Search and judge
In short it comes down to this: children have to learn to deal with material of others. That is: the information they receive but didn't ask for it, and the information that they can look up their selves.
To deal with material of others doesn't go by itself; that has to be learned. In every case, the next subjects should be considered:
• learning to develop search-strategies (how you will find what you want to know?);
• learning to judge the reliability of information;
• learning to criticize information (how to make a difference between facts, theories, lies, prejudices, etc.)
Copyright and plagiarism
A particular aspect of learning to deal with material of others, which has become more evident with the rise of the computers and the Internet, is to respect the copyright. In early years it occasionally happened that students would copy text from a book to use it for their own work. Plagiarism is how they called it back then. Only these days it's almost more a rule than an exception.
Children have to learn what is allowed and what isn't. When is it quoting, and when is it plagiarism? How a correct source indication looks like? How you can copy something from the Internet for your own homepage? Is it the same for text as for photographic-material? And what about copying pictures, images, music and video-clips from the Internet? There are many violations of the copyright to find on the Internet. That will give the impression that this is allowed to do so, but it isn't. You will need permission first from the copyright-holder. Even at school children have to learn about this subject through education.
Advertising
Not only at home but also at school there should be paid more attention to the influence of advertising and commerce. Youngsters and adults should exchange views with each other about the stereotypes, the clichés and the values of the different (advertising) messages. People are easy to be influenced by the media.
Do you have to buy a particular product or a particular brand to be accepted by others? Do you have to follow the recent image of woman? What is the role of violence in this expression? On which principles is the used humor based?
The present situation
Media-education isn't yet in the educational program and the development has just been started. This means that parents are temporarily responsible to help their children dealing with media.
Fortunately there are also many schools and teachers, that can deal with this, and doing their best with their own educational programs. But unfortunately parents can't expect more at this moment.
