If people live near the sea it is better to teach them to swim than to build a protective wall. Media education builds on this belief to empower people in the media environment.
Today the media are more pervasive than 25 years ago. In a country of 316 sq km and a population of 400,000 there are now eight television stations and over 50 national and community radio stations! The number of daily and weekly newspapers is 15.
Half of all Maltese homes are connected to the Internet, and the number is constantly rising. Most probably many students spend more hours surfing the Internet and watching television than they spend at school. There are more homes with TV sets than with fridge freezers or washing machines! If media education was needed 25 years ago it will be even more necessary in the next 25.
An important document that can give us direction is the National Minimum Curriculum (NMC) - Creating the Future Together - published by the Ministry of Education in December 1999. The curriculum caters for the education of children aged between three and 16.
This is a very important document for the development of media education. In Objective 8 it outlines the information, skills and attitudes which students should acquire at the end of a programme of media education. The curriculum builds around the topics: media language; media and society; media content and media organisations. Under "media content" an element of media writing or production is included.
The NMC is binding on all schools - state, independent and Church schools. If media education is not being taught in all schools then it is up to the parents to lobby with the school authorities to introduce this subject in the timetable. It is true that timetables are full but this cannot be used as an excuse to leave out media education. Would anyone dream of leaving out of the timetable the languages we communicate with? So why should we leave out the language of the media?
The way forward is not an easy one. The publication of the NMC was not followed by the qualitative leap many had hoped for in the teaching of the subject in all schools. Unfortunately it was not followed through with the necessary organisational infrastructure. For example, none of the 15 focus groups that were set up to implement the curriculum specifically targeted media education while for the past seven years there was no Educational Officer responsible for the subject.
Moreover, the NMC did not specify whether media education should be taught as an interdisciplinary subject or on its own. The de facto decision taken by the state school authorities to integrate media education with a number of subjects meant that media education is taught in a very fragmented way, if at all. The onus is on the individual teachers, many of whom have been given very little or no training in media education. As a result, media education is not being given the importance it deserves.
Recommendations and future challenges
If we really believe that media education is the best way to empower our students in an oversaturated media environment steps have to be taken to increase its importance in actual school teaching. The following proposals should help in this direction.
1. Lack of trained teachers is one of the main shortcomings that school administrators point to. As Buckingham (2001) rightly points out, "well-intended documents and frameworks are worthless without trained staff to implement them" (p. 13). To date, most of the teachers undergoing training in the Faculty of Education are still not given adequate formal training in media education. Teachers cannot teach what they themselves do not know or have not experienced.
This situation can be changed only if the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta provides both a component of media education as part of the training of all future teachers as well as a more advanced unit to those students who wish to deepen their studies in the area.
2. A new concerted effort between decision makers, schools administrators, teachers, parents and media professionals is essential for the success of the future of the programme. Such an effort can produce a holistic strategy which is essential to address and solve the real difficulties faced by school administrators, mainly an overcrowded syllabus and lack of resources. Strategies adopted till now did include media professionals. If these people are roped in they can contribute in a significant way.
3. Our experience has shown that media education is only given its deserved status and importance when it is treated as a separate subject. The "integration" strategy has not really worked in the local environment especially in government schools. Teaching media education as a subject on its own should be the norm, especially in secondary schools. The "integration" strategy should be carried out over and above the teaching of media education as a separate subject. A level of integration is more possible at primary level because there is only one teacher for each class.
4. Students would more easily become media-literate if media education is also taught outside school hours. Last summer two schools operating between July and August decided to introduce media education as part of their programme. Students were asked to design adverts, conduct a radio interview, visit a radio and TV station and design the front page of a newspaper. The experiment should be repeated by more summer schools.
5. The workbooks and textbooks presently used in Church schools, following the request of school administrators were written in English. We think it is time to have a Maltese edition. Having media workbooks and textbooks produced in Maltese will make it easier for teachers in some schools to use these books with their students.
If we had to evaluate the success of media education in Malta, we would describe it as moderate. Our experience of media education in Church schools is much more positive than that in government and independent schools.
Our suggestions should help surmount the difficulties that are being faced today mainly by putting into practice the official documents on the subject and addressing of the problem caused by an overloaded syllabus. Undoubtedly there are difficulties but the stakes are too high to ignore or minimize the importance of media education in a world which is more and more dominated by the media.
Concluded. Fr Borg and Dr Lauri can be contacted at joseph.borg@um.edu.mt and mary-anne.lauri@um.edu.mt respectively.