ABSTRACT
After synthesizing broad patterns of emphasis recurring among television media education projects worldwide, this chapter reviews distinctive characteristics of each project, and then categorizes them among various theoretical and research approaches.*
GENERAL PATTERNS
Predictably, critical viewing skills curricula for lower primary grades are relatively simplified, leaning heavily on "hands-on" activities and on observing TV and responding to questions put by teachers and parents. Even at upper grade levels, including secondary school, most projects in the United States do not directly include sophisticated aspects of media in society, such as complex social and political considerations recommended by Minkkinen (UNESCO) or Masterman (United Kingdom) or Freire (Latin America). They emphasize personal experi-
ence of the TV medium and subjective evaluation based on values common to American families and schoolrooms. These include some basic aesthetic/artistic considerations, the role of persuasive commercials in young people's lives, and inchoate value-formation reflecting exposure to entertainment, information, and advertising in American mass media. Projects directed to very young people emphasize the more immediate and obvious aspects of broadcast media. Although they do advert briefly to the industry's economic and legal structures (networks, stations, agencies, government), they stress images presented in characters, plots, dialogue, and through production techniques of television. This reflects their effort to match the TV project with youths' level of cognitional development.
