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For whatever it's worth, Media Studies was one of the best classes I took at GCSE and A Level. People were saying exactly the same nonsense about it back then (20 years ago!) as they are now, for exactly the same reasons
It's not even subtle when right-wingers go off about Media Studies (or for that matter Sociology, or any other subject that encourages people to look critically at present-day society)
It used to be the case that they loved the idea of learning vocational skills that are Valuable In The Workplace - at GCSE cooking class was renamed Food Technology and suddenly involved knowing an awful lot about the Chorleywood Process and vending machines...
...but in Media Studies those practical skills are by necessity integrated with a substantial amount of theory about power and narrative construction, so of course the people *in power* are going to be "no, not like that" about *those* kind of vocational skills
Added to that, well-taught Media Studies is both fun and often quite student-led in terms of coursework. We got our pick of what projects to work on - my group chose Starship Troopers, a movie that looks frivolous but engages very bluntly with the idea of media manipulation
For quite a few of my friends who were more into sciences, media studies was both a creative outlet and their major humanities/social science experience and I think that is valuable - it's fun and creative and group-oriented
And, since politicians and right-wingers love to equate virtue with hard work (for everyone but themselves), they can rest assured that a subject that covers a similar level of theory to English, History etc while also involving a ton of practical work, is not easy
Like, not even in the sense of time-consuming - you're developing a bunch of different but complementary skills involving critical thinking, writing, shot and narrative construction, IT - very few people find all of those easy
And it gets you outdoors! Do you know how hard you have to look to find suitable locations to make Cambridge circa 2000 look like a futuristic dystopia for the goofy Matrix knockoff you're creating an opening sequence for? Quite, that's how much.
We won't get into the acting element, because there's a video somewhere of me melting down while repeatedly failing to deliver two lines and I'd rather not go there, but it was definitely character building
Anyway, it's pretty telling that Media Studies could and should be a core subject at GCSE, but no politician would dare because of what the Murdoch papers would say
