1975 NCTE Annual Business Meeting in San Diego, California

Background

This resolution grew out of awareness among educators that understanding the new media and using them constructively and creatively actually required developing a new form of literacy—new critical abilities “in reading, listening, viewing, and thinking” that would enable students to deal constructively with complex new modes of delivering information, new multisensory tactics for persuasion, and new technology-based art forms. Be it therefore

Resolution

Resolved, that the National Council of Teachers of English, through its publications and its affiliates, continue to support curriculum changes designed to promote sophisticated media awareness at the elementary, secondary, and college levels; and, to this end, that NCTE create a new committee composed of no more than six members from the NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak and the CEE Committee on Teacher Training in the Nonprint Media, which will prepare a collection of materials not later than November, 1976;

that NCTE continue to encourage teacher education programs which will enable teachers to promote media literacy in students; and

that NCTE cooperate with organizations and individuals representing teachers of journalism, the social sciences, and speech communication to promote the understanding and develop the insights students need to evaluate critically the messages disseminated by the mass media.

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.