A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

FOR RELEASE
October 4, 2000

U.S. Department of Education contact:
Melinda Kitchell Malico
(202) 401-1008
National Endowment for the Arts contact:
Katherine Wood
(202) 682-5570

RILEY AND IVEY ANNOUNCE NEARLY $1 MILLION IN MEDIA LITERACY GRANTS

U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Bill Ivey today announced $990,000 in grants to school districts to help young people better understand and interpret the artistic content of electronic media images -including those that contain violence. The grants, under the U.S. Department of Education's Arts in Education competitive grant program in partnership with NEA, are going to school districts in California, Florida, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

"Parents, educators and kids themselves need to be concerned with and careful about what young people see on TV, in movies and in video games," Riley said. "Anything we can do to help them critically analyze the wide spectrum of media messages that they are exposed to each day will help them make wiser decisions and lessen the chance that they will consider violence an acceptable way to solve problems."

Arts Endowment Chairman Bill Ivey said, "With the pervasiveness of media in the lives of our young people, it becomes ever more imperative that they are able to interpret the messages they receive. If our children don't learn to shape images, images will shape them."

The grant program, developed by the department in collaboration with the NEA, is intended to help school districts establish programs that teach students how to examine and interpret media messages and will include partnerships between schools and arts-based organizations. The projects will also help students create their own media-based projects, using film, video, Web site design and other art forms, that can offer an alternative to violent messages. Funds may also be used for teacher professional development and to develop curricula.

According to a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee report [Children, Violence and the Media, A Report for Parents and Policy Makers, September 14, 1999], almost half of children have televisions in their rooms and 67 percent of homes with children have video game equipment. Children spend an average of 4.35 hours in front of a screen, watching TV or videotape, paying video games or using a personal computer [Media in the Home 1999: The Fourth Annual Survey of Parents and Children, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 1999].

With so much media exposure, the likelihood of viewing violence is high, Riley said. On average, there are more than five violent scenes in an hour of network prime time, and five murders a night [The Man Who Counts the Killings, by Scott Stossel, Atlantic Monthly, May 1997]. And there are 25 violent acts per hour during Saturday morning cartoons - the programs most watched by children, often without supervision.

Young people not only need positive alternatives to film and television programs that portray violence, they also need to be able to critically evaluate and interpret the messages that surround them, Riley noted. This initiative taps young peoples' inventiveness, providing them with the opportunity to develop their own messages. Ivey adds, "The arts are tools enabling young people to respond creatively and non-violently to those messages, helping them better understand themselves and the world in which they live."

Kathleen Tyner, author of Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information, says that media education provides young people with various skills, including:

• deconstruction of messages or images to illustrate that media are created by people who decide what pictures/text to use, and what to leave out;

• appreciation of the media for artistry of the images, technical feats and creative vision;

• critical literacy, or evaluating the content as well as the construction of the message.

• The administration is seeking funds for additional grants to be awarded in fiscal year 2001.

• The department and the NEA will soon release Beyond the Classroom: Impact of the Arts in After-School Programs, a report that illustrates how the arts can enhance after-school programs.

NOTE TO EDITORS: A list of grantees, grant amounts, project descriptions and contacts follows.

Project descriptions

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