MEDIA IN THE EDUCATION

Media in the education & how it change the way of teaching



Media in the education & how it change the way of teaching

The media plays a very important role as a source of information, education and entertainment. It accommodates the world in to a single village which is saturated of media-information. Media plays an important role. It's a mirror of the society. Its duty is to inform, educate and entertain the people but nowadays we see that media is not doing its duty honestly. Instead of giving important information and educative programme it is giving emphasis to sensationalize the public. They are only trying to attract people to increase their TRP rating. They raise the matter for 2 or 3 days then they forget that and never try to get the feedback of the cases.

Media has a constructive role to play for the society. Today News Channels and even some Newspapers is mouthpiece of some political parties. Their work then limits only to spread the ideology of the party rather than giving the correct news. People have to judge on their own by looking different channels for the same news and then form a conclusion.

Unlike many world events, when it comes to education and schools, almost everyone has first-hand experience of the teaching-learning process. For most, that has entailed six years of primary and six years of secondary education - a very long exposure indeed to the workings of the classroom, school curricula and the dynamics of school life. Parents relive that experience from another perspective when their children go to school. Many in the community would regard themselves as knowledgeable about the education process and some would regard themselves as 'experts' on every school education related topic or issue.

One could expect that with this level of experiential background on the subject of education, the public would be well informed and far less susceptible to distorted, biased, or in any way manipulated media coverage of the education enterprise. This is not the view taken by educational researchers and commentators David Berliner and Bruce Biddle. In their controversial book The Manufactured Crisis they provide a sharp critique of U.S. media coverage of school reform initiatives and student achievement data. They claim the public is being manipulated into believing that the schools, particularly public schools in the United States, are failing in their responsibilities to students and the community (Berliner & Biddle, 1995).

Berliner and Biddle's report card on press coverage of educational issues lists seven deficiencies. These included the media's propensity to cover negative stories over more positive news, its simplistic and incomplete treatment of what are often complex social as well as educational problems, and the misuse and abuse of statistical data when reporting on national and international student achievement studies (Berliner & Biddle, 1995).

It's not just the weaknesses and limitations of educational reporting that Berliner and Biddle write about. At the heart of their criticism of the media is their argument and belief that, in ...