This final section of Rick Shepherd's article: "Elementary Media Education: The Perfect Curriculum" explains why media education is the first, true "post-industrial" curriculum.

All this is very promising, and we are optimistic about the future of media literacy at the elementary level. Nonetheless, there are still many obstacles to overcome. One of the most significant is simply the need to break down old ideas about curriculum. Although elementary educators talk constantly about the need to integrate the curriculum, they still use old categories, and atomized subject areas as a conceptual framework. When something like media literacy (which is in fact a "meta-curriculum") comes along, they persist in trying to fit it into the old subject categories by doing some media literacy in their reading or social studies programs - rather than recognizing it as an umbrella discipline into which other programs fit quite naturally and organically.

We hear more and more about "post industrial" models of education. Media literacy - with its departure from old models based on content mastery and fragmentation of knowledge, with its emphasis on the management and critical evaluation of information of all sorts - is, in fact, the first post-industrial subject. It is the only curriculum area naturally situated to address traditional skill areas such as reading and writing, as well as current educational concerns such as equity, violence, life skills and anti-racism. Media literacy is the only area in education with a framework and methodology that allows us to resist the increasing pressures on our educational system to produce consumers, rather than citizens.

The way forward becomes clearer and clearer. This is the perfect curriculum.

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Source: Adapted with permission from English Quarterly, vol. 25, nos. 2-3. Canadian Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts. Toronto, Ontario, 1992.