Commentary: How Media Education can Promote Democracy, Critical Thinking, Health Awareness, and Aesthetic Appreciation in Young People

Media literacy education is at a watershed moment around the world. We are making the inevitable and gradual turn to changing what we do in classrooms to make education more student-centered and responsive to children's and society's real-world needs. In the pages ahead, the author explores the goals of media education and why it is important, how it is developing in the United States in comparison to the rest of the world, and how media education can promote critical thinking, democracy, health, and aesthetic appreciation.