? The intent of commercial media is to make money. From a
commercial television station’s perspective, the purpose of a show
is to deliver viewers to the advertisers. The show appeals to a
select group of viewers the advertisers want to reach, then prepares
them to receive the advertiser’s message. Shows even have
advertisements nestled in them. When a star wears a certain brand
of jeans, or picks up a soft drink or a pack of cigarettes whose
brand name is visible, money has usually changed hands. It can be
fun to point this out. Ask your children who the target consumers
are, what they are influenced to want, and how they are convinced to
buy.
-
What are the
values? The producers of a show or writers of a song sometimes do
not teach your family’s values. There is often a simple conflict of
interest between you and them. They want to sell CDs, movie
tickets, or advertising space. You want to instill in your children
those values that you think will enable them to develop into
healthy, happy, productive adults. Since you cannot entirely shield
your children from values taught by the media, the next best thing
you can do is define your values in relation to them. Use the media
as a way to begin a discussion of what you think is important, and
how you think people should behave.
Sincerely yours,
BELLEFONTE AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT
James T. Masullo, Jr., Ph.D.
Superintendent of Schools
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