ABSTRACT

Engaging with digital media is part of everyday living for the majority of children, yet opportunities to learn about, through and with media are denied many pupils in compulsory schooling. Whilst Media Studies in the UK is internationally reputed to be well established, changes made to the primary and secondary national curriculum in 2014 included removal of existing media study elements. We demonstrate what is lost by these actions in relation to the United Nations Rights of the Child and, in particular, the right of the child to express identity. We demonstrate how media literacy had previously been included in curriculum, enabling opportunities to address children’s rights, and propose that the absence of media education is part of an overall trend of the non-prioritisation of children’s rights in England and Northern Ireland. The paper calls for media literacy to be reintroduced into primary and secondary curriculum.

摘要

参与数字媒体是大多数儿童日常生活的一部分，但许多义务教育学生被剥夺了了解、通过和使用媒体的机会。虽然英国的媒体研究在国际上享有盛誉，但 2014 年对小学和中学国家课程的更改包括删除了现有的媒体研究元素。我们展示了这些行动在联合国儿童权利方面的损失，特别是在儿童表达身份的权利方面。我们展示了媒体素养以前是如何被纳入课程的，从而为解决儿童权利提供了机会，并提出媒体教育的缺失是英格兰和北爱尔兰儿童权利不优先的总体趋势的一部分。