Where Do We Go From Here?
We began with what appeared to be on the surface, a simple question: Given the rising tide of political apathy among young people, what lesson does news teach, particularly news produced for young people, about what it means to be a democratic citizen? The question, as it turned out, was anything but simple, and led us to a reconsideration of the meanings of citizenship, of news and of the relationship between democracy and capitalism, citizenship and consumership.
At the end of this journey we were left with a very different question, a question that made demands on us as media educators, to seriously consider the intersection between civic education and the rising tide of commercialism in the schools. Our argument was that commercialism in the public schools is a new, pervasive and unexamined civic education curriculum with significant implications for how we teach our children to think about citizenship and how we will reinvent the meaning of democracy. In these terms we are asking that we as media educators make our lives more complex, by beginning to distinguish between competing models of democracy as we develop our lesson plans and teach. We are arguing that the question of commercialism in the schools cannot simply be seen as the province of some well intended but extremist liberal nuts who don't understand the realities of school funding. And we are arguing that the territory of civic education must be seen as unavoidably the territory of media education.
In practical terms we hoped to offer in our presentation some specific teaching aids, such as summaries of various models of democracy, models of citizenship and approaches to news. We also wanted to point in the direction of some additional resources and organizations, that could help us to continue to think through models of citizenship that emphasize lost traditions of democracy emphasizing social interdependence and participation in contrast to the individualistic consumer model of citizenship which stands at the core of neo-liberalism.
However, as we realize, all of these efforts still do not address the most practical of questions, what is a teacher to do, who wants their students to begin developing a critically engaged awareness of current events and their implications for socially responsible citizenship? We would like to conclude with three suggestions.
First, the most straight forward suggestion. Never watch Channel One or CNN Newsroom alone. These programs are heavily loaded with neo-liberal ideology both in structure and content. Working from them, it would be a challenge of extreme proportions to expect a classroom teacher to lead students through the necessary deconstruction and recontextualization to make visible the debate taking place over the meanings of citizenship and democracy. If the programs are to be watched, they need to be counterbalanced on a daily basis with news which has been developed from a strong democracy perspective. Perhaps, what might be seen as the most credible version of daily news along these lines is, to the best of our knowledge, mediachannel.org, an internet news service developed in cooperation with leading journalism educators around the world including the United States. The United States advisors include figures from the civic journalism movement, prestigious academic programs in government, and communication/cultural studies programs. At least if students are watching neoliberal news in contrast to strong democratic news, they will be learning the lesson that the meaning of democracy is part of an ongoing process of political struggle.
Our second suggestion is somewhat more challenging and more time-consuming, but may be more rewarding in terms of not only talking about active citizenship but in practicing active citizenship. Instead of having students watch news, have them make their own news, whether in low-tech newsletter form or high-tech radio, video or computer format. Our colleague at the University of Oregon, Gary Ferrington, who many of you know of for his work in creating and maintaining the acclaimed Media Literacy Online Project, has just launched the first issue of Media Literacy Review focusing on key topics in media literacy education. This first issue is "Kids Doing Media" and provides an outstanding summary, review, and set of resources for teachers interested in beginning media production in their classrooms or linking up to a rich regional and national environment modeling and supporting student production work. Many of these sites are specifically about student news and documentary production in a variety of media, providing examples, technical advice and opportunities for distribution.
Our third suggestion is perhaps the most challenging and is directly related to the first two. We need to think about, debate and imagine what news should be, for adults as well as for young people. Holding examples of adult commercial news production up as ideals for young people to aspire to and emulate is worse that asking the wrong question. It is asking no question at all about what news is, should be, or who or what purpose it serves.
The idea of news as simply being about informing people with a suffocating avalance of factoids occasionally dressed up with celebrity, sex, humor, graphics, irony and violence teaches students to understand democracy as absurd, as irrelevant, and best replaced with the social bonds of some form of new tribalism--- whether it be a tribalism based on religion, mysticism or consumer goods.
If news is to be seen as more than information, as in fact one of the great means of communication in modern society by which a community, a society, a public, comes to a consciousness of itself as an interdependent community, as an interdependent society, as an interdepent public, then we must rethink the idea of news. At the barest minimum, we need to add to the task of the news, not just the requirement that it be a watchdog of government, but that it also be a watchdog of the ways in which the interests of economics conflict with and undermine the interests of participatory democracy.
More broadly, the critical role the news plays in both defining citizenship, and potentially modeling active citizenship must be recognized. News must be seen and practiced much more as public forum of many voices and interests, than as an oracle of truth handed down from political elites, or supposedly disinterested science, or filtered through the constraints of a for-profit market.
As John Dewey wrote, in words critical both to participatory democracy and democratic communication, "Shared experience is the greatest of human goods." Our humanity begins in our capacity and practice of language, in our ability as social beings to make sense of the world. Our humanity is sustained in recognizing that in an imperfect world, our best hope for justice is in constantly returning to the collective wisdom of a community of free men and women. In these terms, can consumerism ever become a substitute for critical, participatory citizenship?