Parents and Teachers: Team Teaching Media Literacy
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Issued by Cable in the Classroom, November 2002. Posted with permission.  |
When it comes to media, our children are mass consumers.
On average, each of them spends 1,500 hours a year watching television. Roughly 17 million children and teens have Internet access in their homes, and most of them use it daily for everything from researching school projects to playing online games to sending instant messages or chatting with their classmates. They go to movies and watch music videos. Headphones and CD players have become so much a part of the middle and high school students' "uniform" that backpacks are now designed to accommodate the gear.
But for all their exposure to mass media, American youth and teens spend precious little time analyzing the messages they're bombarded with every day.