FORMULATE A RATIONALE FOR THE INCLUSION OF MEDIA EDUCATION IN THE CLASSROOM

A school district has decided to revise its entire overall language arts curriculum.   The district is under a lot of pressure to go “back to the basics” in order to improve tests scores in reading and writing.   The school board is therefore skeptical about focusing on media studies which is perceived to be as “outside” or a deviation from a needed focus on reading and writing “basic skills.”

You need to formulate a rationale for teaching media studies that you would present to the school board that identifies specific reasons for why media studies should be taught in the district.  To do so, you first need to provide a summary description of the nature of your district’s current curriculum in the subject matter you teach or are/plan to student teach and when as the school’s/community’s presumed attitudes towards the value of media studies (If you are not a teacher, create a fictional summary or use your own high school as an example).

In your rationale, you may want to provide some formulation on how you would frame your curriculum content in a manner that serves to bolster your argument. This would include:

• Formulating the curriculum in terms of literacies students would acquire through participating in the curriculum.
• The ways in which components of your media studies curriculum would help students acquire these literacies.
• The value of acquiring each of these literacies in terms of larger curriculum goals and outcomes (“critical thinking,” “production and understanding of texts,” etc,), particularly in relationship to the language arts curriculum.