Media Literacy Around the World by Robert Kubey

Author:Robert Kubey [Kubey, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Media Studies, Technology & Engineering, Telecommunications
ISBN: 9781351292900
Google: lHx0DwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 42451522
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1996-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

South African Media Education

In addition to the international influence, it is from these critical and experiential modes of learning that many South African media education programs have drawn their inspiration. A progressive approach to media education is, however, not common throughout the country. In the early eighties the Transvaal Education Department (TED), responsible for white schools in South Africa’s largest province, instituted film studies which were based on early British models of studying “good” films. Films became alternatives to the literature texts and were studied using the same methods. Issues of authorship, representation, audience, and power did not feature in the classroom studies. Instead, the principal characters, plots, screenplay, and technology of film making constituted film studies. In addition, only “safe” films, such as Chariots of Fire, were chosen, as they offered limited potential for reflection on South African society and apartheid.

Parallel to the formal curriculum initiatives of the TED, the Natal Education Department (NED) gave support to the informal and self-directed initiatives of English teachers and their associations. The Natal province can be said to be the most experimental and supportive of grassroot teacher initiatives. In addition to these two white education authorities another white authority, the Cape Education Department, and an Indian Schools authority, the Department of Education and Culture, have implemented media education programs during the last few years. The imminent establishment of a single non-racial education authority will have to come to terms with the various views and differential progress in the present bodies.

In addition to the influence of critical pedagogy on the methods of media education, other influences came from an unexpected quarter. In the late seventies and early eighties many community media organizations were established to support the work of educators and oppositional media producers who presented a direct challenge to apartheid media and the state censorship of media. The Media Resource Center (MRC), in which I am based, was one these. It was established in 1985 following a resolution of delegates at the Media in Education and Development conference to address the unequal distribution of educational media resources and skills in South Africa. The MRC established the Media Education Program to promote a progressive curriculum of media education in both primary and secondary schools. It hosted the first national conference on media education to gain grassroot teacher support for a holistic and progressive view of media education and Media Matters in South Africa, a book based on the conference proceedings, was published in 1991.

Our vision is of a media education which will make a contribution to the whole school curriculum. We regularly reassure teachers that we are not attempting to add more content to the school curriculum but rather to transform the underlying educational philosophy—a foundational rather than additional interest. Media education is not just another subject or an additional curriculum content, but a means of animating and uniting the artificial separation of school subject knowledge and the separation of the school from the outside world. It is a project in which the cultural world is explored by examining and creating media within these school subjects.

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