If I think back to major lessons I learned growing up, one was learning to uncouple the darkly dressed, sometimes dirty, weird looking person commonly labelled as the 'bad guy' in media from the expectation that that's what the 'bad guys' in real life were going to be like. While there definitely were some weird-looking folk out there that turned out to be bad, the greatest of life's real villains for me took great pains to look like they were just like everyone else. And it became slowly apparent that the framing of the darkly-dressed, sometimes shabby, weird-looking individual was more a cultural villainization of minority groups, and a christian-styled narrative theme of painting anyone in clean white and bright colours as good, and anyone in dark or dirty as bad. However, this was never something broken down and explained.
I've since felt that perhaps the same way we have kids read the works of William Shakespeare (with the breakdown on the next page) should be the way we host a class on media literacy for high-schooler's. At the current state of education in North America (specifically Canada and the US), we relegate such breakdowns as the realm of college's, universities, and other post-secondary education institutions in the area's of film or cultural studies. With the way that media is now so easily accessible, and has been for decades now (starting with the home TV, moving to the home PC, to tablets, laptops, and cellphones in the modern age) the need to move such education from post-secondary to secondary education I think is pertinent, and dare I say, vital to educating minors as they begin to approach adulthood. Especially since many politicians and public figures use such narrative elements in their addresses to attempt to seem legitimate, or well meaning when they could be anything but with their true intentions.
I know this is a long essay, but I don't think it's wrong to want children and teens to be able to more accurately understand media framing and censorship, and have them develop the skills to identify themes and tropes that might otherwise bias their interpretation of the events they see. In fact, it's an aspect of critical thinking we should uphold and promote. I think half of the grifters, and bad role-models we see in media wouldn't have half a leg to stand on with the younger generation if we taught them the basic skills. Just so that they know that a white T-shirt, a bright background, and a clean or formal look doesn't automatically land a point in the 'I should listen to this person' column. To teach them that perhaps the compare and contrast skill of "how would my mother/father/brother/sister/best friend (boy/girl/etc) at school feel if this was said about/or was them? And what if this was said about me?" are more important questions to ask before taking someone's advice.
I personally think we should make sure when we as adults today say "think before you act" that them as the next generation of future adults that WILL BE making the decisions of our later years know exactly what we mean. At current, we've done a massive disservice to a vast number of minors and adults by lapsing on such important education. And honestly, I know many of us simply didn't have the power or means to make the changes we wanted to, a lot of the power has been kept in the hands of the oldest generations in a death-grip, but that is soon to change if by no other means than time finally catching up to them and nature running it's course.
Basically, we need to look at the next several generations to come and ask ourselves how we, as power finally begins to trade hands, can make sure the future steers as far away from where we are today. I believe the answer lies not in the current craze of censorship and surveillance, but instead, in the time-tested strategy of education coming first.