Media Education in Israel - Mainstreaming the Avant-Garde

Nationalistic and religious political parties join pro-peace and feminist organizations in favoring media literacy. All wish to equip students with skills of skepticism, verification of information, critical reading, and alertness to manipulation. Paradoxically, this very struggle over the “truth” is helpful in promoting media education in Israel. In the first media curricula in the 1990s, critical discourse was a novelty in the education system. As critical education spread through the humanities, the critical discourse in media studies has detached itself from any clear political ideology. Around the world, the media discipline oscillated during the 1990s between two opposing approaches: protectionist and empowerment-oriented. Israel’s first formal media curricula, dating to the early 1990s, blazed the trail and were ahead of their time in two respects: critical thinking and meaningful learning that includes an active element of output and creative endeavor.