Voices of Media Literacy: International Pioneers Speak : Douglas Kellner Interview Transcript
 
DOUGLAS KELLNER
INTERVIEW DATE: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2010
INTERVIEWED BY: DEE MORGENTHALER
 
(QUOTE)
 
If you look at Britain, Australia, and Canada, the three other biggest English speaking countries, all of them have some quite sophisticated media education programs in the schools K‑12, whereas it's an exception in the U.S.
 
BIOGRAPHY OF DOUGLAS KELLNER
Douglas Kellner is an author, theorist, and George Kneller Chair of the Philosophy of Education at UCLA. He was an early theorist in the field of media literacy, who has since published on topics including the philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, cinema and politics, communications, and media and cultural studies.
 
 
 
Selected Questions:
 
What inspired your journey in terms of getting to the point of looking at media and media education? I'm really interested in who inspired your work in terms of texts and technology and social events.
 
When you were doing those workshops, when you were asked to go around and speak, were those to teachers, teacher groups?
 
Where did your involvement in media education go from there?
 
Do you feel like the direction that we're going in now, maybe since then, is in a good direction?
 
Do you have suggestions for the field?
 
I'm very aware of that issue, that we are very far behind in terms of media education, and it's so strange to me that we're in this society where it seems to be maybe even more influential than in the other areas where they have a much more developed literacy system. What do you think the reason behind that is? Why haven't we caught onto that? Do you think it's politics?
 
One of the things you touched on in your philosophical adventure piece is that, while we still need to have critical media skills and visual media skills, there's still a need for print literacy also. Can you elaborate?
 
Who should be leading the effort?

For complete text of interview go to PDF