Abstract
This article seeks to question the emphasis on critical reading in media education curricula, both in terms of the assumptions about children's existing knowledge which it entails and in terms of its implications for classroom practice. The first part of the article draws on recent research on children's understanding of television, and considers the social functions of critical discourses about the medium. Summarising findings from the author's research, it points to the inter-relationships between cognitive, affective and social factors in children's talk. The second part of the article draws on recent classroom research in the field to consider the processes by which children acquire critical discourses about the media, and the limitations of a purely analytical approach. The article concludes by arguing for the need to develop a more complex theoretical basis for media education pedagogy, based on the interaction between critical analysis and other teaching strategies.