Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/22/media-studies


In defence of media studies

How do we judge if a subject is easy or difficult? Condemnation of media 
studies reflects a fundamental confusion about its aims

o David Buckingham
o guardian.co.uk, Saturday 22 August 2009

It's unfortunate for teachers and students that the exam results always 
come out in the midsummer silly season. It seems to guarantee a flurry 
of tiresome political rhetoric, in which their hard work, and the 
realities of contemporary education, are entirely ignored.

This summer's great education debate has seen frequent mention of media 
studies – a subject that is now a byword for dumbing down. Media 
studies, we are told, is one of those soft options now being offered to 
the deluded students of our state schools; while the privately educated 
elite are being stretched by real, hard subjects like physics and maths. 
Admissions tutors at a few elite universities apparently look down on 
such soft options. And shadow education secretary Michael Gove has even 
proposed that schools be allocated more points in the league tables for 
hard subjects than easy ones.

If anything is a symptom of dumbing down, it is the willingness of 
politicians and pundits to pronounce on things they know nothing about. 
But why would they bother to find out? It is so much more convenient for 
them to represent media studies as just a matter of ignorant chavs 
sitting around watching telly.

Much of the discussion of media studies reflects a fundamental confusion 
about its aims. On the one hand, it is chided for being not vocational 
enough: after all, media studies GCSE isn't going to get you a job in 
the BBC. Yet on the other, it is condemned for not being academic 
enough: it is, quite hilariously, a Mickey Mouse subject.

But how might these arguments apply to other subjects? Do we judge the 
value of English degrees on whether they equip students to become 
professional literary critics? In fact, the employment rate of media 
studies graduates is higher than in most other humanities and social 
science subjects; and most of them are getting jobs in media-related 
professions, however precarious they may be.

The charge of being insufficiently academic is one that media studies 
students – who routinely struggle with the complexities of social and 
cultural theory – would find quite ridiculous. The academic study of the 
media dates back more than 80 years, and there is a vast body of 
scholarship on the sociological, psychological, cultural and economic 
dimensions of the media.

Indeed, there are many academics researching and teaching about the 
media at Oxford and Cambridge, and at most leading "old" universities. 
Meanwhile, competition for places on media studies degrees is intense, 
with required grades often much higher than for other subjects.

How do we judge whether a subject is easy or difficult? Is art 
difficult? For some it is as easy as breathing, but for others it is 
something they will always struggle to master. For some, maths must seem 
like a soft option, while for others it will forever remain a closed book.

The suspicion of media studies is very similar to that which greeted 
sociology in the 1960s, or English literature in the 1920s. Then, the 
suggestion that young people might study books in their native language 
rather than just in ancient Greek and Latin was little short of scandalous.

Now, the idea that young people might study the media of modern 
communication seems equally scandalous. Newspapers have been around for 
more than 250 years, the cinema for more than 100 and television for 
more than 60. Perish the thought that schools should recognise, and 
interrogate, their existence.

This suspicion is fuelled by some who work in the media, but who seem to 
regard what they do as somehow unworthy of serious critical attention. 
Or perhaps they find such attention threatening?

By all means let's have a serious debate about how we teach media 
studies, and what it can achieve. But that debate needs to be based on 
more than ignorance and narrow-minded prejudices about modern culture.