ASIA/INDIA - Catholic school curriculum will soon include education to critical use of the media

Bangalore (Fides Service) - Catholic education institutes are getting ready to include Education to Critical Media Use as a regular subject in the school curriculum. For some time religious and secular bodies involved in Catholic education, Bishops’ Commission, associations of headmasters, teachers, commissions of religious orders and so forth, have recognised the need to teach children a proper use of the media and promoted the inclusion in official Catholic school curriculum of the subject of Education to Critical Media Use.
In recent years Church teaching and theological reflection have given increasing attention to the media’s impact on society and on public opinion and Catholics are encouraged to recognise this situation and take an active part in the field of social communications. In 2005 the Catholic Bishops of India, after reflecting on the theme Church and Media at their plenary assembly, called on Catholics to be more involved in the media, to spread the good news of the Gospel and also to portray and represent the Catholic Church as she really is in Indian society.
Catholic Bishops in the various states of India are now taking steps to include “education to the media” in Catholic school programmes. One state which is ahead in the process is Karnataka in south west India. Jesuit Father Sunith Prabhu, secretary of the regional commission for Catholic Education explained: “Children, adolescents and young people of today are exposed to a bombardment on the part of the media: TV, mobile telephones, the Internet often transmit messages which are dangerous”. It is therefore most important, he said, for children to learn in school how to make good use of the media and how to discern between good and bad information. (Agenzia Fides 20/1/2006 righe 26 parole 261)