United States Standards

Is media literacy taught in schools? In many countries outside the U.S., media education IS integrated nationwide into many aspects of K-12 curricula, but not here at home (here's why). Montana and Texas are the exceptions in the United States. Montana Standards for Media Literacy (opens PDF) have benchmarks for 4th, 8th and 12th grades. Texas' Viewing & Representing standards show how media literacy can be thoroughly integrated into curricula.

In the other 48 states, standards for media literacy education vary widely. In 1999, Robert Kubey [1] and Frank Baker [2] wrote Has Media Education Found A Curricular Foothold? for Education Week Magazine, and Baker developed a matrix showing where all 50 states have at least one reference to media studies in the curriculum (usually English/Language Arts or Social Studies, but also sometimes in Health/Life Skills or Media Studies classes). Teachers can check that matrix to find where media literacy educations can be found in your state's standards. Updated California standards are here.

International Standards

As the first recipients (several decades ago) of American English-language media exports, Australia, Canada and Great Britain have the most highly advanced academic research and educational programs in media studies and media education. Choose a country below for information on their school standards.

• Australia The Australian Teachers of Media, Queensland site once had links to the Queensland media curriculum documents, which teachers there believe are "amongst the most developed in Australia." Their website has now changed, and as of March 2008 we can't locate working links to the actual curricula, but you could visit the site and use the Contact link to make an inquiry.

• Canada The excellent Media Awareness Network site has an overview of curricular outcomes and expectations in curricula across Canada. (Thank you to Jane Tallim for this link.) The Media Literacy Online Project has two links to curriculum standards in Ontario, Canada.

Other countries are also way ahead of the United States:

• France CLEMI, the Centre for liaison between teaching and information media, was created in 1983 with the mission of "promoting especially by means of training activities, the multiple use of news media in teaching with the aim of encouraging a better understanding of the world by pupils while simultaneously developing critical understanding." The CLEMI program focuses on teaching media literacy relative to the news media.
  

[1] Robert Kubey, Ph.D. directs the Center for Media Studies and is Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Media at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.
[2] Frank W. Baker is past President of the Partnership for Media Education and is a media educator from Columbia, South Carolina. Frank maintains the Media Literacy Clearinghouse website, and is a consultant to MediaLiteracy.com.