Kellner and Share

   The article focuses on the critical media literacy and how to address it in the classroom. Critical media literacies can be described as lenses for thinking critically through or about media. If I introduce an image of a celebrity, the critical literacy is not simply learning about the celebrity or how to draw the celebrity, but about either how the image reads, why celebrity has importance in our society, what impressions these images imprint on society, etc. The article points out that media and contemporary popular culture is apart of the lives of students. The questions are  how do media enter the class room and what do we do with that aspect of student life? Media undoubtedly enters the classroom. Students bring it in with them, knowingly or not. If the assignment is to create a portrait, what do you do when your student chooses to draw a celebrity, as they often will? There is the choice to ignore it, treat it as any other image and face. But it isn't just any face. It;s a face of celebrity that the student deliberately brought in, after filtering out dozens of other contenders for the assignment. Why this person? Why this pose? This is where the critical literacy can be introduced. The material media is there to work with, the critical literacy is in what you do with that media. And then who does what with the media that students track in on their feet? A separate teacher? Someone in the English or social studies department? Surely every subject area teacher has enough on their hands to pack into lessons, but critical literacies aren't a new subject area separate from all the rest. Because of their critical nature, they can work with any lesson already structured into the class. It asks for a re-framing of information, which can be done by any subject area, albeit more easily in certain some . In visual arts education, critical media literacy is all too easily incorporated into the class. Acknowledge student choices and popular culture instead of ignoring their role in the classroom and the lens of education if re-framed.