Media Literacy is Elementary

The Author: Jeff Share worked for ten years as a freelance photojournalist documenting situations of poverty and social activism on several continents. He spent six years teaching bilingual primary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. After working as the Regional Coordinator for Training at the Center for Media Literacy, Share earned his Ph.D. in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. His current research and practice focuses on the teaching of critical media literacy in K-12 education. He is currently a faculty advisor in the Teacher Education Program at UCLA.

«Not teaching critical media literacy to your first graders? Why not?! With television and Internet content shaping how children see their world and themselves, Jeff Share argues ‘the earlier the better’. This book makes a compelling case for helping our youngest students analyze and create media. Taking up the tools – cameras, computers, pens, and pencils – in their own hands, children begin to participate in the discourse of democracy. Most importantly, they learn that they belong.» (Carol Jago, Vice President of the National Council of Teachers of English; Director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA)«Media literacy needs to be understood as a fundamental component of any well-rounded educational curriculum in the twenty-first century. In this groundbreaking work, Jeff Share argues persuasively that it is never too early to help young children learn the skills they need to make sense of the media culture in which they’re already immersed. Quite simply, this book should be required reading for all elementary educators, administrators, educational policy makers, and parents too.» (Jackson Katz, Creator of the educational video ‘Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity’)