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Variety reported last week about the increased need for media literacy programs in high schools.

According to the article, the average teenager watches 3 hours of television a day, versus 43 minutes of reading. That difference also represents an educational gap that needs to be closed, to help students “recognize and deconstruct the ways messages are made in film, television and new media.”

I grew up in a church environment where every TV show or movie was suspect of some evil or another. I think the Church has come a long way recently in helping students (and adults) see the value of engaging popular culture. Perhaps the next step is to help students “read” media– the way sound and images are arranged to communicate specific ideas and points of view–the same way we help them understand how authors use words to do the same.

I’m interested to others’ ideas … How can we help our churches become more visually literate? What things can we do to become more visually literate ourselves? Thoughts?

via ypulse

This entry was posted on 03/31/2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under culture . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.