Not ‘Philosophy of Media Education’, but ‘Media Education as Philosophy’: Working with ‘Creativity’

Abstract

It is to my enduring shame that, upon starting my first media studies teaching job in 1991 and being recommended Len Masterman’s Teaching the Media by a colleague, I appraised it sceptically and pronounced ‘bit dated isn’t it?’ Twenty years later, returning to Masterman, I appreciate his intelligence, political commitment and willingness to make media studies philosophical — I love the fact that he has a chapter called ‘Rhetoric’, for example. This essay, then, attempts a few different things: it attempts to articulate an unease, a dissatisfaction with a subject area which now seems to be in thrall to ‘professional practice’; it attempts to show how the notion of creativity is used to legitimate such a shift; it attempts to subvert this notion by revealing its incoherence; and, not least, it attempts to make amends to Masterman for my callow foolishness.