"curriculum of prevention"

in her book, tuned in: television and the teaching of writing, brownwyn williams says the following:

"This stance, of defining anything emerging from mass popular culture, particularly television, as not falling withing a definition of legitimate cultural capital, begins in grade school and is reinforced through the educational system (Dyson 1997, 3). Indeed, as Joseph Toobin poings out, if television or other media education make it into elementary schools at all, it "is taught along with sex and drug education, as a curriculum or prevention rather than appreciation" (2000, 5)."

this gets at one part of what susan was saying (see comments under "are we better off?"), one part of the bigger issue of how the not-so-new medium of television continues to be situated within broader educational discourses - and the distancing that persists between the value of 'textual literacy' and popular culture, writ large.