Journalists and teachers advocate media literacy training from pre-school onwards
Journalists are firmly committed to media literacy as an antidote to the growing penetration of hoaxes, and teachers are joining in. A path that, in the opinion of academics, has made notable progress in recent years, although there is still unfinished business.
The report on Media Literacy in Spain, drawn up by the Luca de Tena Foundation on the basis of questions to a hundred experts, states that three out of every four teachers (74%) consider that students are uninformed and 67% believe that no resources have been invested in teaching media literacy in the classroom.
Journalists and teachers agree on the need to teach children to discern between news and hoaxes. Moreover, some of them consider it advisable to tackle it from pre-school education, in a context in which 7 out of 10 Spaniards recognise that they have believed false messages or videos.
The study also indicates that 40% of respondents think that there has been no investment at all, and 27% that there has been little investment in the resources and infrastructure needed to deliver media literacy, in contrast to other countries such as Finland, Denmark, Estonia or Sweden which are developing initiatives to tackle the problem.
Spain, the report explains, ‘does not even meet some of the most basic recommendations made by the European Union to member states, such as strongly supporting the establishment and development of media literacy networks, developing a lifelong learning approach to media literacy and supporting pilot projects, supporting the development of media literacy materials, or improving existing training models and designing new ones’.
The autonomous regions are calling for greater coordination between autonomous regions on media literacy training.
Some of the actions being implemented in Spain are being developed independently by the autonomous regions. The Vice-Minister for Educational Policy in the Community of Madrid, Rocío Albert, defended yesterday at the presentation of the study at Meta’s office in Madrid that “a safe method for children to make careful use of the platforms must be taught from infancy” and recalled that in the last two years more than 50 courses have been given in this field. “We have developed many training courses, also for teachers so that they can transmit better to students,” he said.
Andalusia is also making progress in this area. Macarena O’Neill, the Junta’s Vice-Minister for Educational Development and VET, highlighted that “we have established regional alliances, with different organisations, which have allowed us to improve a lot, although there is still a long way to go”.
Despite the progress made, the regional spokespersons believe that there is a lack of greater coordination between autonomous communities. “We need the state to coordinate us,” concluded Albert.
