Violence and the Media: Teaching Strategies and a Rationale.

This paper suggests teaching strategies for grades 4 through 12 that examine the commercial media and their messages as agenda setters, i.e., as mechanisms for selecting social issues, establishing their importance, and defining socially acceptable attitudes and responses to those issues. The strategies also explore how the media can create biased points of view and how commercial interests help to determine the form and content of most commercial media messages. They are designed to raise awareness, to explore the extent to which media messages advocate values that are antithetical to ethical standards advocated by schools and responsible parents, and to place in context the need for media education at all levels of learning. The objective of the first activity presented is for participants to examine the extent to which violent media messages pervade our modern society. In the second activity, the objective is for participants to demystify how violent media messages are manufactured for high action/high violence television and film narratives; stunts and make-up workshops provide participants with experience in creating the illusion of violence and preparing actors for screen roles that require altering their appearance. Recipes for false flesh and blood, a narrator's script, and an equipment diagram are included. (Contains 14 references.) (MES)