Estimated reading time: 9 minutes, 41 seconds

Hey Maha – great post! I used to work for an Ed-Tech company (now long gone) that wrote curriculum for various states. We examined state standards across the U.S. You were wondering what was taught as far as media literacy in schools. From a state level, almost all states have had (and probably still do have) very extensive standards to teach media literacy – not just evaluating sources, but questioning power structures, taking into account who owns the media sources, and so on. There are also many lessons available for this in many states. So it is out there. However, WHO teaches it is often unclear, and it may be assigned to different teachers that may or may not take it seriously. Quite often, you might see it thrown into an overall “social studies” course that may have a dedicated teacher, or it may have a coach that is just clocking time to get to the practice field. Then, of course, individual students will have varying degrees of interest in what is being taught, and so on. So mileage on those standards will vary depending on how the school sets it up in addition to all the factors that affects whether each individual learns it or not. Too many times we attack the various ideas of media literacy, but I would guess that the uneven application of these state standards is a huge reason why we see so many problems with media literacy now.