Research On Contemporary Media Literacy Education

Education is a social practice focused on “human culture”. The bottom lin-e and the lawful basis of education are to make a man as a human being. In-other words, the fundamental for the existence of education is to promote hum-an development with "human culture" as a mission and "making a man as a h-uman being” as basic purpose and starting point. Therefore, how to achieve hu-man development becomes a key question to be answer in education. On the i-ssue of "human development", the basic quality of human is the central eleme-nt. That quality is not only an important condition of all-round development, b-ut also the basis for sustainable development. In the framework of "human cult-ure”, nurturing and development of basic quality constitutes the basic premiseof education. Contemporary media literacy education aims to foster and improv-e human’s basic media literacy, which is a purposeful, planned and organizedpractice. In essence it is a specific form of education that adheres to “humanculture” as a mission.In cotemporary, with the rapid development of media,"media-controlled ex-istence" has become an important characterization of social life. Human’s medi-a literacy constitutes the basis of social existence and development, affecting h-uman survival and access to resources for development. In order to achieve themission of human culture, contemporary media literacy education, should not-only be simply limited to the culture of human’s basic quality, but should alsoimprove human’s quality of life by enhancing human’s basic media literacy. Itmay create a possible way and meaning of life and correspondingly increasehuman happiness. Since the1930s, media literacy education has become a mea-ns to solve social crisis and social problems in various names of politics, econ-omy, morality, etc. But it is different from the beginning track of "human cult-ure" and specifically aimed at enhancing human’s media literacy. With the deve-lopment of media society, innovation of educational philosophy and educationalpractice go into deeply in contemporary. The status and value of media litera-cy education is gradually standing out. First, media literacy education has beco-me the intermediary condition of access to resources for survival. Second, medi-a literacy education has reflected its process-based value in participating in soci-al “reproduction" and human “modernization”. Third, in contemporary society,media literacy education makes it possible that people live a life in line with t-he times.In China, media literacy education started in the1990s and has been carri-ed out under the initiative of media literacy education scholars. On the one ha- nd, the development of media society provides a favorable external environmen-t to the launch of media literacy education in China. On the other hand, Chinahas made efforts for its "localization" since media literacy education is introd-uced in China. The effort is not only to make media literacy education as anindependent discipline, but also to carry out the practice of media literacy educ-ation smoothly, especially to play a positive role in social “reproduction” andhuman “modernization". However, the short time and low degree of localizationhinder the quality of personnel training. The localization is not available to m-eet the needs of social and human development. Therefore, the contemporarymedia literacy education in China should establish a theoretical and practical sy-stem with local characteristics and China’s education reality.In western developed countries, media literacy education started earlier. So-they have many advanced conceptions, mature practices and great number ofexperience. In order to further promote the in-depth practice of media literacyeducation, China need to draw on western developed countries based on nation-al circumstances. Specifically, China should work on the following aspects.(1)China should have a proper understanding of the nature and task of media lit-eracy education, stick to the mission of "human culture", establish the values a-nd ideals that go beyond "survival" to create "meaning" and upgrade education-al concepts with the times;(2) China’s contemporary practice of media literacyeducation, in addition to persisting in "cultural contemplation" based on nation-al conditions, should strengthen the cultivation of "localization";(3) media liter-acy education need to adhere to the principle of "subject construction" to stimu-late students’ subject consciousness and improve the structure of students’ basicquality;(4) in the contemporary media society, media literacy education needto establish a “community-school-family" tripartite linkage mechanism to fo-rm a strong cohesive force in practice and promote the combination of own co-nditions and life practice.