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Media
Section 2 - Key Issues
Three debates are addressed in this section, and offered for beginning teachers to debate. Each debate is briefly summarised, and followed by questions for student teachers to debate.
1. The cultural value of media texts
Media texts are often located broadly in a popular cultural context, and one of the criterial features of media education is that it offers the opportunity to engage with popular culture in the curriculum. This raises a number of question, however, about how texts are valued or evaluated, what part aesthetic taste plays in this (and what this might be), how we conceive of popular culture in the curriculum, especially alongside the canonical ‘heritage’ texts of the English curriculum.
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How do we judge the cultural value of media texts? Is it entirely relative? Do texts have intrinsic merit, and if so, what might this look like? Or is value decided by different interpretive communities?
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Are the polar opposites of popular and elite culture typically proposed by mid-twentieth century sociology still in evidence? Or is it more complicated?
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How can we be consistent about cultural value in respect of texts we teach in different parts of the curriculum? How can we approach media texts in the same way as literary or dramatic texts (or vice versa)? Should we?
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What practical approaches do we use to help students to evaluate texts? Or do we avoid this completely?
 
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