Popular culture is one of the sites where youth
make sense of themselves and others. Popular culture tells children and young
people who they are and what societies are about. The importance of media
education lies then, in the way it teaches how knowledge and social identities
are produced in a variety of sites in addition to schools. Media education
explores how texts can be deconstructed to understand and question the
relationship between knowledge, representation, values and identities.
Students should not only analyze media
representations. They must also be able to produce knowledge. Students should
become the subjects and not simply the objects of the pedagogical work. They
should be considered culture producers,
who can read different media texts and create them. This is why Media education is education for democracy.
Because when students become culture producers, they learn how to generate
their own meanings, to act on their own histories and to oppose any reduction
of the public sphere.
Media education in Latin
America works on one main direction: to strengh democracy. In Latin America, students need to believe that change is
posible and that they may have some role to play. The future of media education
has to be built around the recognition that media education is about the real
world in wich we all live and upon which the students may have a democratic impact.
Popular culture is one of the few
places where young people make sense of themselves and others. They feel they
can speak for themselves and represent their own interests. The central threat
to childhood innocence lies in the diminishing public spheres available for
children to experience themselves as critical agents.
The challenge for media education is
to transform popular public spheres into sites that address social problems,
within a real (and not just formal) participatory democracy.
The National Ministry of Education in
Argentina
created a national Media Education Program to coordinate various initiatives
between the media and the schools across the country.
The program has the media industry as
its main partners. All initiatives count on the participation of the television
channels, radio stations, photography companies, newspapers and cinema. The
idea behind this is that one cannot work with media education without the
media, and it is thus necessary to involve the media in the debates and
projects. The Media Education Program makes it possible for the Ministry of
Education to discuss media and educational issues with the industry. In this
way the media have become directly interested in what education has to say.
Media representations and youths’ voices are often the main topics in these
discussions.
The National Media Education Program coordinates
several different projects, each with a different medium, covering all levels
of education. The projects are based on the program’s main goal: to consider the students as cultural producers
who know how to read different texts (media contents) and, certainly, how to
produce them.
Programs developed
The School Makes TV
The project “The School Makes Television”
invites all 11- and 12-year-old primary students in urban schools to write a
fictional story about a certain subject. Six stories from the entire country
(one per region) are then produced as “advertisement campaign” and shown on all
Argentine TV channels for a month. In order to produce a story, a student needs
to investigate, learn about publicity (be critical), conduct research on the
issue and write the story. The subject in 2003 was “Thinking about the other”.
The task for the students was to investigate who “the other” is, and what “I
and the other” means.
School, camera… action
The project “School, camera… action” invites all
13- and 14-year-old secondary students to write a fictional story about a
certain subject. Three stories from the entire country are then produced as
short films and shown on all Argentine cinemas for a week. In order to produce
a story, a student needs to read literature, to watch films, to analyze what a
short film is, to learn about genres, to explore the audiovisual language and
write the story. The subject in 2004 is “One´ s first experience”.
TV in the family
It is a booklet including the main questions all parents
usually ask about the relationship children and young people establish with
TV. Questions such as “what do I do if
my child asks for TV in his/her
bedroom?”; “what do I do if the program he/she chooses is not suitable
for his/her age?”; “what do I do if the program he / she watches includes too
much violence?”, “how do I know what he /she prefers on TV?”, etcetera. Each
question has its answer and includes suggestions and orientations to discuss
the question with the children. The booklet came out with the Sunday edition of
the largest newspaper in Buenos Aires
(one million copies).
Internet in the family
It is a booklet including the main concerns parents usually
ask about the relationship children and young people establish with Internet. Questions such as “how to avoid risky sites
(pornography, pedophilia)?”; “what do I need to know about chat and blogs to
orient my sun/daughter?”; how do we build a family code on the use of
Internet?”, etcetera. Each question has its answer and includes suggestions and
orientations to discuss the question with the young people. The booklet came
out with the Sunday edition of the largest newspaper in Buenos Aires (one million copies).
The School Goes to the Cinema
The project “The School Goes to the Cinema”
allows 10,000 secondary school students (13 and 14 years old) across the
country from very poor neighborhoods to go to the cinema, during school hours,
to see three Argentine films per year. After the film, the director, writer,
actors and other professionals who took part in the film production talk with
the students about the way the film was made. For most of the students it is
their first time in front of the big screen.
Giving Children a Voice
It is hoped that students through this media
education program, will learn that they have a voice, which can be
listened and read by the whole society. At the same time,. they will be able to
study how the media function, and learn how to use them. The entire
Argentine society, as said, no matter where one lives, will be able to watch a
TV campaign written by small children, listen to rural voices on the radio who
do not normally have a voice in the public sphere, and see and read about what
affects, worries and interests the country’s youths in newspapers and cinemas.
The projects, giving unique opportunities to
children and youths, to the school and entire communities, count on the support
and involvement of the media industry. Television provides airtime for the
“advertising” campaign, radio offers time for the rural schools, cinema
producers and cinema exhibitors support the short film´s production and
exhibition, and the newspaper association furnishes a full page one day of the
year. Also, the projects are free of charge for the state.
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