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Experience
as a teacher has made Sainath a keen observer of the
effects of media on children.
"There is no resemblance between the media of twenty
years ago and today", he says,
emphatically. While it has always been normal for children
to want stylish clothes, (and there
is nothing wrong with that), today, the wanting has gone
from just wanting to craving and it is
the media, powered by market forces, that has made the
biggest difference in promoting
unbridled consumerism.
The
present generation of children is more media saturated
than ever before. They have started
believing in a media constructed reality. And, in this
context, the need for media literacy.
Even
a major, mainstream national daily, The Times of India
makes no bones about its focus. It issued
a ‘fatwa’ to staff in Aug-Sep 2003 – ‘The TOI is
not concerned with 99% of society. Let politicians
deal with the 99%. We are concerned with the 1% that
drives society.’
With
their purpose laid out as blatantly as that, little wonder
that ‘serious’ issues get short shrift in
the media. Is there enough being said in the press on the
impact of advertising on children’s health? There is
scant, poor reporting on such concerns. Enough has been
said on the issue of colas and recently, the JPC report
confirming the dangerously high levels of pesticide in
them.
But what about other equally important issues?
Twenty
years ago, the average American child consumed six times
more milk as sodas, but today
it’s the other way around. A ‘tectonic shift’ in
dietary habits! In one generation, there is a marked
rise in obesity, diabetes – a major problem in the USA
and, as surveys done across Delhi’s private schools
reveal, in India too. Advertising is to blame and that
makes the media culpable because
they feature the products but don’t care enough to warn
the consumer.
‘Fast
Food Nation’ by Eric Schlaser deals with the issue of
ethics or lack of it in advertising by
giant companies. The entry of colas and burgers into the
school system happened as a result of
cuts in education funding. Burger and cola majors stepped
in with money. But, with largesse,
comes the fine print which read that schools had to sell a
certain amount to ‘earn’ the funding.
So teachers entrusted with a child’s well being, became
‘junk peddlers’. Cola vending machines
were positioned outside the gym. Very appropriate when you
consider that it is the place around
which they are most likely to feel thirst but highly
inappropriate if you stop to think that these
drinks completely negate the work that happens inside the
gym.
The
concept of ‘media literacy’ arose from a bunch of
parents, teachers and concerned media professionals. They
saw a fundamental and growing disconnect between mass
media and reality.
At a time when children are techno-savvy and very
confident, the downside is that a group of
children are growing up far removed from history and large
sections of society. Media literacy is inextricably linked
with a knowledge of history. Teaching journalism students,
Sainath has always
had to give them a sense of history which is not very
strong.
Education
has to tackle this and issues like caste, communalism,
secularism, to make up for deficiencies in a media
unwilling to engage with these complexities. Instead, the
focus is fashion!
The largest single media issue of 2003 was Lakme India
Fashion Week! And this in a country
where only 0.2% of the population sports haute couture.
There is a pressing need to stop children
from becoming passive recipients of whatever the media
dishes out, because, for a media that
survives through advertising revenues – 80% from
advertising and 20% from readership, the focus
is pre-determined.
The
child or the consumer has to be a vigilant reader of the
media. This is where education can
play a part. There has to be a new approach, a willingness
to deal with these issues in the
classroom. The education sector is weighed down with
problems but just as these problems
cannot be solved within the educational system alone,
problems of the media can’t be solved
within the media. The family, business, the classroom all
have to play a part in engaging
themselves with the issues at hand.
Various
means and suggestions for exercises came up on how the
classroom can empower
children to read the media intelligently using their
critical faculties and through challenging
discourse.
– Groups in school can start drawing boundaries in
schools that won’t allow propagation of
brands / labels etc within the school.
–
Ask every child to spend a day with a child of another
religion / social group and ask them to then report an
issue through that child’s experience. This would allow
them to see things through a very different viewpoint.
– Engage
with complex issues and realities – to not shy away from
discussing issues like caste, patriotism, questions such
as ‘Who is the army?’ Why are workers and peasants
only important
when they die in large numbers.
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