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With this nation's renewed interest in children and education in the 1990s, there have been significant signs of recent growth in the media literacy movement emerging in the United States. In the State of North Carolina, for example, media literacy is included in both the Communication Skills (English) curriculum and in the Information Skills curriculum. In many communities, educators have begun the process of thinking seriously about expanding the concept of literacy to include media. While there was only one teacher-training program in media literacy in 1993, in 1994 there were 12 different programs held across the United States. However, in most communities, media literacy exists due to the energy and initiative of a single teacher, not because of a coordinated, community-wide programmatic plan of implementation. At present, only one such plan is now underway, in the community of Billerica, Massachusetts, which is developing a comprehensive media literacy program that reaches all students across the curriculum in grades K - 12.

Renee Hobbs, EdD, a prolific writer, speaker, researcher and curriculum designer in the field of media literacy education, is the director of the Media Education Lab at Temple University in Philadelphia. She is a founding Board director of the Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA).

For years, many educators (and some parents, too) have stood like ostriches, sticking necks in the sand and trying very hard to ignore media culture. Television became the