Students must go beyond button-pushing, taping school plays and football games and learning drill and practice exercises on the computer to become media literate. It takes a rigorous, formal course of media study that does not happen accidentally. The focus on production in the United States is not surprising. Americans love technology. Machines and electronics are a major part of North American culture and we tend to deal with the social consequences of technology later.
Production also fits in better with a job-readiness approach to education.
The main underlying goal of media education is to teach good citizenship skills. There was a time when amassing information was a form of power, but with an avalanche of information crashing down on us every day, it becomes increasingly apparent that those who can access and organize information are the ones who are empowered to make informed decisions. Information access is a democratic skill and an important one for media education. Computer education, telecommunications and old-fashioned library research skills are an essential adjunct to any media literacy curriculum. Teachers in media production classes have much to share with media resource teachers, librarians, computer teachers, social studies teachers, language arts teachers, and artists.