Discusses a high school unit involving the cartoon characters "Beavis" and "Butt-head." Examines how social values and social conflicts affect and mirror language use. Describes Beavis and Butt-head projects, and objections to the unit. Argues that schools must embrace nonprint texts to help students become skilled, literate,…

Argues that educators should train themselves and students to understand and cope with television's power. Describes an inventory of viewing and reading habits, then discusses how three principles of teaching television are expressed in class activities. Outlines a unit that takes students from television as "just entertainment" to active,…

This resource guide contains lessons, suggested activities, and 54 individual student activity sheets for using editorial cartoons in the classroom. Editorial cartoons, at their best, are well-thought out arguments about important issues in the news. They are meant to provoke thought, not merely assert a position and, as such, they engage the…

This paper describes a unit of instruction about media images--how they work, ways they affect people, and means to use them--in which young adolescents learn the consequences of becoming a media-literate consumer. The paper explains that in the unit, divided into 2 "clusters," 110 Boston-area eighth graders share 5 core academic…