The orphan has long been used as a device in adolescent literature to allow child protagonists to have wondrous adventures that would be stymied by the constraints of parents. Charles Dickens created a plethora of orphans whose parentless state allowed him to explore political, social and ethical issues of the time period. In The Outsiders, Pony boy and his brothers lose their parents in an automobile accident. The boys band together to avoid the threat of foster parents who would change their lives. The parentless child remained a plot device. Often these parentless boys embark on journeys that lead them to maturity. The emotions accompanying such a loss were subtly alluded to but mostly ignored. Only in the past decade have we seen a marked change in how adolescent literature examined the emotional complexities of grief and loss, particularly for adolescent girls.
People are uncomfortable discussing grief. During the 1900s, a great silence settled on the subject of death (Aries, 1974). Though Edna St. Vincent Millay once identified childhood as "the kingdom where nobody dies," our students witness thousands of deaths each year on television, while few explore bereavement. The classroom is no exception. Through a student's schooling, teachers read tragic stories from Charlotte's Web to Romeo and Juliet. Yet, we do not deal with the aftermath of loss. We do not teach our students how to mourn for Charlotte the spider or Johnny Cade and Dally Winston or Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. We silently close the book and move on. Our students who suffer personal tragedies have few models from which to draw in addressing their own sorrow. However, in the 1990s, a remarkable trend began in adolescent literature: an exploration of the nature of the grieving process in adolescents.
In this article, we focus on how adolescent literature can enable students to examine the specific experience of the motherless daughter. We acknowledge that the discussion of the death of a mother causes discomfort and resistance in some. While these adolescent novels are not the only titles on the topic, we feel they are powerful in reducing the threat of the situation and prompting meaningful dialogue. Each novel has been recognized as superior. We have each taught these books in middle school classrooms and found them to have merit. We will look at these novels in the chronological order of publication to see the evolution of the archetype of the motherless daughter from the 1960s to the present day. In addition, we will be utilizing the work of texts on grief and loss and how they relate to the motherless daughter to examine the nature of both bereavement and acceptance as explored in adolescent literature.
In Jean Craighead George's absorbing novel, Julie of the Wolves, Julie's mother died when Julie was but four years old. The character of the mother and her impact on Julie are only briefly discussed. In a short passage that opens Part II of the novel, Julie recalls a walk with her father on the day of her mother's death. She recollects not being sad, but rather being happy to be with her father. She remembers how her father said that the cries of the animals sounded as if they were grieving with him.
In Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss, Hope Edelman notes that young children do not have the understanding to deal with death. They do not understand the loss or the process of grief. Their bereavement process is often protracted. They often must wait to grieve until the surviving parent has mourned. Only then can the child grieve safely (1995) . George acknowledges this through julie's actions in the Newbery Award-winning novel. Her anger is directed at her aunt.
Edelman explains that a motherless daughter chooses a woman as a replacement figure. Instead of detaching from her lost mother, a daughter may try to quickly and directly transfer her feelings of dependency, her needs, and her expectations onto the nearest available adult. The woman can be a relative, a teacher, or a family friend who plays a strong role in the child's development. During adolescence, the motherless daughter will then rebel and gain autonomy from this woman. For Julie, that person is her aunt Martha. In early adolescence, Julie escapes from her aunt's home into an arranged marriage.
Yet, no effort is made in the text to further explicitly examine Julie's grief for the loss of her mother. She is only mentioned in passing. The text concludes with Julie's desire to reconcile with her father. The death of Julie's mother essentially remains a plot device to free the character for a wilderness adventure. Julie's grief is silenced.
Anna, 11, is one of the few motherless daughters in adolescent literature who is not an only child. She is the older sister to Caleb. Edelman states that a motherless daughter who is also the oldest child assumes the role of family historian. Patricia MacLachlan's poignant novel, Sarah, Plain and Tall, opens with Anna recounting the story of Caleb's birth and their mother's subsequent death. Caleb is listening and offering details, indicating that Anna has told this story many times before.
The role of family historian is only one in a pattern of service this motherless daughter accepts. Edelman reminds us that early loss is a maturing experience. Another pattern of service is the daughter'S assumption of her mother's role in the household, since no other older female relative exists to assume the tasks. Set in the prairie of the late 19th century, the story shows Anna labors in the home, undertaking many of the chores of her late mother.
MacLachlan does little to explore Anna's emotions regarding her mother's demise. In the opening passage, Anna ends her account of her brother's birth with her mother's dying words, "Is he beautiful?" Caleb answers for Anna, "And I was" (1985, 4). But Anna secretly and vehemently disagrees. She tells herself that he was homely and plain. He had a terrible holler and a horrid smell. She remembers going to bed thinking of how wretched he looked. In this sequence, we get a hint of the rage Anna feels about the death of her mother. Following this moment, Anna's grief, like Julie's in Julie of the Wolves, remains silent. It becomes secondary to the story of the arrival of Sarah Wheaton from Maine and her romance with Anna's father. For a long period, the cultural norm has been for the bereaved to be silent and move on (Stephenson 1985). Much adolescent literature prior to the 1990s reinforced this concept by keeping grief felt by protagonists unspoken.
Salamanca Hiddle lost her mother in a bus accident when she was twelve. Shortly after the death, Salamanca's father plucked her up like a weed and the two of them moved three hundred miles away to begin a new life. However, she has no interest living in a neighborhood of tiny homes jammed together like birdhouses. Nor is she interested in the stiffly dressed kids at her new school. She especially has no interest in knowing her father's fond new acquaintance, Margaret Cadaver. Sal simply wants everything to be like it was.
Sharon Creech's landmark story, Walk Two Moons, unfolds as Salamanca takes a week-long road trip with her grandparents to follow the steps of her mother's journey; a trip that ultimately leads to the site of Mrs. Hiddle's demise. It is a trip her father had made alone nearly twelve months earlier. Now it is Salamanca's turn to acknowledge the death of her mother.
The grieving process in adolescence is frequently characterized by an attack of emotions including fear, resentment, abandonment, guilt, and anger (Edelman, 1995). Creech's development of Salamanca's character allows her to illustrate these feelings. For instance, Sal is afraid. When she and her father move to Euclid, the first thing she does is to unpack all of the gifts and remembrances from her mother and display them around the room. Without them, Sal fears the memory of her mother will disappear completely. Salamanca's fear continues to be seen as she suggests the journey with her grandparents is a trip she is not eager to take, but one she has to take. In fact, even though her grandparents describe the jaunt as an opportunity to "see the whole ding-dong country," Sal only wants to see her momma but acknowledges that she is also afraid.
In addition to her fear, Salamanca is angry, especially at the relationship developing between her father and Margaret Cadaver. Creech often characterizes Sal as feeling "particularly ornery" and accentuates the awareness of her behavior. She tells the reader, "Whenever anyone tried to console me about my mother, I had nearly chomped their heads off." Although she feels miserable and lost, she will never admit it. Instead, Salamanca feels she has to cry by herself.
Edelman explains ornery behavior like Salamanca's by reminding us that mourning hurts. It requires these girls to take a risk, to lose control of emotions. In order to take this risk, they need to feel a safety from the remaining parent who has already begun the healing process. Therefore, adolescent girls begin to grieve six to nine months after the death of their mother. Not until Salamanca visits the site of her mother's grave a year later that she is able to face her sorrow and begin to move toward acceptance. In fact, Salamanca buries her grief as she remains in denial about her mother's death.
Psychologist Judith Mishne writes, "The avoidance of the finality of the loss is supported by fantasies of the parents return" ("Parental Abandonment," 1987, 17). In the same way, Salamanca tells us, "When my mother did not return, I imagined all sorts of things. Maybe she had cancer and didn't want to tell us and was hiding in Idaho. Maybe she got knocked on the head and had amnesia and was wandering around Lewiston, not knowing who she was, or thinking she was someone else." Salamanca needs to feel that her mother is coming back and refuses to believe her father saying those reasons are "fishes in the air."
Even when the journey to Idaho begins, Sal expresses an extreme urgency in getting to Lewiston by her mother's birthday so they would have a chance at bringing her home. "I had been praying that a miracle would happen and my mother would come back and we would return to Bybanks and everything would be exactly as it used to be." But once Salamanca saw the wreckage of the accident, she knew things would never be the same. When Salamanca finally returns to Bybanks, she learns that she can still live on the farm, she still climb the sugar maple tree, and she can still miss her mother, too.
In A Girl Named Disaster, Nancy Farmer's engrossing tale of a young girl's maturation in the rural Africa of Zimbabwe and later Mozambique, we are shown how one motherless daughter utilizes idealization of the deceased as a normal response to loss. The tragic death of Nhamo's mother, Runako, haunts her daughter. A leopard killed Runako when Nhamo was three years old. The animal came into the hut, struck, and dragged the young mother's lifeless body back into the jungle.
The bereaved move toward acceptance when they can visualize the face of the deceased at peace. Virginia Woolf, who was thirteen when her mother died, wrote, "Youth and death shed a halo through which it is difficult to see a real face" (A Sketch of the Past 15).
Nhamo cannot recall her mother's face. She supplements her mother's face with that of a model in an advertisement torn from a magazine. The woman, clean and well dressed, is serving margarine and bread to a little girl. Nhamo treasures the picture. She speaks to it daily as if her mother were still alive. Rather than surmising her mother's face looks like one of the weather-beaten women of her village, Nhamo idealizes her mother as having the features of a magazine model. Edelman writes that because girls love their mothers they want them to be flawless when they lived. Girls honor their mothers by granting them posthumous perfection, and soothe themselves by creating the mothers they wish they had had. One of the key reasons mothers cannot be replaced when they are gone is that there is confusion as to who is missed -the ideal mother or the real one (Davidman 2000).
Though deceased, Runako plays a vital role in a novel where spirits can and do converse with the living. When Nhamo is forced to flee her village in a leaking fishing boat and becomes lost on a great lake, she freely converses with her mother's spirit who responds. Nhamo hears her mother's voice as "sweet and low" (Farmer, 1996, 293). This is an idealized voice that would match the appearance of a model in a magazine advertisement. Later, after a severe illness, Nhamo comes to believe a female doctor is her mother, because of the physician's resemblance to the model in the advertisement. Nhamo transfers her mother's identity to the woman who cares for her during an illness. This idealized maternal figure is highly intelligent, a quality Runako was said to have possessed.
Only when Nhamo sees a photograph of her mother and hears the true story of Runako's life is Nhamo able to separate the image of her mother from the advertisement and to come to terms with her grief. Nhamo has established herself as an independent person without feeling she has abandoned the memory of her mother.
A daughter who is an only child suffers a different loss when her mother dies. Because she received more attention from her mother, her loss is greater, according to Edelman. That is true in Karen Hesse's remarkable novel, Out of the Dust.
The novel, written in first person, free verse poems, follows 14-year-old Billie Jo Kelby through a journey of healing that begins with her mother's accidental, yet horrific death. Set in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, the community holds both Billie Jo and her father jointly responsible.
After the death of the mother, the relationship between a father and his only child changes. Billie Jo comments, "I don't know my father anymore ... I am awkward and irritated ... We are both changing. We are shifting to fill in the empty spaces left by Ma." The effort is not successful. A nurturing, caring, unconditionally loving mother is so central to our idea of family that it is virtually impossible to have a family with out her (Davidman 2000).
Sometimes motherless daughters feel the impulse to become perfect so their father won't leave them too. During her first Christmas without her mother, Billie Jo aches that she never had mother teach her to make a special cranberry sauce. Billie Jo laments that being there without her mother would not have been so bad if she had remembered the cranberry sauce her father so enjoyed. In reality, it is not cranberry sauce that is creating distance between father and daughter.
The death of her mother has left Billie Jo and her father alone. Not knowing how to cope with the death, their relationship begins to disintegrate. Edelman reminds us that a child who loses a parent cannot exist alone emotionally without significant cost. Billie Jo desperately yearns for her father's love, but they no longer know how to talk with one another. Billie Jo states, "My father and I, we can't soothe each other. I'm too young, he's too old, and we don't know how to talk anymore if we ever did" (Hesse 153).
Time progresses and the relationship diminishes further. "I have given my father so many chances to understand, to reach out, to love me. He once did. I remember his smile, his easy talk. Now there's nothing easy between us" (Hesse 195).
Ultimately Billie Jo leaves her father. Unable to find solace, this motherless daughter hopes to abandon her loneliness when she latches on to an abandoned boxcar and heads west. She is not gone long. During her journey, Billie Jo learns a life on the road is even more lonely than the life at home. Upon her return, she and her father begin to find healing, acceptance, peace, and forgiveness:
As we walk together,
side by side,
in the swell of dust,
I am forgiving him, step by step,
for the pail of kerosene.
As we walk together,
side by side,
in the sole-deep dust,
I am forgiving myself
for the rest.
(Out of the Dust 206)
Suicide brings with it a legacy of confusion, guilt, blame, hostility, stigma and feelings of rejection. Social stigma compounds problems created by a suicide. The potent mechanism of denial may prompt the bereaved to unconsciously create acceptable stories. That is all true for Miracle McCloy.
In a book that is controversial for its inclusion of Ouija boards and self-immolation, the effort undertaken by this motherless daughter to find inner peace is profound. Named by her maternal grandmother Gigi, Miracle was born immediately after her mother was killed. Sissy, nine months pregnant, was struck by an ambulance. "It didn't seem natural, a live baby coming out of the dead body of a dead woman. Gigi said it was the greatest miracle ever to come down the pike," reads the opening passage of Han Nolan's powerful novel, Dancing on the Edge (3).
Children who have lost their mothers feel they no longer have a stable foundation in their lives (Davidman 2000). The narrative of this novel follows Miracle as she leads an unconventional life filled with isolation and unspoken grief. Her father leaves one night during Miracle's first attempt to connect with her dead mother's spirit using the Ouija board. The grandmother Gigi denies the truth of her son's departure as a rejection of her. She creates a fanciful tale that has Dane vanishing in the flames of the candles in his basement bedroom.
Miracle grieves the loss of both her dead mother and absent father until her torment is extreme. She sets herself afire to follow her father. While hospitalized and partaking in therapy, Miracle confronts the truth of her mother's death:
I saw Mama sad, the way she was in the picture of her on the iron gate. I saw her standing on the side of the street looking down the road to check for traffic. I saw her watching the ambulance, waiting for it to pass, its siren screaming, blocking out her own thoughts, her ability to reason, there wasn't time. There was just the screaming siren, the speeding truck, there was no time to think, she just did it, she stepped in front of the ambulance. She let it hit her, I saw it. I knew how it was. I had always known. I had always known! (Dancing on the Edge 217).
Children grieve differently than adults. Their process is lengthened, extending throughout their development as their cognitive and emotional abilities mature. Miracle and some of our students cannot address the death of their mothers before they are ready. Yet, as Edelman suggests, all ties, both positive and negative, have to be evaluated before a daughter can reconcile her mother's death and move on.
There is no more suitable time to discuss the concept of forgiveness than in the wake of a suicide. This is the teachable moment. Students can learn to forgive the deceased and forgive themselves for any guilt they may hold. This is critical to the healing process. Later Miracle proclaims, "I didn't need Mama to make me feel real ... I was real ... It was knowing the truth -all of it. The truth made me real" (Dancing on the Edge 234).
In her landmark research and subsequent writings about death and dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified the five stages of grief and loss -anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (Kubler-Ross 1969). Award-winning author Norma Fox Mazer sends 13-year-old Sara beth Silver on a journey through these stages following the untimely fatal heart attack of her 29-year-old mother, Jane Halley Silver.
Sarabeth changes following the death of her mother. "You're not the person you used to be. Jane would cry to see you," warns Cynthia, Sara beth's mother's best friend, and now Sarabeth's temporary guardian (Girlhearts 157).
Others notice the change. Her friend Patty, a sexual abuse survivor, tells Sara beth, "You're all closed up; you're like a room with no doors and no windows" (Girlhearts 150).
The character of Chester Jay Travisino, Sarabeth's social worker, allows Mazer to speak directly to the grieving process and specifically to issues of anger present in one suffering from grief and loss:
This 'yeah, yeah' stuff is telling me you're depressed. You're mad, really mad. And we both know why. You're mad at your mother for dying. Simple as that. Listen you can admit it. Nobody'll put you in jail for being angry about her deserting you. (Girlhearts 93)
Through the narrative, Sara beth does confront her anger, as well as her denial, her depression, and ultimately her acceptance. In the closing of the novel, Sara beth has a dream of her mother. They share a moment together. Finally Sarabeth acknowledges the realization that she will never forget her mother nor will her mother forget her. "And the happiness I felt was extraordinary."
Traditionally we shield children from the grim finality of death. Girlhearts does not shield the adolescent reader from Sarabeth's raw emotions. Kubler-Ross spent her life writing about how death shapes experience. Advocating that children should not be hidden from a friend or a family member who is dying, she writes, "If we shield the canyons from the winds, we would never know the beauty of their carvings" (Kubler-Ross xix).
In Motherless Daughters, Phyllis Silverman, M.D., director of the Child Bereavement Study at Massachusetts General Hospital, stated that asking girls to sever ties to the past may only confound bereavement. When one loses her mother, the intervals between grief responses lengthen over time, but the longing never disappears. Edelman explains that grief always hovers at the edge of her awareness, prepared to surface at any time, in any place in the least expected ways.
As educators, we have choices. Many novels we teach begin or end in death. We can opt to turn away from those students who grieve and dismiss their emotion as the result of effective storytelling. Traditionally we shield children from the grim finality of death. Those who work with children confronted by death tell us that this is an error.
Girls enveloped in grief and loss feel anger, denial, and depression. Purposefully or not, we encourage denial. Societal rules regarding anger are different for young men than young women. Young women who exhibit rage are not in keeping with the traditional feminine behavior of many cultures. An adolescent who has lost the primary female role model in her life wants to conform. She wants the other females in her life to like her. The teenage girl who thinks her mother's absence will make her appear different or abnormal will often avoid talking about the loss or revealing any anger or depression to her friends. The motherless daughter is also coping with rejection. "My mother left me." The argument is not rational, but the feeling of rejection is real.
The notion exists that grief is a finite process that can be resolved (Davidman 2000). Grief does not end. Motherless daughters revisit their loss at significant moments in their lives—graduation, awards night, first date, a break up with a serious boyfriend, birthdays, Mother's Day. The motherless daughter misses her mother at these and other significant moments.
No one story should be expected to offer a complete philosophy, to portray all the stages of grief and adherence to the "typical" set of circumstances (Radley, 1999). Literary characters can provide experiences and actions to guide readers to empathy or to model positive choices. As educators, we have the opportunity of enriching the study of adolescent literature by expanding into the realm of profound relevancy for not only those students who address grief and loss in their lives but every student by providing a greater depth of understanding of bereavement and acceptance -the reality of death, the importance of connecting with others, the power of forgiveness, the ability to feel joy without guilt, and the freedom of truth.
James Lovelace is the Assistant Principal at Bret Harte Middle School in San Jose, California, and was a teacher of middle school English for 20 years. Laura Howell Smith is a new mother who taught middle school English for five years. She lives in Denver, Colorado.
Aries, P. Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present. Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1974.
Creech, Sharon. Walk Two Moons. HarperCollins Juvenile Books: New York, 1994.
Davidman, L. (2000). Motherloss. University of California Press: Berkeley, 2000.
Edelman, H. Letters from Motherless Daughters: Words of Courage, Grief, and Healing. Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA,1996.
Edelman, H. Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss. Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA, 1995.
Farmer, Nancy. A Girl Named Disaster. Orchard Books: New York, 1996.
George, Jean Craighead. Julie of the Wolves. Harpercollins Juvenile Books: New York, 1973.
Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. Scholastic: New York, 1997.
Kubler-Ross, E. On Children and Death. New York: Macmillan, 1983.
Kubler-Ross, E. On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan, 1969.
Mazer, N. F. Girlhearts. New York: Harper Collins, 2001.
Mishne,].. "Parental abandonment: A unique form of loss and narcissistic injury." Clinical Social Work Journal 7, fall,1979.
Nolan, Han. Dancing on the Edge. Harcourt Brace: New York,1997.
McLachlan, P. Sarah Plain and Tall. HarperCollins Juvenile Books: New York, 1985.
Radley, Gail. "Coping with death in young adult literature." The ALAN Review, volume 7, number 1, fall, 1999, 1416.
Stephenson,]. Death, Grief, and Mourning: Individual and Social Realities. Free Press: New York, 1967.
Woolf, Virginia. "A sketch of the past." Moments of Being. Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: New York, 1985.


The Greek Myths
William Harris, Prof. Em. Middlebury College
Preface and Historical Background
Euhemerus was a Greek philosopher who lived about 330-260 B.C. who is known mainly for his radical interpretations of the Greek myths, which he felt were part of a long historical tradition by which the Gods were originally men, known for some great historical feat or some important social and cultural advancement and later raised to god-hood. This view was current in Greek intellectual circles and was popular in the early Christian period as well, probably as a way of defusing the idea of pagan religion.
The principal materials were handed down in the writing of Diodorus Siculus' Bibliotheca Historica: Book VI, (Loeb Library ed. Vol. 3, transl. C. H. Oldfather, HUP 1970):
Diodorus presents Euhemerus as a friend of king Cassander, first ruler of Macedonia after the death of Alexander, on the throne no more than four years until his death. It was Cassander who sent Euhemerus to sea on international expeditions, going southward from Arabia for a number of days, before carried ashore on the island of Panchaea where he found inhabitants worship their gods with magnificent sacrifices. He found a temple to Zeus, in which there was a writing telling the deeds of Uranus, Cronus and Zeus when they were men in a fully human status.
Certain of the gods, they say, are eternal and imperishable, such as the sun and the moon and the other stars of the heavens, and the winds as well and whatever else possesses a nature similar to theirs; for of each of these the genesis and duration are from everlasting to everlasting. But the other gods, we are told, were terrestrial beings who attained to immortal honor and fame because of their benefactions to mankind, such as Heracles, Dionysus, Aristaeus, and the others who were like them. Regarding these terrestrial gods many and varying accounts have been handed down by the writers of history and of mythology; of the historians, Euhemerus, who composed the Sacred History, has written a special treatise about them, while, of the writers of myths, Homer and Hesiod and Orpheus and the others of their kind have invented rather monstrous stories about the gods.
Euhemerus says that Uranus was the first to be king, that he was an honorable man and beneficent, who was versed in the movement of the stars, and that he was also the first to honor the gods of the heavens with sacrifices, whence he was called Uranus, or "Heaven". There were born to him by his wife Hestia two sons, Titan and Cronus, and two daughters, Rhea and Demeter. Cronus became king after Uranus, and marrying Rhea he begat Zeus and Hera and Poseidon. And Zeus, on succeeding to the kingship, married Hera and Demeter and Themis, and by them he had children, the Curetes by the first named, Persephone by the second, and Athena by the third. And going to Babylon he was entertained by Belus, and after that he went to the island of Panchaea, which lies in the ocean, and here he set up an altar to Uranus, the founder of his family.
The materials relating to Euhemerus were first collected in a small volume by the Hungarian scholar Nemethy in 1889. New edition of the materials by Marek Winiarczyk: Euhemerus Messenius: Reliquiae, Hamburg 1994, and the Dissertation of H. F. van der Meer, Amsterdam 1949 (Dutch)
Euhemerism and Mythic History
This study investigates the Greek myths as a thinly cloaked chapter in an ancient Historical Tradition, which goes far back into the history of the Near East. A captious critic of conservative cast might call this approach Cultural Materialism, while many who have read and loved the Greek stories as highschool students will resent a theory which threatens the pleasure of the days when they were entranced with their Bulfinch's Mythology. The Myths themselves have no real basis in a Greek "Theology", which never was developed at any period.. The Mystery Religions which coursed through Hellenic culture from Homer to Christ were the real "Religion" of the Hellenic world, but their myths which were secret are ill known and generally had small influence outisde the cults.. But the Myths do have many traces of historical fact, much of it going back to a Pre-Greek period, even into the third millennium BCE. Examining these considerations critically is the core of the twelve chapters of this study.
The ancient Greek myths are a familiar part of the intellectual background of Western society. Along with the materials of the Old Testament and New Testament, Greek mythology supplies a variety of names, situations and awarenesses which no educated person can ignore. Reading the Greek and Roman literary Classics, one is constantly confronted with mythological references, and this is equally true of our English Classics, which from the Renaissance on used Classical mythological names and references as a part of the modern Western cultural tradition. The Greek and also the Hebraic traditions did contribute many of the views and traditions which crystallized in the mind of modern Western society. But it was from Charles Bulfinch's popularizing book (The age of Fable, l855) that Greek mythology became a part of the English language consciousness, while mythical motifs reappeared indirectly in painting, sculpture and the curious Greek Revival architecture in America. Even now elementary school classes learn the more common stories about the Greek gods, especially those which present material consonant with our society's esthetics and morals, while the less attractive tales of incest, murder and cannibalistic atrocities are conveniently avoided.
For the Romans the Greek myths were readily available, and since they reflected the values and status of the literary models of the Greek world, they were often used for largely illustrative and decorative purposes. We see a fascination with the Greek stories in Ovid's and Propertius' poetry, but sheer proliferation of mythologizing tends to become an end in itself. Mythological "references" in Propertius are often nothing more than literary "asides" for the recognition of an educated class of readers, while the poet's value lies more in his personal and subjective processes than in the mythological trimming.
For earlier authors Aeschylos and especially Pindar, the myths were intertwined with the poet's meaning in an inextricable interplay of forces, but already in the Hellenistic period and especially in Alexandrian circles the Greek myths were either reference points for new treatments of traditional themes, or used for purely decorative effects. By the time Apollodoros' Library of Mythology was put together about l50 B.C. for literary readers' use, the myths had become a web of stories which had lost both religious and historical significance. When the Roman learned his mythology out of Julius Hyginus' strange little abridgment in Latin, he was familiarizing himself with materials which he would find useful in his Classical reading, much as the modern student of literature uses his pocket dictionary of mythology to decode Milton's Paradise Lost or the Greek Drama which is on his reading list.
When one compares Greek mythology with the myth cycles of the Indian tradition, one sees immediately that there is a vast difference between the two. The Indian myths have as wide a story-telling range as the Greek myths, but they have also been incorporated into, and also formed by a strong religious tradition. They are used to develop philosophical points, to indicate moral choices, and to reinforce sincere religious views if value to the society. Part of the reason for this transparency of purpose lies in the fact that there is a continuous religious tradition which extends with many changes from Vedic to modern times, even as Hinduism became fused and amalgamated with Buddhism, to reappear later as the dominant religious system of India. Within this long, living tradition the position of the myths in India is full of new developments but their use is relatively stable and clear.Working with the Greek myths carefully, I have always felt that they are far more History than Storytelling. Their theological and philosophical content is questionable and can often seem evanescent. We do know the Greeks were early in contact with India by the 7th century BC, and I believe some thoughtful Greeks absorbed some of the format of the Indian myths while entirely missing their religious and philosophical penchant. But most of the the Greek myths reach further back into the history of migrations into Europe from the Near East, and represent a different segment of historical evolution.
I and many others have found the mythic interpretations of Joseph Campbell misleading and embarked on an entirely wrong track. But Campbell achieved a certain degree of public fame in the decades before his death. I feel we should not leave the public with an impression of Campbell as the major authority in this area. Campbell started his studies with serious interest in the Hindu myths, which are remarkable examples of myth, story and philosophy rolled into one. But then he returned to the Greek materials, with a conviction that they were analogous to the Indian corpus and throughout his long career he preached the message of the Indian doctrine on very different Greek social and textual grounds. It is no pleasure to discredit Campbell under the adage "Nihil de mortuis nisi malum...", but his loose and uncritical treatment of Greek myths as a close cousin of the Indian mythologies, which has become popular in the last few decades, has led us on an entirely wrong path.
The Greek myths had no regular religious structure or "Theology" to reinforce popular belief, since Greek religion never became institutionalized beyond the needs of the individual city-state. Myths became formalized and politicalized after the fifth century, and in the Hellenistic period they became more of a political or even literary tradition than a religious phenomenon. It was the ancient Mystery Cults which were the real religion of the Greeks, from the time of Homer down into the Hellenistic Period, even with some features which were absorbed into early Christianity.The myths were reduced to a complicated system of formalized storytelling, largely bereft of historical and the earlier pre-Greek associations. Greek mythology turned into a formalized political apparatus with specific associations and rituals assigned to each city-state, but it could also be used as entertainment for a literary Hellenistic society. It is in this mode that it appeared in Bulfinch's l9th century translation as a delightful set of stories from the ancient world, arranged,compacted and regularized for modern readers.
Beyond being entertaining and useful for understanding the Classics read in translation and our older English poetry, what do the Classical myths tell us? Often their meaning is obscure, contradictory and (if taken literally) frightening. One might well ask if there is another way of approach. Euhemeros, a Greek writer on myth and mythic history in the early third century B.C. had already suggested an alternate path of interpretation for myths, his views were widely known in the ancient world, and the fact that he did develop a new method of approach shows that even in the Classical period people were not satisfied with the traditional, story-cycle approach to mythology. His methods were of a sort that educated Hellenistic Greeks could understand and use. His ideas enjoyed a considerable vogue in the Hellenistic world, although their extension was limited by the accusation of atheism which was leveled against their founder. In the Christian period Euhemeros' theories were used in another way, to demonstrate the man-made and hence harmless notions of the Greek gods, and his notions became a stock demonstration of the futility of the heathen world's atheistic theology.
In the last two centuries we have learned a great deal about man's behavior from the formal fields of sociology, psychology, political science and economics. Archaeology has thrown a whole new light upon man's recently unknown past, while anthropology has broadened the scope of all studies of the human condition. Scientific aids, such as carbon-dating methods and pollen identification, as well as information gathered by students of the history of science, have extended our range of inquiry far beyond what the ancient Greek could have imagined. This "new thought" must be present in any serious study of humankind, and much of this material is so important and pervasive that it simply cannot be ignored. Our study of Man's history extends from the very beginning of humankind some five millions years ago, to the time after the last glacial retreat, when much factual material about the rise of civilization as a social phenomenon starts to appear. A great deal of light on the human condition can be elicited from the rich matrix of human history interpreted in the light of the newly evolving disciplines, and it is in this spirit that the present study of Greek mythology is undertaken. Euhemeristic interpretation of myth has much to work with in conjunction with modern studies of myth as part of the human social and historical record.
The Greek myths are of two sorts. Some are what can be called the "mythic" myths, which are stories which find ways of telling important things about difficult and even ineffable matters through stories. Some of the Greek myths explore profound matters and have through the ages challenged people with examples of serious thought, these are the true and spiritual myths, which abundantly deserve religious and philosophical study, and constitute to a major section of Greek thought.
A second much larger group may be called the "historical" myths. These are the ones which Euhemeros identified and began to interpret, and it is these which the present study will discuss. Many of the myths, when viewed as mythology will seem confusing, self-contradictory and somewhat pointless as myths, but this is because are historical records of social and historical events which lose their meaning when read as quasi-religious mythology. And when the historical mythology loses its original social and historical factuality, it becomes inane and superficial. Over the years it has become common to tell and retell the myths as imaginative stories, leaving historical origins aside, rather than trying to fathom an original meaning.
A partial parallel may be seen in the fossilized Mother Goose stories which date from l8th century England. Children and their elders still enjoy telling and retelling the traditional tales about Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, and the old lady who lived in a shoe, but most of us have no idea of they mean, if they do mean anything. Historical studies have shown that these stories once had pertinent, often trenchant political meaning, but for most of us, they are amusing but essentially meaningless. Yet by being familiar and historically "indestructible", they do form a part of our cultural baggage, meaning left quite aside. We can enjoy the mouse who went up the clock, without having any idea of what he was doing and that the story means. Appreciation of most of the Greek myths is exactly of this nature, we know and retell and enjoy Greek mythology without having much idea of what it is really about.
The germ of the idea behind the present study goes back to Euhemerus, a writer on mythology who flourished about 300 B.C. at the court of Cassander, the king of Macedonia. Very little is known about his life, even the place of his birth is disputed, the date of his death is unknown, and there are no personal particulars to give us a better idea of the man. He is known chiefly as the author of a book called The Sacred History, which purports to be based on inscriptional material found on the island of Panchaea while traveling around the coast of Arabia Felix. These inscriptions have never been taken to be any more real than the imaginary island of Panchaea, but the Sacred History also outlines the theory for which Euhemerus' name is famous. Euhemeros seems to have picked up some parts of his theory of interpretation from eastern sources which he heard of on his travels, but some parts of his theory may come from Greek sources, or even from his own imagination.
This study proceeds with an analysis of the Greek myths partly analogous to Euhemeros' outline. His scant material has been collected by Nemethy (Euhemeri Reliquiae, Budapest l889), as a source of what later became the Euhemeristic school of interpretation of the Greek myths. His suggestions seem perhaps hesitant or tntative, either because they were not well developed in ancient times, or because our historical information about them is so fragmentary. This study will graft onto the Euhemeristic rootstock, a number of concepts and sources of information which are available at the present time. Using Euhemeros' original and authentically Greek interpretations as a starting point, we can go a great deal further than he would have gone, probably further than he could have imagined.
Some of the inscriptions Euhemerus cites claimed to have come from Greece proper, others from "Panchaia" which may be as far away as Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The Sacred History has never been taken seriously as a document, but a full and entertaining description of Euhemerus' travels among the Panchaeans is found in Diodorus Siculus (V, c. 4l-46), which at first glance might seem to belong somewhere in the imaginative range between Psalmanazer's 1702 description of Formosa and Gulliver's Travels. But we have more skills these days about processing of presumed "fake" data for bits of fact, enough perhaps to make rereading the Sacra Historia worthwhile, if it is undertaken by someone competent in ancient Near Eastern history.
One may wonder why Euhemerus was traveling in the Near East in the first place. He was authorized to travel there by Cassander who found himself passed over after Alexander's death as ruler of Macedonia, a position which he clearly expected not only because he was ambitious, but also since he had married Alexander's half-sister Thessalonica. After killing Alexander's son Alexander, and Alexander's wife Roxana, and making connections with various powers, he did finally become ruler of Macedonia in 30l, just four years before his death. Everything that Cassander did, seems to have been done in opposition to Alexander. He worked against Alexander's family, against the assignment of rule in the empire, and he even rebuilt Thebes, which Alexander had previously razed. Hence it is not surprising that the chapter of Alexander's history, his trip to the East and specifically to India, should have been the one thing which Cassander could not equal. When he sent Euhemerus to the East on an exploratory cultural-historical mission, he probably thought he was ensuring for his memory the kind of fame which Alexander had accrued in his lifetime as world-king in Greece and abroad.
Euhemerus' name would have probably been consigned to the library files of antiquity forever, had he not incorporated in his writing the one idea which made his name famous. He maintained that heroes and gods were actually men of note, who were commemorated for their achievements by being relegated to divine status by a grateful populace. It has been suggested that this idea was drawn from Indian or Arabian sources, which Euhemerus may have picked up in his travels either from written materials or from discussion with the natives. Whatever the origin of this singular idea, the ancient world fastened onto it with great interest, since it promoted a train of historical thinking about the gods and heroes which few people in Greece had contemplated.
Euhemerus' theory proposed that the divine and semi-divine personages of myth were just people, perhaps remarkable people, but actually humans and not of divine origin. For some people Euhemerus was considered an evil man, oras the poet Callimachos put it "an idly babbling old man", or still worse, an atheist, although for Hellenistic scholars his name was not identified with atheism.
But the Christians took an opposite tack. If one could prove that the gods of antiquity were mere human fabrications, whether they were so constructed for bad or for good reasons, Christians can get rid of the weight of millennia of pagan thought with one swift stroke. This is rendered even more plausible when it is suggested that Euhemerus himself was an atheist. From this odd notion comes the important flow of Christian comment and quotation on this author, to which we owe a great deal of our knowledge of Euhemerus and his theories. A great deal of this material is hopelessly garbled, not only because of slanted arguments which the Christians were using, but also because they had almost no authentic material at hand on which to base their views. Second-hand historical criticism, especially when done with a zealot's vengeance, is not a good source for exact information, but this is exactly the case of the many Christian apologists who rehandled Euhemeros' name in the interests of proving old errors and establishing the true faith.
In l889 Geyza Nemethy brought together everything that is known about Euhemerus (G. Nemethy: Euhemeria Reliquiae, Budapest l889), and this material was carefully sifted through by Jacoby in his article on Euhemerus (Pauly Wissowa s.v. Euhemerus). Much of the ancient material is thin and disappointing, especially when one considers the serious studies in the Euhemeristic spirit which have been undertaken since the l8th century, starting with Banier's "Explication de la Fable, Expliquee par la Histoire ", the l9th century factualizing historians and even the sociology of Herbert Spencer.
Cicero intelligently remarks that "Those who maintain that famous and important men after their death became the gods to whom we pray and bow.... are these men not actually immune to religion? This kind of thinking has been developed by Euhemerus, which our Roman Ennius later translated and interpreted. But it is Euhemerus who has portrayed the deaths and burials of the gods. Does he (Euhemerus) seem on the one hand to have provided a factual base for religion, or has he actually removed the need for it?" (Cicero De Natura Deorum I 42).
One wonders why, with all the rich Greek literary materials available, the 3 c. BC Roman poet Ennius chose to translate the work of Euhemerus. It may have been that the Romans were uneasy with the superior status of the Greek deities as compared to their own familiar if shadowy Animistic spirits, and wanted an explanation which rendered these distant theological concepts more understandable. If they turned to debunking them by analysis, it suits well the hardheaded, practical Romans, who were at work developing a few things on their own, like Rustic Comedy and the genre of Satire. Most people in the third century B.C. would still have been aware of the subtleties of the old Roman animistic beliefs, which carried their own interpretation for a perceptive country folk . If the Greek gods and heroes were not interpretable, they would seem inaccessible, and in such a quandary Ennius' interest in approaching Euhemerus' doctrine seems reasonable. Since Ennius' translation with his own commentary has disappeared and is known only from slight references, there is little more that we can draw from this source.
Sextus Empiricus is not the best witness for subtle thought, he is as often disappointing in his remarks about early Greek philosophical figures as he is informative. But in the case of Euhemeros he is the only source which gives a clear and unequivocal statement of his basic views, and his remarks can serve as a general introduction to Euhemeristic thought:
"In the days when life was unsettled, those who were superior to the others in strength and intelligence, so as to get greater control over the rest (figuring that they might seem more remarkable and serious), fabricated the story that there was some surpassing and, as it were, divine power about their persons, and it is from this that they were venerated by the people as gods."
This is an extension of the rule of "man is the measure of all things", to the role of "measure of the gods". Man made the gods, and in a typically Greek mode, made them out of human forms and notions, and even eventually from human beings who had died. Xenophanes had said in parallel spirit some centuries earlier "if oxen and lions had hands which enabled them to draw, they would portray their gods as having bodies like their own, horses would portray them as horses, and oxen as oxen". Moreover he noted "Ethiopians have gods with flat noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with blue (glaukos!) eyes and red hair." With such well known statements serving as intellectual background, Euhemeros' words would not have been surprising to the educated Greek public. However he does, as Cicero remarked, work this process in reverse, and the results of his theorizing can finally dispense with deity altogether.
In the history of the West after the Greek period, divification is common. It started with the cult of Romulus and the Roman founding fathers, who are not actually deified, but given a special position of respect and veneration in the Roman consciousness. The serious tone in which the Augustan poets speak of these early heroic figures at Rome marks a semi-religious sanctity which verges more on the religious than on the historical side. The formal divification of Caesar and the Roman Emperors follows easily from Greek myths, from the old idea Eastern Monarchs were gods in their own right, and from the old Roman hero tradition. As Christianity gathered strength and numbers within the Roman world, it too found the practice of sanctifying certain holy men with the title of "saint" to be a useful focus for public veneration. The transition from humanness to godliness seems easier to imagine than the conversion of a god into a human being, which can only be done as aa temporary disguise. Holifying famous men produces hallowed examples of holiness out of human fabric, and this probably offers a greater opportunity for social identification than the gods who reside apart in the clouds like Epicuros' "reformed" deities, aloof and unconcerned.
The very familiarity of a great deal of Greek mythology, which was heavily used in a borrowed form by everybody from the Romans to the classically oriented nineteenth century, obscures the fact that many Greek myths are obscure in themselves, and so heavily reworked into later fabrics that the basic meaning of the original cannot be imagined. But following an Euhemeristic thread, and weaving it into the fabric of modern studies of the three pre-BC millennia which are now appearing, we may elicit from the Greek Myths a wealth of surprising information.
In summary, the aim of this study is to bring into focus the Greek myths of the class which belong less to a religious than to a historical class, and to elicit from them where possible,factual social and historical meaning. There is much important information which we can draw from myths if we treat them as carriers of the social and historical activities which were current in the early Greek and pre-Greek periods, at the time when story-cycles (later to become myths) were alive and responsive to social issues. In the last two hundred years we have learned a great deal about man and his early history. If we can use a portion of our modern, multifarious frame of reference in the interpretation of Greek myths, we can extend our knowledge of man's earlier history considerably further back into the shadowy realm of Pre-History.
Return to Greek Myth index


Definitions of media literacy remain contested, with different dimensions emphasised or marginalised. Arguably the biggest concern in attempting to reach a consensus on a definition of media literacy is the tendency in some policy statements to undervalue the importance of critical or creative/ communicative dimensions. Definitions vary, and include:
‘The ability to access, analyse, evaluate and communicate messages in a variety of forms’ (US National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy, Pat Aufderheide, 1993). Aufderheide’s full definition can be found at:
‘The ability to use, understand and create media and communications’ (Ofcom). Ofcom’s full outline of media literacy can be found at:
Sonia Livingstone also uses this definition, which is expressed in her discussion on media literacy, which can be found at:
‘Media literacy relates to the ability to access the media, to understand and critically evaluate different aspects of the media and media content and to create communications in a variety of contexts.’ (European Commission). This definition is given here:
Media Literacy in the UK
In aiming to meet this statutory mandate, Ofcom undertakes research into UK citizens’ media literacy needs in order to inform and support public policy initiatives. Ofcom’s research initiatives in this regard are broadly classified into three categories: children’s research, adults’ research, and nations’ research. Ofcom’s Media Literacy Audits for children and parents are undertaken regularly, followed by the publication of detailed reports (the most recent in October 2013). You can view the reports here:
A commentary of the reports by Sonia Livingstone:
Ofcom researches various aspects of children’s media usage and literacy, including children and parents’ attitudes to diverse media; the websites visited by children; how parental controls are exercised and evaluated; and children’s television viewing preferences at different times in the day.
Ofcom similarly undertakes in-depth research into adults’ media use and attitudes (the most recent published in 2013). It also investigates related topics, including people’s habits and attitudes in the online world (June 2013), and how people make use of the internet (July 2012).
The full June 2013 report ‘Being online: an investigation of people’s habits and attitudes’:
The full July 2013 report ‘Internet use and attitudes’:
Ofcom similarly compiles a report that combines a number of media metrics relating to parents and children ‘in the nations’ – i.e. in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as well as across the UK (the latest report was published in February 2013).
But as argued by Svenja Ottovordemgentschenfelde, while Ofcom thus does much to support media literacy initiatives in the UK, it is charged with not only supporting but with also actively promoting media literacy for UK citizens – a role that Ofcom is arguably at risk of neglecting at the moment.
While Britain traditionally at the forefront of media literacy and media education initiatives, new research suggests that the UK is lagging behind in funding, training and policy; and there is a perception that, since the 2011 election, there has been a reluctance on the part of politicians to take inclusive and sustainable media literacy initiatives forward. A blog post by Julian McDougall on media and information education in the UK can be accessed here:
A blog post by Svenja Ottovordemgentschenfelde on new research in media literacy can be accessed here:
This apparent lack of political will is worrying in light of express recognition by the government of the importance to encourage media literacy initiatives – on more than one occasion:
- In the Digital Britain Interim Report (2009: 5)
“The necessary education, skills and media literacy programmes to allow everyone in society to benefit from the digital revolution will be a central part of the Digital Britain work and key to our success.”
- In a March 2011 letter to Professor Sonia Livingstone, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP explained that media literacy is indeed ‘a priority’ for the government.
Hunt’s letter can be accessed here:
As the government’s own analysis of UK social trends reveals, the ‘e-society’ is advancing steadily (if unevenly and unequally). An article that overviews e-society:
While more and more services move online due to the growth of the ‘e-society’, digital participation becomes increasingly important. An Ofcom report on Internet Citizens: Use of selected citizen-related online content and services (2013):
Communications Consumer Panel: The Consumer Framework for Digital Participation:
Media Literacy in the EU
“I want to assure you that I take digital literacy seriously”, said Neelie Kroes, the EC’s Commissioner for the Digital Agenda and Vice-President of the European Commission, in 2009. And more recently, in early 2014, she confirmed the importance of the internet but also warned about the risks involved with digital technologies. During a speech at the World Economic Forum, she said: ‘Europe’s leaders have recognised the large and growing role digital plays in our economy. And they have supported our plans to bring down the barriers that stand in the way.’Kroes’ full speech can be read here:
“We must make sure everyone is media literate so nobody is left out,” said Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship in 2009.
In January 2013 the High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism recommended (among other things) that ‘[m]edia literacy should be taught in schools starting at high‐school level. The role media plays in a functioning democracy should be critically assessed as part of national curricula, integrated either with civics or social studies.’ Following this report, the EC made various recommendations, including one aimed at improving media literacy. The report can be found at:
The task of producing indicators is now underway, building on the work of EAVI Consortium (European Association for Viewers’ Interests (EAVI), CLEMI, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Université Catholique de Louvain and the University of Tampere): Study on Assessment Criteria for Media Literacy Levels – A comprehensive view of the concept of media literacy and an understanding of how media literacy level in Europe should be assessed (2009). See full list of studies:
Media Literacy Internationally
The UIS and UNESCO’s Communication and Information Sector, in collaboration with an international advisory panel of experts, have developed a framework to measure media information literacy in countries at different stages of development. The Global Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Framework can be downloaded from here:
Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy, MediaSmarts, operates with the vision that ‘children and youth have the critical thinking skills to engage with media as active and informed digital citizens’. For this reason, MediaSmarts develops digital and media literacy programmes and resources for Canadian homes, schools and communities: ‘We support adults with information and tools so they can help children and teens develop the critical thinking skills they need for interacting with the media they love.’ More information on their fundamentals for digital and media literacy can be found here:
In Australia, the Australian Communications and Media Authority has an online resource that combines research, activities and reports on media and digital literacy in the country.
In the United States, the first Media Literacy Conference was held in 1995 in North Carolina with approximately 400 participants. After a continual growth of dialogue emerged, the Alliance for a Media Literate America was formed in June, 2001, which was dedicated to the promotion of media literacy education. A full history of media literacy in the U.S. can be found at:
2. Key Documents
UK: For the first time in UK law, section 11 of the Communication Act 2003 gave the Office of Communications (Ofcom) a statutory duty to take steps to promote media literacy. Section 11 of the Act can be accessed here:
The Bailey Review investigates how children in England are under increasing pressure to ‘grow up too quickly’. A progress report was published on 24 May 2013. Both documents are produced by UKCCIS (UK Council for Child Internet Safety).
Bailey Review Progress Report:
The Wolf Review, which investigated vocational training, was commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE) and published in March 2011:
While the BBC’s First Click initiative is no longer operative, a useful guide for first-time internet users is still available for free download. The BBC’s media literacy strategy, published in May 2013, confirms the need to promote media literacy, as outlined in the 2006 BBC Charter Agreement. The 2017 BBC Charter Review may arguably lead to changes in this regard. Access the Media Literacy Strategy here:
The Next Gen Report, published in January 2011, made various recommendations to help the UK become a more popular talent hub for visual effects and visual games. But, as pointed out earlier on the LSE Media Policy Project blog, in conjunction with the curriculum changes, the recommendations ‘will place media education in the UK in further ‘limbo’’. Download the full report here:
The Review of the National Curriculum (Department for Education) has been completed and the 2014 National Curriculum has been published, proposing significant reforms to what is taught in schools:
The EC’s Digital Agenda for 2020, which aims to help ‘reboot the EU economy’ and ‘enable Europe’s citizens and businesses to get the most out of digital technologies’ , emphasises the importance of digital literacy, with one of its seven pillars being dedicated to digital literacy, skills and inclusion. As it explains: ‘As ever more daily tasks are carried out online, everyone needs enhanced digital skills to participate fully in society. The Digital Agenda tackles the digital divide.’ More details on this pillar and the associated list of actions:
As part of the Lisbon strategy, in response to calls from the European Parliament and from the media and communication sector, and informed by the High Level Expert Group (2008), the European Commission has worked to promote media literacy as follows:
Communication on media literacy (2007) – alerted member states to the importance of media literacy:
Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive 2007/65/EC – article 26 introduced a three-yearly reporting obligation regarding levels of media literacy in all member states. The full Directive 2007/65/EC can be accessed here (Amendment to Article 26 is found on p. 332/44):
Recommendation on media literacy in the digital environment for a more competitive audio-visual and content industry and an inclusive knowledge society, EC(2009) 6464 final. In this Recommendation, the Commission recommended that:
“the Member States […] open a debate in conferences and other public events on the inclusion of media literacy in the compulsory education curriculum, and as part of the provision of key competences for lifelong learning, set out in the Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning”. The 2006 and 2009 recommendations can be accessed, respectively, here:
See also the Brussels Declaration on Lifelong Media Education from over 300 media literacy experts (in French):
The OECD identifies a range of key competencies essential for full participation in society, several of which relate to media or digital literacy (including the ability to use knowledge, information and technologies interactively). Access their full Executive Summary:
UNESCO: ‘Information and media literacy enables people to interpret and make informed judgments as users of information and media, as well as to become skillful creators and producers of information and media messages in their own right.’ See particularly the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) section on information literacy:
In 1982, UNESCO issued the Grunwald Declaration at the International Symposium on Media Education in Grunwald, Germany. The Declaration was used as a means for educators to justify media education, and to promote media education globally. The Declaration can be accessed here:
In the United States, Renee Hobbs, R. (2010) has produced Digital and media literacy: A plan of action aimed at incorporating digital and media literacy education into formal and informal settings through a community education movement:
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn on the recommendation for a National Digital Literacy plan:
“Nothing can open more doors for a person than literacy. But knowing how to read is no longer sufficient to be ‘literate’ in the 21st Century. Basic literacy must be supplemented with digital literacy” (Clyburn, 2010: 4). Full recommendation:
3. Key Participants
Ofcom: In aiming to meet this statutory mandate, Ofcom undertakes research into UK citizens’ media literacy needs in order to inform and support public policy initiatives. Ofcom’s research initiatives in this regard are broadly classified into three categories: children’s research, adults’ research, and nations’ research. An index of their research on media literacy can be accessed here:
Communications Consumer Panel: This Panel consists of eight independent experts who work to protect and promote people’s interests in the communications sector, and was established by the Communications Act 2003. The Panel conducts research and provides advice to Ofcom, the Government, the EU, and the industry on how to consider consumer persepctives. Their website can be accessed here:
Svenja Ottovordemgentschenfelde: PhD at the London School of Economics who studies Ofcom’s support of media literacy initiatives in the UK. A full description of her research and research interests can be found here:
Participants in ongoing policy initiatives include:
UKNC: The UK National Commission for UNESCO (UKNC) is a leading force in UNESCO’s initiatives for media literacy. They aim to strengthen the internationalist dimension of media literacy in the UK, and to raise awareness and understanding among UK Government of the importance of media literacies for democracies: Access their website here:
Go On UK: promote digital and internet literacy. See its three-point plan for 2013/14):
Martha Lane: Lane was appointed as the UK’s Digital Champion in 2010, resigned at the end of 2012. The Digital Champion’s remit is to ‘encourage as many people as possible to go online, and improving the convenience and efficiency of public services by driving online delivery’. Read her resignation letter here:
UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) is a group of more than 200 organisations drawn from across government, industry, law, academia and charity sectors that work in partnership to help keep children safe online. Among other things, UKCCIS has created a code of practice for internet parental controls, published in October 2011.
UKCCIS Code of Practice:
More information on UKCCIS, including achievements, board members, and the Executive board:
The DfE Technology Policy Team, tasked with developing ICT in schools, was abolished in April 2012. An article on the abolishment can be found at:
Media Smart develops and provides free educational materials that teach children to think critically about advertising in the context of their daily lives. Media Smart offers a range of innovative and interactive materials for parents, educators and children:
There are also various other non-governmental national initiatives in the UK:
Learning for the Fourth Age (L4A) aims to provide educational and learning services to frail elderly people who live in residential accommodation settings, using multimedia resources:
Citizens Online is a national charity that aims to tackle the issues of digital exclusion, to make sure that the Internet is available to everybody, and to help individuals and communities understand and gain the benefits of being online. This charity has a variety of valuable projects around the UK aimed at encouraging digital inclusion.
Age UK works towards improving ‘later life’ of UK citizens through information and advice, campaigns, products, training and research. The organisation, for instance, offers computer classes across the country for older people to allow them to have access to the advantages of the internet and computers.
Digital Unite is an independent organisation that offers digital skills training and promotes the benefits of computers, tablets and the internet to older people. Useful guides to a variety of topics are offered on their website, including how to use Skype, basic computer skills, how to join social networking websites and how to use email.
AMES: The Association for Media Education in Scotland was formed in 1983 at Stirling University with the purpose of promoting media education. They now publish a bi-annual journal, the Media Education Journal, and hold an annual conference. Access their website here:
Neelie Kroes: High-Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism: This independent group was established in October 2011 by Vice-President Neelie Kroes, and is chaired by Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the former President of Latvia. Their mandate was to create a report for the European Commission with recommendations that aim to respect, protect, support, and promote pluralism and freedom of the media in Europe. More details on this group can be found on their website:
Media Literacy Expert Group: In 2005, the European Parliament requested that the European Commission launch an initiative on media literacy. As a result, the EC formed the Media Literacy Expert Group, made up of media literacy experts from a wide range of backgrounds and experience. This included members from academia, the audiovisual and media industry, international organisations, and regulators in media institutions. For more information and to access the full list of members, follow this link:
EU Kids Online: This multi-national thematic network aims to “stimulate and coordinate investigation into children’s online uses, activities, risks and safety”. EU Kids Online also publishes a wide variety of research and resources for media education. Links to their reports and contact details can be found at:
EAVI: The European Association for Viewers Interests is a non-profit international civil society organisation based out of Brussels, and aims to work with European and other international institutions to contribute to the empowerment of EU citizens through the field of media. It was formally established with the support of the European Commission. EAVI works on a variety of projects, reports, and conferences in order to promote active citizenship and media literacy, and engage European institutions and media stakeholders. A link to their website:
EuroMeduc: The European Congress on Media Literacy (EuroMeduc) promotes media education in Europe. The aim to set up structured media education programs and research findings, and sustain networks in the field of media education. The last congress was held in 2009. Their publications on media literacy can be accessed on their website:
OECD: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development aims to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world, and currently has 34 member states. One of their key topics is the Internet, consisting of issues surrounding broadband and telecom, internet economy, consumer policy, and public sector innovation and e-government.
Access to their website, including published reports:
UNESCO: The United National Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics acts as an official source for literacy data. They are responsible for monitoring international literacy targets associated with Educational for All (EFA) and the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). More information on their research and international goals can be found at:
UNESCO’s Media Literacy webpage with links to detailed actions for media education and literacy:
MediaSmarts: Formerly known as the Media Awareness Network, MediaSmarts emerged as part of a TV violence initiative by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in the early 1990s. They now act as a resource for educators, youth, and policy-makers on digital and media literacy among young Canadians. Their website provides more details on their mission and history, as well as resources for researchers, policy-makers, educators, etc.:
Media Literacy Network: This non-profit foundation, founded by Liesbeth Hop and Bamber Delver and based in the Netherlands, aims to develop media literacy projects around various topics, such as safe Internet, digital bullying, sexualisation of the media, the Mobile Internet, online privacy, transmedia storytelling, etc. They also work with major universities around the world to initiate studies on media and youth related topics. Access their website here:
A) Academic research foci (by Sonia Livingstone)
With the growing importance of media, information and communications in society, media literacy contributes to:
- democracy, participation and active citizenship;
- the knowledge economy, competitiveness and choice; and
- lifelong learning, cultural expression and personal fulfilment.
But academic research suggests that media literacy initiatives are still needed:
- By the whole population, since they are faced with rapid changes in the choices, complexity and importance of communication technologies;
- By disadvantaged populations in particular (e.g. young, elderly, poor, disabled, ethnic minorities), for whom knowledge gaps compound prior disadvantage;
- In areas of importance to the state (e.g. health, civic participation, e-government, e-commerce, creativity/innovation, digital take-up/switchover), since currently the population does not meet government expectations;
- In areas of importance to citizens (e.g. for empowerment, alternative lifestyles or politics, critical information skills, creative production)
Also, key questions persist (with links to relevant articles):
- Is media literacy about empowerment or protectionism?
- Should media literacy be defined minimally or ambitiously?
- What does research show about media literacy?
- What new challenges do new media pose for media literacy (for adults and for children respectively?):
- Do media literacy interventions work?
There are significant differences between the post-test scores of experimental and control groups, indicating that the media literacy course offered to college students was ‘at least partially successful’ in achieving the course goals of improving knowledge of media structures, increasing awareness of media influence, and being critical of implied messages. (Duran, Yousman, Walsh, and Longshore, 2008)
Media literacy interventions can be helpful or harmful. Students who had the cognitive activity after the lesson about violence in media reported a reduction in willingness to use aggression, while children who did not had the cognitive activity after the lesson reported an increase in willingness to use aggression. The media literacy lesson offered might have brought students’ attention to violence without helping to develop the cognitive skills required to process the information. Future studies should have more refined comparative conditions in order to understand the boomerang effect, and determine what factor in each condition works or does not work. (Byrne, 2009)
Survey conducted to a random sample of U.S. university students shows that those who are more critical about tobacco use in advertisements, TV and movies (‘smoking media literacy’) are significantly less likely to be current smokers (Primack, Sidani, Carroll, and Fine 2009).
Media detective: “Media Detective is a media literacy education program for 3rd- to 5th-grade students. The goal of the program is to prevent or delay the onset of underage alcohol and tobacco use by enhancing the critical thinking skills of students so they become adept in deconstructing media messages, particularly those related to alcohol and tobacco products, and by encouraging healthy beliefs and attitudes about abstaining from alcohol and tobacco use.”
- Why is critical media literacy important?
- Aren’t young people already media literate?
- What do recent research findings show?
Although economic capital is the first and foremost mediating factor in digital divide, cultural and social capital are also important factors as the possession of them means having the know-how and resources to operate and engage with technologies meaningfully at the personal level. (Grant, 2007)
Children’s digital skills should be enhanced through regular education, focusing especially on information and strategic skills (given their already high level of operational skills). As to the elderly, the illiterate, the disabled, and ethnic minority, there should be special courses offered to them, adapting to their needs, learning pace and style. If nothing is done, the “information and strategic skill divide” will continue to widen, with the skilled people being able to take advantage of the Internet to achieve their personal goals, while the less skilled continue their struggle to locate correct information. (van Deursen and van Dijk, 2009)
Regarding content-sharing online, although there is significant difference between genders, after controlling for internet experiences, the difference no longer exists. In other words, users’ online ability mediates online content-sharing. (Hargittai and Walejko, 2008)
“[N]ew digital media, due to their interactive and highly socializing nature, are more adept at breeding the social and cultural competencies needed for a full participation in today’s digital environment than traditional media, which are inherently more passive” (Literat, 2011):
Blog post at the following links:
When given the opportunities to learn about political participation online through digital media literacy education, students are more likely to engage in political participation online. (Kahne, 2010)
“Teens who have poor health literacy are more likely to search for sexual health information using slang terms, which may lead to less credible Web sites.” (Brown, Keller, and Stern, 2009)
- Far from promoting empowerment, is media literacy really a neoliberal strategy to reduce top down regulation?
As the UK’s then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Tessa Jowell, stated: ‘if people can take greater personal responsibility for what they watch and listen to, that will in itself lessen the need for regulatory intervention’ (The Daily Mail, 21/1/2004, p. 23).
Ofcom concurred: Robin Foster, Ofcom’s Partner for Strategy and Market Developments in 2005, said,
“As regulators and policy makers we need to radically adapt the way we think about the communications sector as this group evolves into the mainstream. And we need to start doing this now. We will have to learn to rely more on markets than ever before. And we need to rely more on individual consumers and on companies exercising responsibility in those markets, with increasing emphasis on self-regulation and co-regulation.”
Pressing policy questions:
- Does the evidence show that media literacy is increasing?
- Can such increases, if any, be attributed to policy efforts to promote media literacy?
- How can media literacy initiatives and interventions be meaningfully evaluated?
- What policy recommendations would result and will policy-makers follow them?
- Who is getting left out of media literacy opportunities?
- Which dimensions of media literacy tend to get neglected (Critical? Creative?)
- Can teachers be held primarily responsible for teaching children about media literacy?
- How can adults be reached, once they have left school, to increase and update their media literacy?
- Should it remain Ofcom’s remit to promote media literacy?
- Should internet safety be a key pillar in media literacy or, even, should it be part of a separate policy? (For UK policy on internet safety, see http://www.education.gov.uk/ukccis)
- As a new UK Communications Act is announced, should the present section 11 be maintained, altered or dropped? What would be the justification, the evidence base, for any of these decisions?
- If media literacy is no longer actively promoted as part of UK public policy, who will be the biggest losers and why?