media education in south africa: at the edge!

Media Education in South Africa: At the edge!

Jeanne Prinsloo

Widespread changes are occurring in all spheres of South African life. Within education the nineteen authorities of the apartheid era will give way to a transformed arrangement and we will confront the possibilities, problems and constraints of a single educational authority within each of the designated nine regions. The histories inscribed by apartheid have produced very different approaches to all facets of education including the field of Media Education. A few years ago, any discussion of Media Education would need to be preceded by an explanation: it was reasonable to suspect that Media Education would probably be con- fused with library skills or information technology or practical technical skills (such as how to use a slide projector). Now more educators are less likely to do so. In spite of many educators knowing about it, it is very difficult to know who "is doing" it. Problems (but little actual de- bate) remain about where Media Education exists in the school syllabus, around what should be taught and who should teach it. It is on the agenda, but no-one can tell you quite where and how. If you inquire about assessment no-one will be sure about how to go about it and mostly it ac- tually isn't "being done" in any serious or concerted way. Reasons offered are that teachers are already overburdened; Media Education is viewed as something in addition; and other areas of study are considered more important. Perhaps that is why no-one is fighting to get it seriously on the agenda. I will argue it is crucial for Media Education be given serious attention and to be structured into syllabi and curricula right now. The reason that it is not being taken seriously stems from a con- tinuing lack of understanding of what Media Education offers to teachers and learners.

The Media Education Programme 1 in the Media Resource Centre as- sumed somewhat of a pioneering role in its attempt to put Media Educa-

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tion on the agenda. It was established in the conviction that Media Edu- cation has a central and crucial role to play in education in South Africa, right now and at all levels possible. From this perspective I attempt to consider the importance of Media Education, to speak of its potential role in education and to consider how it could be approached as an essential aspect of critical education. Recent debates and policy documents have not considered or positioned Media Education in any specific way. This omission needs to be examined and the possible opportunities that exist need to be scrutinized in order to consider where Media Education needs to be situated and what can be done about it.

Media Education is as important in our society as literacy and nu- meracy. Certainly that was the conclusion reached by the UNESCO declaration on Media Education as far back as 1982.

The school and the family share the responsibility of prepar- ing the young person for living in a world of powerful images, words and sounds. Children and adults need to be literate in all three of these symbolic systems, and this will require some reassessment of educational priorities.

Such a reassessment might well result in an integrated approach to the teaching of language and communication.

As the term suggests, "Media Education" specifically aims to educate about the media. Inherently, Media Education implicates popular culture because what we describe as popular culture is contained in media texts, whether these are films, picture romances, pop music, compu- ter games or Eskom (electricity) ads on billboards. While it aims at a critical literacy and competence, it advocates a close scrutiny of that which constitutes it as its field of study. This contrasts with other fields of study. Mostly subject disciplines, especially at school, are constructed around Eurocentric metanarratives which contain and are contained by accepted bodies of knowledge and that do not problematize their own history and legitimacy. It can be argued that Science selects and con- structs those scientific events it considers of value in a culturally specific manner. Scientific discourse selects its main heroes and valorizes particular narratives. History is one of the disciplines where the metanarrative of conquest and imperialism is most obviously studied (and also is critiqued by its vanguardists.) These disciplines construct a body of

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knowledge accompanied by a common-sensical understanding of what constitutes this field which remains largely unchallenged. History is not referred to as historiography, science does not critique what is considered science. In contrast, Media Education (as the word education suggests) attempts to educate about the media, to construct a critical approach to information offered by the media, to contextualize those agencies that produce media. The role attached to Media Education is to develop and nurture the critical abilities of learners, to nurture autonomous thinkers who approach information not as transparent, but as constructions that are selective and partial. It is vital for today's learners to approach information in relation to the mass media and those texts considered authoritative precisely because all information is mediated. All information is produced within a signifying system, be it spoken, written, audiovisual or any other possible form of representation. Hence all knowledge reaches us as representations and mediations whether they be fictive or factual. Consider the description of Media Education offered by Bob Ferguson in his opening address as keynote speaker at the conference held in Durban in September 1990 entitled "Developing Media Educa- tion in the 1990s".

[Media Education] is, I suggest, an engagement, over a long

period, with all forms o f representations. It is concerned with how messages are pu t together, by whom and in whose interests .. . . . . . . . It is also concerned with how to construct media messages which are similar to those now available, and how to construct messages that are different; and how to acquire production skills ...... It is a subject that should be on the agenda for all teachers and students and one which does not lend it- sel f to brief encounters ....... For, above all, Media Education is an endless enquiry into the way we make sense o f the world and the way others make sense o f the world for us. Above all it must be genuinely open and critical (Ferguson, 1991, pp. 19).

From this definition it becomes clear that this conception of Media Education situates it within critical education. As with any other field of study, this is a considered choice emanating from particular philosophi- cal positions and understandings of society. This has certainly not al-

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ways been the case with Media Education. The position Ferguson described as Media Education emanates from rigorous debates and shifts in social theory over several decades largely in the United Kingdom and reflects the rejection and revision of certain other positions.

In particular, two humanist positions have advocated a discriminatory approach to the media. On one side of the political divide are the Leavisites, and on the other are those Marxists influenced by the Frank- furt School's ideas around popular culture and the "culture industry" and by an Althusserian sense of the interpellation of the subject. A brief, and undoubtedly scant, synopsis outlines these two approaches, rejecting the premises of the former and retaining aspects of the latter within the field of Media Education. Following media educator, Len Masterman, the former is charted to describe what Media Education ought not to do (Masterman, 1985, pp. 38ff.).

Interest in Media Education in the British context can be considered to start with Leavis in the 1930s (Leavis, 1977). He was concemed that mass culture has a degenerative effect, and early Media Educators focused on those texts considered to be non-literary. Their approach had its roots in a belief in the power of the media. They saw its power of communication as inoculation, as being transmitted and received in an uncontradictory manner. Leavis reacted with a sense of dismay and dis- appointment at the decline of literary or high culture in the face of the onslaught of industrial encroachment. The creators of literary culture were an elite minority who carried the meaning of culture. Accordingly for Leavis, teachers became entrusted with the missionary task of promot- ing literary criticism to enable learners to defend themselves against mass media: "the competing exploitation of the cheapest emotional responses; films, newspapers, publicity in all its forms, commercially-catered fic- tion - all offer pleasure at the lowest level, and inculcate the choosing of the most immediate pleasures, got with the least effort" (Leavis, 1977, pp. 5). The role of the teacher was to introduce media texts in classrooms only as a defensive discriminatory training against the debilitat- ing effects of the media. Such discriminatory approaches are based on an understanding of"taste". Eagleton summarized the approach of Leavis and the Scrutiny group. "English was not only a subject worth studying, but the supremely civilizing pursuit, the spiritual essence of the social formation" (Eagleton, 1983, pp. 31). As such this Leavisite approach to

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media texts and popular culture is a reactive one that is middle-class, paternalistic and defensive, an attitude that is now disparaged and dismissed by critical educators. While Leavis wrote in Britain in the 1930s such intellectual strands have been very influential and formative of approaches to literature in many places globally 2, and this dichotomy between high and low culture has entrenched itself in South African education as well. One has only to consider the prescribed literary texts for the final school examination annually which continue to reflect the same canon.

The Marxist thinkers referred to above shared the disparaging attitude of the Leavisites to the media and popular culture, albeit for very different reasons. Rather than moral and aesthetic concerns, political issues emanating from the social upheavals in the late sixties focused attention on the ideological workings of the media. They draw on particular interpretations of the work of the earlier Frankfurt school theorists and adopt what they construct as the pessimistic attitude of these theorists whose b~te noir was the power of the "culture industry" to domes- ticate and placate the population by production of "false" consciousness. This, coupled with notions of Althusserian Marxism develops the notion of the power of the Ideological State Apparatuses of which the media is one, the school another. Media Educators working in this tradition believed in the power of the media to manipulate the audience and they concentrate on the need to demystify the media, to expose the ideological workings of the media and thus protect the learners from their pernicious influence. Their emphasis moved away from the text alone which was the Leavisite group's primary concern. Rather, they considered the economic scenario, the context of the media industry and capi- talism. Both the school and the media were thus understood as responsible for disseminating the dominant ideology which is inherently bound to the interests of the dominant economic class. This shift in approach crucially incorporated new areas of consideration of the media. In order to consider the ideological impact of the meclia, notions around reception were considered important. The institutional context, the notion of agency and the corresponding notion of audience became essential, but not exclusive, aspects of any examination of what constitutes "Media Education" and these concerns are still important today.

The interest in analysing the text that concerned the Leavisites con-

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tinued, but in a dissimilar manner. The form of analysis of the text was influenced by shifts of concern among critical theorists in the attention they paid to the structuralist tendencies of cultural texts. The concem with language moved from the expression of an individual author to concepts derived from semiotics, in which signification focused attention on representations and mediation of meaning, how codes and conven- tions work and are used, and how cultural "myths" operate. It introduced structural understandings around narrative and the ideological implications of the structure. In addition, structuralist understandings of audience identificatory positions were introduced through considerations of Lacan and the formation of the subject, introducing further questions around reception and subjectivity.

This produced a closer analysis of what appeared "common-sensical", designed to alert the reader of the text to the processes of selection and construction of popular cultural messages. It proposes an investigation of how and potentially why these messages are constructed and in whose interests they operate. This type of discrimination does not relate to notions of high or low culture that fired the Leavisite concerns outlined earlier. Through this shift in approach the concepts of audience, language, representations, technology, categories and agencies are in- voked in the consideration of the media. These areas had become centrally constitutive of the field of study of Media Education in the United Kingdom by the early eighties.

What education and the media shared for the Media Educators was the purpose of maintaining the status quo by means of ideological production. Drawing on certain insights of liberation pedagogy of Freire, Masterman, a prominent figure in advocating Media Education in the United Kingdom, espouses an approach to the field of study that is both experiential and demystificatory (Masterman, 1985, pp. 31-32). In addition, cultural studies concepts, taken from the work of Gramsci, were used to consider ideological positioning not as simply inscribed by the text, but rather saw the possibility of resistance to such inscription. The notion of hegemony and the media as containing contradictions heralded the notion of culture as a site of struggle and popular culture became the terrain on which such a struggle could take place. This contrasts to the pessimism of the heritage of the Frankfurt school. It also introduced a particular tension into media theory which continues to manifest itself.

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This period of British Media Education is marked by frequently vitriolic debates around traditional and critical pedagogy and arguments about the learners and their subject formations. Inherent in these conflicts are questions relating to a type of enlightenment model around demystifica- tion, founded on the notion that superior logic could shift the subjective understandings, be they racist or sexist, classist, ageist, homophobic or sizeist.

Further debates, underpinned and influenced by ideas emanating from postmodemist positions, refuted this enlightenment model which began to run the gauntlet of accusations of proposing a "true" consciousness once again. The complex nature of socialization and subject formation was not being satisfactorily addressed. Beliefs, prejudices and attitudes of any kind are rooted in material conditions. Notions around decoding and "reading" in varying ways lead to a rejection of the notion of the sovereign power of the text, relegating it to a position of cultural relativism (Allen, 1989). Similarly, the attitude of learners was problematized with warnings against interference with the pleasures the text offered those very pupils that teachers were trying to disabuse of their position (Williamson, 1981 ).

This struggle continues between the enlightenment position that advocates the ideological power of the media, as described by Postman (1986), and that suggested by certain reception theorists such as Morley (1980) or Ang (1985), who argue the posi t ion of mul t i fa r ious contradictory readings and the notion of negotiation of meaning and multiple meanings. The latter also celebrated popular culture as a site of resistance 3.

These poststructural understandings both shook the assumptions of Media Educators and also offered renewed and exciting potential. The feared "death of the subject" that Althusserian Marxism heralded and the relativism enabled by discourse theory are disarming only if one is attempting to impose a master narrative, a tgtalizing and rational logic. Those teachers who "failed" to "teach" learners about their stereotypes and undo their p re jud ices are able to r econs ide r their aims. Postmodemism and poststructuralism offer a path for educators to engage with both the insights offered by understandings of the ideological power of discourses within society and the concept of multiple readings. Such an enterprise moves beyond being only deconstructive in considering

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the workings of the metadiscourses, and it does not anticipate a single answer.

The potential for postmodemist understandings in our country with our particular heritage of an educational system based on gross inequalities needs some elaboration. What postmodemists were responding to was the totalizing metanarrative of modemity. The discourses of moder- nity entrench Eurocentric notions of a single rationality, the belief in the power of logic, in progress and technological development as part of the inevitable route to "civilization". For Lyotard (1984, pp. 24), such grand narratives assume their legitimacy, and deny their social and historical construction as they oppose and take up position against difference and particularity. (I discuss this later in terms of the South African curriculum proposals.) Postmoderu writings and, in particular, certain feminist investigations, challenged and critiqued the construction of the constant "Other" that is created by modemist discourses wherein the "Other" is situated as unable to assume the role of the protagonists and is relegated to the role of victim or enemy, and displaced somewhere at the margins of history and society. Henry Giroux (1992) takes up the notion of the margins and the "Other" when he outlines what he terms "Border Peda- gogy". It provides fertile ground for teachers concerned about such borders, for teachers who have to reconstruct education to deal with those learners who have been constructed as on the periphery, or those who have accepted such constructions, whether they are sited centrally of peripherally.

Giroux suggests that the rigid boundaries imposed by modernist culture exclude and privilege according to categories of race, class, gender and ethnicity. It creates a frame which centres European (or Western) culture. For him, postmodernism questions the way such culture is inscribed. It offers possibilities of rereading history, of reconsidering what is high culture and what is low or popular culture. A crucial characteristic of border pedagogy is the rejection of binary oppositions as postmodernism refutes the possibility of a single truth. Eurocentric history cannot summarily be dismissed and replaced by a single oppositional history. It demands that we examine all representations in our culture; it requires an acknowledgment of the borders, that we understand difference as social and historical constructions positioned within hierarchies of domination and opposition.

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In this way crucial questions are raised for what I consider to be vital aspects for critical education in South Africa now. Critical education calls for our focused attention on the cultural representations that circulate. It requires that we attend to popular culture, to all media texts, whether they be considered high or low. It calls for their consideration in terms of the discourses they are presenting, for us to ask the questions around who is represented, how are they represented, who is omitted, who has made the message, in whose interest is this discourse working. These questions reflect the key notions of Media Education mentioned earlier. However, border pedagogy goes further. It aspires to the creation of learners who are able to cross borders and locate knowledge historically, socially and critically. Beyond this they need to understand that codes have limits and they need to become productive: they need to construct their own narratives and histories in an attempt to fill the gaps that exist, while recognizing that they are themselves located by narratives, partial and specific.

Within this discourse, students should engage knowledge as border crossers, as people moving in and out o f borders constructed around co-ordinates of difference and power. .... Bor- der pedagogy decentres as it remaps. The terrain of learning becomes inextricably linked to the shifting parameters of place, identity, history and power. .... This is not an abandonment Of critique as much as it is an extension of its possibilities ( Giroux, 1992, pp. 29-30).

This paper is assuming an agreement that education should be democratic, open and tireless in its spirit of enquiry. Such democratic aspira- tions contrast drastically with the present circumstances. Reacting to the pervasive violence, repeatedly calls are being made by leaders, by the clergy, by ordinary people, for an atmosphere of tolerance. What future education has to contend with in South Africa are the difficult notions around the "Other" that are the dubious legacy of colonialism, apartheid and patriarchy, the intolerance around race and gender to mention two. It needs to deal with the powerful discourses that have entrenched power in South Africa, and to create the kind of critical thinkers who are not simply reactionary, angry or defensive, but that can aspire to democratic principles. South Africa urgently needs the border crossers that Giroux

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described. Media Education seems to me to be crucially implicated. I am conscious of the possible criticism that these histories relate to

thinkers and writers based in Europe and the USA; this paper locates them there. In deciding their relevance to South African educational situ- ations, one needs to consider the academic practices that prevail in South Africa, which have their roots in British academia. Leavisite approaches to language and literature have persisted and these exclusionary notions and approaches prevail in much of what is commonly considered literary studies both at school and tertiary education. To a lesser extent, a discriminatory Marxist approach has had a broad impact on South Afri- can media activists of the seventies and eighties and this influence manifests itself in some examples of simplistic teaching that presents the media as manipulating and duping a passive audience into total compliance - a strange simplification in a country where authoritarian control of the media has not prevented massive political and social upheaval. This paper has tried to draw on critical educational theorists broadly. Giroux quite evidently attempts to be a border crosser himself.

Underpinning this approach to understanding is a critical sense of pedagogy, that moves from transmission modes of education and the focus on rote learning, and the present forms of assessment and hierarchies of discourse. It assumes that no content can be critical and progressive if the form contradicts it. Forms of learning that are experiential, interac- tive, reflective and productive are necessary accompaniments for the type of Media Education outlined. Clearly also, this is not a bit on the side of the regular curriculum, as feared by certain teachers. An approach of this nature ideally requires reorganizing and reconceiving the curriculum radically, rather than attempting to iron out some of the more obvi- ous failings of the present system. Proposed curriculum changes will be examined following a brief overview of what has been happening with Media Education in the schools.

South African Media Education. The present. The introduction of Media Education in South African schools has been gradual and uneven, following diverse patterns within the different educational authorities. Apartheid education has resulted in a Byzantine bureaucracy with nineteen educational authorities, defined by race and geography. The segregated system has been put into place by key acts of

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parliament so that educational authorities were classified as White, In- dian, Coloured and Black 4, with further division of black education according to ethnic homelands. (The order used also reflects the hierarchy of privilege and resources directed to each.) The locus of power for curriculum development has been in the hands of the white Afrikaners and consequently the philosophy of Christian National Education 5 has been dominant. Educators within the white authorities had greater lee- way in terms of teacher autonomy, and in particular within schools where English was the medium of instruction. Consequently, in those disciplines which permitted a more progressive approach to the curriculum, these shifts would originate in the more privileged and innovative White departments and tend to exert a trickle down effect to the others in an order that reproduced the hierarchy of privilege. Predictably, those areas tended to be humanity subjects within English-speaking curricula. Here the humanist impulse of liberal thinking had a far greater hold and the English curricula tended to reflect this. It is interesting that Media Edu- cation found its way into the secondary school curricula of English (first language) in those White authorities and also into what had originally been Indian education.

Media Education initiatives in South Africa. In 1990 a conference entitled Developing Media Education in the 1990s provided the first forum for representatives from the existing educational authorities to outline the nature and scope of Media Education in their departments. What was striking was which authorities were engaging in Media Education and how similar such initiatives were. Predictably, no reference was made to developing critical thinking in the sense outlined above. (Prinsloo & Criticos, 1991, pp. 25-45)

As in early British initiatives, the concerns reflected Leavisite preoccupations. Of the popular media, film was privileged as an extension of the "Great Tradition". This is articulated in the statement of the white Transvaal Education Department (TED):

Film Study... raises the consciousness o f pupils and enables them to discriminate and resist manipulation; the traditional skills of writing, language and literary criticism are advanced by film studies; the film has been shown as a valid medium by which literary themes and preoccupations are conveyed;

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...(Gosher, 1991, pp. 34)

The white Cape Education Department (CED) similarly defined its aims as inoculatory, needing to combine:

aesthetic appreciation of the medium as "communication art form" and critical awareness of the techniques employed by its creation to achieve specific or implicit intentions ( Faasen, 1991, pp. 25).

The white Natal Education Department (NED) also focused on film study and notions of "high" culture, but were less prescriptive in teaching approaches and supported teacher research and circulation of their ideas. Teachers could consider other media to a small extent.

The Leavisite echo recurs in the Indian House of Delegates (HOD) where film was again approached in a literary manner as an alternate genre for study. Imitating the CED and TED, they focused on terminology and the ability to employ such terminology to describe film se- quences. Media Education was largely restricted to a literary approach to film. This is really not surprising as language teachers have themselves traversed the Leavisite corridors of learning on their ways through the academy.

There were no representatives from the House of Representatives authority, the Department of Education and Training or the KwaZulu educational authority none of which had considered Media Education. Their absence reflected and reinforced the historic aversion to teaching critical thinking in South Africa and in these authorities in particular.

Beyond the confines of the educational authorities, academics and media activists resisted the high cultural emphasis. The conference rec- ommended that Media Education should not "be confined to those media forms generally associated with high technology and sophisticated electronic media such as film and television, but that educators should use those media resources readily available to them to engender critical discussion" (in Prinsloo & Criticos, 1991, pp. 300.)

The 1990 conference provoked a shift in focus within the compara- tively privileged authorities.

Debates have shifted the common-sensical approach that it is film that should be studied. Certain South African publications have helped to focus attention both on the field of study and modes of pedagogy and

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have helped to locate Media Education as part of a critical agenda (Potenza 1993, Ranby 1993, Prinsloo & Criticos, 1991 and Young & Regnard, 1992) 6. Within certain authorities, namely the House of Del- egates and the Natal Education Department, they now address Media Education and not film studies.

Within the House of Delegates in particular, there has been a dra- matic shift from the Leavisite approach mentioned earlier to a resistance approach. One initiative produced a photocopied document entitled "Media Education for Secondary Schools" which includes a foreword, an introduction, an official syllabus, contributions (of about fifty pages) relating to sections of the syllabus, and miscellaneous additional photo- copies of newspaper articles. Informed by a politics of resistance, but lacking any sustained basis in media theory, this collection tends to adopt the eighties rhetoric of media activists and is implicitly based on realist theoretical positions secured by the notion of a single truth founded on a rational knowledge. In contrast to the resistance content, the methodology and pedagogy retain a strong transmission mode characteristic of the educational practices in South African education. A move to critical Media Education would interrogate the assumptions of their present initiatives.

A different kind of shift has occurred within the Natal Education Department where Media Education is inscribed into the syllabus now with the following rationale:

In order to create more active and critical media users, we need to: • Engage this experience, • Systematically develop pupils' critical understanding

through the analysis and production of media, • Employ these understandings to develop their creative

powers, • Deepen their understanding of the pleasure and entertain-

ment provided by the media.

Also by 1993 a shift in concern among a core of these teachers became evident. The change in classroom population to include other races brought home to some teachers the specific nature of their teaching and they began to look around for solutions to their problems of teaching

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mother tongue and second language learners, all through the medium of English. Their prior assumptions and practices were thrown into question. Their debates have given rise to a draft proposal which attempts to propose a radical shift in teaching of English through a focus on narrative. It acknowledges the historical and contextual dimensions of the curriculum, that the most prevalent methodology of teaching has been transmission mode, that those learners whose knowledge is most in keep- ing with what counts as dominant knowledge are privileged, that this impacts on non-mother tongue learners of English and that their voices and lived experiences consequently tend to be denied value. It argues that teaching should be concerned with the negotiating of meaning and proposes narrative as the focus as it is the common textual experience of all the learners. Importantly for Media Education, it argues for the in- clusion of a wide range of textual materials in a variety of forms and diverts attention from the content to the process of narrative construction by the narrator and the receiver. It proposes that this approach "will develop the critical abilities of the learners which they will be able to apply to a range of knowledges" and inform all disciplines (Ashworth and Prinsloo, 1994). This approach accords with the earlier description of critical Media Education. At this stage it exists as theory but is being developed into practice by teachers.

Beyond these formal interventions, individual teachers have under- taken changed approaches to Media Education in the last couple of years even where no clear directive has been issued by their department. Me- dia Education is also being offered as modules of study in education departments at certain universities. Quite obviously, there is little room for complacency. Media Education could be playing a far more radical and progressive role for learners, for citizens. It needs to be included in a concerted and direct way in future curricular strategies.

Change is anticipated in the organization and provision of education. Again this is a site of struggle. In the light of the proposals and investigations into curriculum changes introduced by the state and the National Education Coordinating Committee (NECC), advocates of Media Edu- cation are invested to discover how this field of study, this approach to knowledge, has been articulated and where it has been situated. A brief consideration of the documents reveals that it has not been taken up by them in any overt or significant way, nor was it considered in the subse-

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quent ANC document (ANC 1994). What follows is an attempt to discover where Media Education can conceivably be sited in spite of such oversights.

Discussion of proposed curriculum changes The perspectives of the state for the future or renewed educational curriculum as outlined in the EducatSonal Renewal Strategy (ERS) and fol- lowed by more detailed proposals in the Curriculum Model for Educa- tion in South Africa (CMSA), offer a reactionary position, one that attempts to patch up the deficits in the existing educational provision. This position impacts on all aspects of education, but in particular the advo- cacy of Media Education becomes more problematic within the framework outlined by this document. The major change it presents is a shift away from education with racial underpinnings.

While there is a proposed shift away from racially based education, this document deals with race and South African education ahistorically. The issues of race, it is felt "should not feature" (DNE, 1991 a). Decon- textualized, this approach overlooks the complex issues around constructions of subjectivities and positionings within society as a result of material conditions. Lip service is paid to the question of difference. No significant focus is given on how practitioners would deal with difference, nor is the question of appropriate methodologies broached. CMSA sets out its three guiding principles: equal opportunities for education, recognition of difference in terms of religion, culture and language, and a responsibility to the learners described as follows:

The provision of education shall be directed in an educationally responsible manner at the needs of the individual and those of society, and the demands o f economic development, and shall take into account the personpower needs of South Af- rica (DNE, 1991b).

In an attempt to locate Media Education within this proposed curriculum, one could argue that an "educationally responsible manner" would incorporate teaching for critical autonomy and would engage learning processes that are not directed at the transmission of given 'wisdoms'.

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However this optimistic stance is not confirmed by the tone and content of the rest of the document.

The four broad aims for education 7 also include the preparation of learners for independence and occupational competence; and the education of learners towards responsible and useful citizenry. Again the former is vocationally driven, and the interpretation of "responsible and useful citizenry" appears conservative in the light of the preoccupations and tone of the rest of the document. This policy document is not premised on explicit underpinnings of the relevance of critical thinking. Respon- sible citizenry does not call for active and reflective participation in democracy. Nor is there any mention of a movement away from content- based syllabus or understanding learning and teaching in a way that is pupil-centred and engaging. The issue of modes of pedagogy is ellipti- cally treated, but assumes a continuation of existing methodologies.

Rather than an understanding of the complexities of education in this country, reality is defined as contained and uncontradictory, in contrast to a poststructuralist understanding of complexity and richness. Accord- ing to this document, "reality" (I am assuming this implies some notion of lived experiences) is composed of areas of experience (DNE, 1991b, pp. 24). Several of these (e.g. aesthetic, creative, social, economic) are isolated, but the caveat is offered that while, "The identification of areas of experience is an attempt to give structure to reality, ... No claim is made that all facets of reality have been completely covered." Clearly no concept of analysis or critical consciousness is expressly proposed as an area of experience. This limited approach does not problematize its legitimacy; it simply assumes it.

Another place in the report where critical thought is mentioned relates to the continuous aims which include the development of "Intel- lectual skills (including logical, independent, creative and critical thought)" (DNE, 1991b, pp. 1). Considering that critical skills have historically been based on the Leavisite understandings of"critical" whereby the learners acquire the framework and metanarrative of their teachers in order to be judged critical, it is unlikely that this curriculum is really proposing the critical skills that Media Education is advocating.

This ahistorical approach ignores the context of the existing inequalities and, consequently, there is a silence on the issue of redress. Any calls for equality of opportunity appear vacuous without an attempt at

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redress. Furthermore, there is no attention to gender inequalities. To the contrary, it manifests an expressly conservative strand when the junior primary phase, as the first three years of formal education is described, is considered and "A high priority is attached to such aspects as making learners aware of their sexual role, equipping them to be acceptable to others..." (DNE, 1991b, pp. 15). As this document presents a conservative position, the role allotted to girls and women becomes a discriminatory policy against women.

The proposal overtly emphasizes general education, but ultimately is vocationally driven (DNE, 1991b, pp. 41); the aspects of lifestyle education mentioned include religious instruction, guidance, economic education and physical education. No mention is explicitly made to democracy or to critical thinking. Reading, writing and communication skills are seen as transparent and unproblematic areas rather than an understanding of the inherent negotiation of meaning and the need to develop an understanding of communication as more than a transmission of information. It contrasts to a progressive understanding offered by Giroux:

... the discourse of literacy cannot be abstracted from the language of difference and power As such, literacy cannot be viewed as merely an epistemological or procedural issue but must be defined primarily in political and ethical terms. It is political in that how we "read" the world is always implicated in relations of power. Literacy is ethical in that people "read" the world differently depending, for instance, on circumstances of class, gender, race and politics. (Giroux, 1992, pp. 244).

The areas I believe Media Education needs to address are silenced in this document. The important tasks of positioning understandings, of developing tolerance through such understanding, the concept of the richness of differences, the concept of the power of discourses and their role in society are not encouraged. It reflects a continuation of a domesticat- ing attitude towards learners, with little atter~tion to notions of pedagogy and empowerment, democracy and social interaction, and it incorporates a very strong emphasis on the production of "personpower".

Like the previous documents just discussed, the National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI), a project of the National Education Co- ordinating Committee 8 conducted between December 1990 and August

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i i

1992, does not deal with Media Education in any specific way and this should be considered a serious omission. However, in contrast to the CMSA proposals, this investigation presents a more proactive approach to the problems of education and while it overlooks Media Education in particular it provides a progressive framework which would not simply accommodate Media Education but within which Media Education has a crucial role. This investigation interrogated policy options in all areas of education, within a value framework derived from the ideals of the broad democratic movement. They present a number of policy options rather than a policy document. The authors describe the five principles underpinning the report as non-racism, non-sexism, a unitary system, democracy and redress.

This report outlines the existing curriculum practices and concludes that the existing policy making and curriculum development are racially driven, with a trickle down effect from white educational authorities. Similarly it draws attention to the gender implications of pervasive discrimination contained within the existing policies.

The problems are contextualized: in their consideration of options around a core curriculum, they consider the issues of commonality and diversity: "What is the appropriate common curriculum for a culturally and linguistically diverse schooling system?"

The notion of difference is confronted directly in a proactive way. While the curriculum needs to play a role i~a "building a sense of common citizenship and common entitlements" it acknowledges the tension that exists between this and the "legacy of disunity and inequality based on racial and gender differences (among others)". Other differences in- elude those of language, culture, religion, and region. Not only are these problems contextualized, and debates offered around ways of approach- ing them, the very real issue of tolerance is broached.

How can tolerance of difference best be built into the curriculum? There are a number of options:

• a model of 'multicultural education' could be adopted; • anti-racist curriculum strategies could be adopted; • a curriculum model for citizenship could be developed,

which emphasizes the equal rights of common citizenship rather than fostering different identities (NEPI, 1992a, pp.

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).

These assumptions around pedagogy engage directly with education as a process. This report considers the forms of learning and teaching which the curriculum assumes. They comment on how the present curriculum privileges rote learning in the current curriculum while critical thinking, reasoning, reflection and Other conceptual skills are largely neglected.

..... How can curriculum policies encourage more active, task- centred and facilitative pedagogies? (NEPI, 1992a, pp. 7)

There is a rejection of assessment simply as a measurement relating to the outcome of learning.

Using assessment solely to measure the outcomes of student learning obscures the curriculum benefits to be gained from finding out how students apply skills, how they construct meaning, and how they can work together when being assessed. This type of progressive education enables the incorporation of Media Education with its emphasis on the development of critical thinking, on education as a "long engagement" to use Ferguson's expression, that relates to democratic and lifeskills.

Unlike CMSA, this document questions the problems around resourcing and redress. The commitment to gender equity is an inherent component of their proposals. Again, the crucial role that Media Educa- tion can play could be harnessed with the caveat that gender position is a process of subject identification which has to be understood in terms of its construction, not only as a weed to be eradicated. This too will require a long-term engagement.

When policy options for education in the future are offered around a core curriculum and differentiation, possible guidelines for all the options suggest particular points could underpin them all:

Whatever subjects are taught, conceptual skills and processes could be made more prominent in syllabuses, with reduced emphasis on content. Conceptual skills and processes which are necessary in all subjects for critical and reflective thinking could be highlighted in curriculum documents ..... Greater flexibility within syllabuses to encourage teachers to take curriculum initiatives .... Changing the mainstream curriculum

35


need not be viewed as 'lowering of standards', but rather as a means of broadening standards and improving progression rates for the majority of students... (NEPI, 1992a, pp. 76)

This positioning responds to the criticisms levelled against the introduction of Media Education into the curriculum, as adding an extra bur- den on the already embattled teachers. Ultimately, a radical change of approach is being proposed.

To summarize, the report considers the issue of commonality and diversity and the acknowledgment that there is "the need for appropriate curriculum responses to diversity in the classroom", both in the increase in desegregated classrooms and also in relation to principles of non-racism, equality and democracy, the curriculum needs to be based on re- spect for equal rights and responsibilities of a common citizenship as well as on tolerance and understanding of social difference" (NEPI, 1992, pp. 9).

The NEPI document on curriculum acknowledges the need to address rights to difference and ways of dealing with difference. It allows for Giroux's conception of border crossers. It considers the need to

approach these issues procedurally in the classroom, so that developing and changing procedures for negotiating difference is the focus of the curriculum, rather than focusing on content knowledge .... As far as possible, concepts such as culture, citizenship, commonality and diversity need to be understood as historically produced and changing, rather than static categories. Teaching this could be one of the goals of the curriculum (NEPI, 1992a, pp. 81).

They advocate materials and in-service courses for teachers, and a curriculum that is inclusive of a range of viewpoints and experiences. It acknowledges the need to develop tolerance and calls for a curriculum that will develop an "awareness of the nature of the ethnic, social, or cultural diversity and how these have been part of the unequal alloca- tion of power and privilege." (NEPI, 1992a, pp. 81).

Particular attention to the central role of representation is acknowl- edged when advocating vigilance against gender stereotyping and bias in content and teaching materials. This proposal enables an approach to education that positions knowledge. Teachers would be considering the

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questions posed by Lyotard and quoted in the NEPI Post-Secondary Education volume where it does take up the issue of knowledge:

Who transmits learning? What is transmitted? To whom? Through what medium? With what effect? (NEPI, 1992b, pp. 1)

This document provides a theoretical overview and options for a progressive and critical approach to education. However it stops short of pointing the way forward. What is very striking is the congruence between the concerns, the processes and the approaches presented here which echo the concems articulated in my earlier discussion of the role envisaged for Media Education. It is the contention of this paper that Media Education is crucially implicated and provides direction for curricula development. It can serve to focus attention on the cultural representations that circulate in South Africa. It attends to popular culture, to all media texts, whether they be considered high or low. By directing attention towards the representations and discourses, it addresses the difficult question of the construction of the "Other", and the intolerance that derives from such constructions. It directs teachers to a concem with difference. It provides an arena where teachers can address leamers who have been constructed as peripheral, or those who have accepted such constructions, whether they are sited centrally or peripherally. It aspires to the creation of learners who will find ways to cross borders and to locate knowledge historically, socially and critically. It recognizes the need for learners to actively produce their own narratives, their own histories, while acknowledging that such stories are always partial and always incomplete. This understanding strives for a critical edge while encouraging tolerance and empathy, and enabling participation.

The recent ANC draft policy document (ANC 1994) again lacks any articulation of a clear space for Media Education. Following the distri- bution of the policy documents, a variety of task teams were established to extend and develop more comprehensive implementation proposals to inform national education policy under the umbrella of the Centre for Education Policy Development. Once again, there has been no express task group for Media Education, although in a general sense it should be addressed by the curriculum grouping. Clearly unless a member of the grouping was cognisant of the relevance of Media Education, this was

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not going to happen. Belated attention to the use of media resources in education resulted in the formation of a task team to make proposals around media resources in education. Included in their proposals are issues of Media Education and the proposal that it should be incorporated into the core curriculum.

In any society, particular discourses and ways of understanding the world and each other are circulated and reproduced. This is especially true in South Africa where stereotypical representations based on racism, sexism and classism have been systematically cultivated.

Media studies attempts to create critical users of the media who can discern constructions of knowledge and images .... " (CEPD 1994)

While the inscription of Media Education in this form at least positions it as part of the national thinking around educational implementation, it remains marginalised and the struggle will have to continue! For example, unless it is incorporated into teacher education, teachers will not be equipped to teach it.

Quite clearly, this paper proposes a role for Media Education in South African education which is idealistic. While this account has been es- sentially theoretical, the practice can facilitate a developing and progressive understanding of the media at all levels of education. Where authorities have engaged with this area of education, it has been predomi- nantly at a secondary level. It is imperative that, to echo Ferguson quoted earlier, this long term enquiry into "the way we make sense of the world, and the way others make sense of the world for us" is an integral part of all educat ion 9. Those teachers who have historically not been exposed to such ideas or opportunities because of the context in which they have worked are beginning to encounter shifts in emphasis. 1°

This paper proposes a task of some magnitude and challenges educators in South Africa to recognize the central role of Media Education in the development of critical education. Political transition in South Africa has produced a moment of great fluidity in all sectors. It is widely anticipated that the opportunities presented by this moment will be countered sooner rather than later by considerable pressure for closure. This paper is a call for media and popular culture to be taken very seriously, to shift media and popular culture from the edges and to locate

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i t centra l ly . The e x c l u s i o n or i nc lus ion o f M e d i a E d u c a t i o n wi l l be c ruc ia l

to the de f i n i t i on o f the t e r ra in on w h i c h e d u c a t i o n is c o n s t r u c t e d in the

future .

This paper is an extension of a paper entitled "Media Education in South Africa - Whence and Whither?" published in Journal o f Communication Inquiry, Vol.18 No.2 1994.

Notes

1 The Media Education Programme was started in 1989 as one of the projects in the Media Resource Centre (MRC). The MRC responded to community and organi- zational requests to establish an organization that dealt with redress of media needs in education. It was established within the University of Natal in the heyday of apartheid as the academy served to buffer such progressive initiatives from state intervention.

2 The dichotomy between high and low culture remained a dominant strand of the debates around the media for decades. The concern for questions of taste and discrimination against the media and popular culture moved to a discrimination within the media, sparked by Hall and Whannel's seminal text The Popular Arts in 1964. Screen journal in the seventies pointed the way forward by emphasizing a need for more objective knowledge than aesthetics and taste.

3 Refer to Ferguson for an extended consideration of these issues.

4 The historically white authorities referred to in this paper are the Cape Education Department, Natal Education Department and Transvaal Education Department. "Indian" education is administered by the House of Delegates, "Coloured" education by the House of Representatives, and "black" (African) by the Department of Education and Training. This separation was accompanied by inferior educational provision and selective curricula. Widespread resistance has lead to a rejection of the educational edifice as it exists. Recent years have seen a less exclusive pupil population within the so-called Coloured, Indian and White authorities, and it is reasonably certain that there will be a single authority shortly after the national elections in April 1994, with decision-making structures at a regional level

5 Christian National Education (CNE) is the official position of Afrikaner National- ists on education and is considered the educational expression of apartheid, based on a belief in the need for racial segregation (not uncommon in a colonial era) and Calvinist teachings. It succeeded in providing very unequal education according to racial categorization. While this philosophy entrenches ethnic nationalism, it was also constantly contested by the English-speaking sector of the teaching pro- fession and faced growing rejection by people of colour.

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10

See review section of this publication.

The four broad aims are set out for the learner as the development of the individual in terms of intellect, moral character, and personality; the development of individuals to their full potential; the preparation of learners for independence and occupational competence, and the education of learners towards useful citizenry.

The National Education Co-ordinating Committee developed from the National Education Crisis Committee which was formed in response to parental and community concern at the growing disruption and rejection of black schooling (1985) and advocated People's Education, drawing on ideas of Liberation Socialist thinking.

The video Media Education - an ABC, produced by the Media Resource Centre is a record of work that has been carded out recently with children in their first year of primary school.

I refer to workshops for certain teachers in the Department of Education and Train- ing in Natal attending in-service courses on teaching advertising in January 1994.

References

Allen, Robert C. 1989. Reader oriented criticism and television. Chapter 3 of Chan- nels of Discourse. London: Methuen.

African National Congress (ANC) Education Department. 1994. A Policy Framework for Education and Training (Draft: for discussion purposes). Johannesburg: ANC.

Ang, Ien. 1985. Watching Dallas. London: Methuen.

Ashworth, Joan & Prinsloo, Jeanne. 1994 "A Draft proposal for a Programme to address the Challenges for Teaching and Learning English, both in a Chang- ing Classroom and a Changing Country." (In this publication.)

Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD), Implementation Plan for Educa- tion and Training. 1994. Using Media in Education and Training. (Unpublished.)

Department of National Education (DNE) 199 la. Educational Renewal Strategy. DNE: Pretoria.

Department of National Education (DNE), 1991b. Curriculum Model for Education in South Africa (CMSA) DNE: Pretoria.

Eagleton, Terry. 1983. Literary Theory. London: Blackwell.

Faasen, Nicol. 1992. Media and Film Studies in Schools of the Cape Education De- partment. In Prinsloo, Jeanne & Criticos, Costas. (eds.) 1992. op. cit.

Giroux, Henry. 1992. Border Crossings - Cultural Workers and the Politics of Edu- cation. New York: Routledge.

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Gosher, Sidney P. 1992. Visual li teracy and film study in Transvaal schools. In Prinsloo, J. & Criticos, C. (eds.) 1992. op. cit.

Hall, Stuart and Whannel, Paddy. 1964. The Popular Arts. London: Hutchinson Edu- cational.

Leavis, FR. & Thompson, Denys. 1977. Culture and Environment. London: Chatto and Windus.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1984. The Postmodern Condition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Masterman, Len. 1985. Teaching the Media. London: Comedia.

Morley, David. 1985. The Nationwide Audience. London: BFI

National Educational Policy Investigation (NEPI), 1992a. Curriculum. Cape Town: Oxford University Press/NECC.

National Educational Policy Investigation (NEPI). 1992b. Post Secondary Educa- tion. Cape Town: Oxford University Press/NECC.

Postman, Neil. 1986. Amusing Ourselves to Death. London: Heinemann.

Potenza, Emilia. 1993. Get the Message? Cape Town: Maskew Miller

Prinsloo, Jeanne and Criticos, Costas. (Eds.) 1991. Media Matters in South Africa. Durban: MRC.

Ranby, Peter. 1993. Get the Picture! Cape Town: Maskew Miller

Williamson, Judith. 1981. How Does Girl Number Twenty Understand Ideology? Screen Education, 40, (Autumn/Winter) 1981/2

Young, Douglas & Regnard, Claudia. 1992. Media and Meaning. London: Oxford University Press, 1992)

UNESCO 1982 Declaration on Media Education. In Prinsloo, J and Criticos, C. 1991. Media Matters in South Africa. Durban: MRC.

Video: MRC 1992 Media Education - an ABC. Durban: Media Resource Centre (PAL. 21 minutes).

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media education in south africa: at the edge!

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