What is the role of art education (or art educators) in
teaching students to be media literate digital citizens?
My role as an educator, I think, first and foremost is to contribute to the development of a well-rounded citizen. And when I say citizen, I think in terms of many communities, not just an American citizenry but a conscious global citizen as well as citizens that I would like to surround myself with in my local small town. I would like to think that after graduation my students go out into the world and see great sights, experience all that life has to offer. But I want them to be equally prepared and suitable for a more low key life too (such as a shift at the Mickey D's - b/c face it, we do hold those fast food workers to a certain standard of intelligence and decency too.) if that's where it takes them. And regardless of what they do with their life, television is the great equalizer. 98.8% of all households have a television (The Heritage Foundation, What is Poverty in the United States Today?). With a staggering number of hours of television being watched by children so that they see, on average, more than 40,000 television commercials a year, the effects this will have on attitudes, perspectives, and development can not be ignored by educators. (Not to mention what the effects of the hours of other screen time may do in addition.)
Now, I have to confess, you are reading the opinions of a self-proclaimed television addict. I am a child of the eighties, affected by the deregulation of television advertising and a HUGE TV watcher as a child (we're talking an average 3 hours a day while I was in elementary school most likely - and that was WITHOUT cable and a multitude of 24/7 cartoon channels). I never thought about it having much impact, seeing as how I am a savvy connoisseur with self-control, will-power and what I thought was self-determination. Seeing some of the studies on how children are affected by screen time is down right scary. I'd like to think I really did turn out okay, but my husband laughs when I don't realize I start to prepare the same types of food for a meal as a commercial that just whizzed past that I thought I was tuning out. The DVR was the best invention / investment we could have made for the very reason of not being psychologically manipulated by advertising. I try to limit the time my son watches TV, and even then I really try to limit how many commercials (even for other tv shows) he is exposed to. Even before this, I was trying to limit his exposure to the feeling of the "gotta have its" that commercials induce. Now I will be even more conscious of the correlation on his behavior. Between these documentaries, the readings, and information I learned about mirror neurons, I am more convinced that people (students) learn through watching others. This might be through real life, or more increasingly, through screens - television, computer, cellphone, etc.
A concept that has really stuck with me since reading Daniel Pink's "A Whole New Mind" and jumped out at me again, was the idea of unstructured play. As a high school art teacher, I feel this could be very helpful to what we are trying to teach in terms of innovation and creativity. But I constantly have to fight my classroom manager's urge to structure it. And students are unsure of what to do with time to play at this stage. I have a hunch that I could be doing it all wrong and that there is a better way to present it to a class to make it more meaningful. I am curious about where my students would be in their cognitive, emotional, social, and physical well-being by the time they get to HS if their time for free and unstructured play has been so dramatically decreased with the increase of standardized testing, pressure on schools to perform, and various other factors that have caused this to happen. I found the statistic of 9 - 12 yos having a 94% decline shocking at first, but then, having access to the elementary areas through my content leader position, realizing that of course its been a 94% decline! They went from two recesses to one! They constantly have testing to monitor their progress, they spend more time in reading and spelling then at specials (art, music, pe) OF course!! And that makes me sad. Sad for the children, sad for the teachers, and sad for our world. What a world we live in when we can't let children play. When we can't figure out how to help kids read (or more accurately - when we can't affect change in our communities / society / governments to come together to do what is best for our kids and our future.) There is not one easy fix and it seems like the burden just keeps get heavier. Are we just trying to perform a Sisyphean task?
But let me refocus my thoughts to the direction of the question, What is my role as an art educator in teaching students to be media literate citizens? A reading for VTS from Philip Yenawine kept coming back to me during this. He said, "Having Art in our lives is necessary for us to be fully human." He goes on to say that we (as a society and culture) currently marginalize art to a privileged position so that people so infrequently encounter it. I would disagree with that to a point. It is not that people don't encounter it, it is that they don't see it as "art". That they don't analyze it or consider it. And our role as art educators, I believe is, in part, to make people see. We are no longer teachers of art makers solely, but we hold a greater position and responsibility to teach students skills to "use" art. To use it to communicate, to use it as a vehicle for higher thought. We should take on a role to educate students on how visual images communicate. This may be "fine art" like paintings or sculptures, but it also includes the art of photography, video, and design. We could easily overlay the six principles of media literacy into the creation of art works. (And it wouldn't hurt to help the future design DIY'ers for the sake of all our aesthetics!) As consumers, we should also be savvy and discerning, analytical and critical. Teaching our artizens to have these skills could be nothing but beneficial to our global society.
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