No matter what the setting or project, but particularly for formal learning, media educators insist that the process of learning embody the concepts being taught. Stressing as it does critical thinking, it is inquiry-based. Touching as it does on the welter of issues and experiences of daily life, it is interdisciplinary and cross-curricular. It is ironic and also understandable that the United States is the premier producer of international mass media, but that media literacy education is only beginning in this country. The United States has a culture fascinated with individualism and with tote potential of technology to solve social problems.
Media literacy is thus an especially difficult challenge in the United States.
The U.S. experience until recently has been that of a blizzard of idiosyncratic projects, typically driven by the passion of individual teachers and organizers. Corporate projects and materials, in search of markets for new technologies, have also explored media literacy. This diversity reflects, among other things, the decentralized nature of U.S. education. In the last several years, leaders in various media literacy arenas have coalesced around basic definitions, approaches and goals for media literacy. This emerging process has been reflected, inter alia, in the creation of the National Association for Media Education, and indeed in the conference itself.