To find out how much students in public schools are expected to know about media issues, it's important to look at curricular standards in education. For the next several posts, I will weed through
a number of national learning standards to find out whether topics like
media structures, media ownership, media policy, etc. are defined as subjects to
be taught in schools. This task is a bit tricky, because
learning standards exist in countless subject areas, created by
organizations that are either federally funded or are working outside
of federal mandate.

Briefly, national content standards are important because they set the baseline for curriculum within each subject area in education. State departments of education look to national standards (among other sources) when they define curriculum for their state. Then, local school districts must meet or exceed content standards set at the state level. So states have the strongest role in setting curriculum, but they take ideas from frameworks set on the national level.

As most of us know, K-12
public school curriculum is pretty structured, divided into categories like English/language arts, science, social studies, geography,
history, mathematics, physical education, and so on. Curriculum
professionals today generally aim to fit curriculum within
these subject areas. Since media education is currently not considered
a separate subject area of its own, we can either look at how media
literacy advocates have tried to define content standards for media
literacy, or we can look at how (if) media literacy has been included
within content standards for existing subject areas.

Curriculum professionals (this is a term I use often to describe
those employees of school boards of education who define curriculum for
a state or school district) are generally more familiar with standards
for existing subjects. In Illinois, more example, social studies curriculum was
defined with the help of the National Standards for World History, the
National Standards for United States History, the National Geography
Standards, the National Standards for Civics and Government. Each of
these standards were set by organizations who work within these
particular subject areas.

For example, the National Standards for Civics and Government was
defined by the Center for Civic Education, a group funded by the US
Department of Education. CCE created the standards in 1994, and
continuously pushes for their adoption in state departments of
education around the country to this day.

Since curriculum professionals use a certain group of standards more
frequently, we'll take a look at those standards first, and then move
onto how media literacy has been defined within academic circles.

Generally, media literacy has been taught within English/language
arts and social studies, as well as some technical/career education and
health classes. For now, I'll look closer only at English and social
studies. If you think about it, including media studies within English
and social studies makes sense -- in English, students get to analyze
media texts of various formats, while in social studies, students can learn
about freedom of expression within historical contexts, for instance.

Some popular standards that relate to media literacy are:

• Standards by the National Council for the Teachers of English (for English language arts)
  • originally funded by the federal government, until disagreements on standards ceased funding
• Standards by the Center for Civic Education (for civics and government)
  • is and has always been federally funded
• Standards by the National Council for the Social Studies (for broader social studies)
  • not federally funded (the government only requires standards for civics, not social studies more broadly)

Next time, we'll take a look at each standard individually.