For many years, the Media Education Foundation (MEF) has put out videos and DVDs to help people understand the social impact of mass media on our culture. MEF is especially committed to helping young people critically analyze sitcoms, sports broadcasts, advertisements, news programs, and other media products. Where commercial media tend to lead young people into
being passive viewers and consumers, MEF helps them become more savvy about the way media have affected them all their lives and continue to influence them in powerful ways.
Now MEF has invited Peter Elbow to use a selection of short clips from their longer DVDs about the media in order to create materials for teaching writing and helping teach media studies. What you’ll find here is a collection of writing assignments and clips from MEF DVDs — and lots of suggestions and tools for using them. The MEF media clips are ideal for creating an experiential or
workshop approach to intellectual work, an approach that foregrounds active participation rather than passive listening and tends to create deeper learning.
This curriculum has been written and assembled for a spectrum of different teachers.