John M. Culkin
Encyclopedia
John M. Culkin, SJ, PhD (1928-July 23, 1993), leading media scholar and critic
Critic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

, educator, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 and consultant
Consultant
A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...

.

Early life and education

John Culkin was born in 1928 to an Irish-Catholic family from Brooklyn. He and his brother Gerald attended Xavier High School, an elite Jesuit College Preparatory High School, in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 where he was on the basketball team. He graduated from there in 1950 and then entered the Society of Jesus. He attended Bellarmine College, was ordained at Fordham University
Fordham University
Fordham University is a private, nonprofit, coeducational research university in the United States, with three campuses in and around New York City. It was founded by the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York in 1841 as St...

 and received a doctorate in education from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

.

Career

At Jesuit seminary, John Culkin first became interested in media studies. Later, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Father Culkin’s dissertation was a curriculum to study film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

. There he also met Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...

 and they became lifelong colleagues because of their mutual interest in mass media and its effect on society. McLuhan appointed Father Culkin to a position at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

. In 1964, Father Culkin came to Fordham University
Fordham University
Fordham University is a private, nonprofit, coeducational research university in the United States, with three campuses in and around New York City. It was founded by the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York in 1841 as St...

, convinced them to hire McLuhan for a year, and earned a reputation as an intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...

 for his interest in media studies.

In 1969 Culkin left the Jesuit priesthood and formed the Center for Understanding Media, named after a McLuhan book. At Antioch College
Antioch College
Antioch College is a private, independent liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, United States. It was the founder and the flagship institution of the six-campus Antioch University system. Founded in 1852 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1853 with politician and...

 he started a master’s program to study media, then moved in 1978 to the New School for Social Research. There his Center for Understanding Media administered the film portion of the Artists in Schools program of the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

 and created a forum for filmmakers in the education field to preview important films, the Metropolitan Area Film Instructors Association.

Culkin advocated media studies in public school systems. He observed that children watch TV thousands more hours than they study.

Culkin knew that films, radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 and TV profoundly affect young people. Culkin believed that even young children should be taught to analyze mass media, that new means of communication should enhance education, that programming quality should be improved and focused on childhood development. He came to believe that children should examine the arts as experience, to develop their own positive value system.

Culkin advised the creators of Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...

. In 1964 he helped organize parochial school
Parochial school
A parochial school is a school that provides religious education in addition to conventional education. In a narrower sense, a parochial school is a Christian grammar school or high school which is part of, and run by, a parish.-United Kingdom:...

 instruction in TV. In 1970 he proposed a special cable TV channel for children.

After 1973, he promoted Unifon
Unifon
Unifon is a phonemic orthography for English designed in the mid-1950s by Dr. John R. Malone, a Chicago economist and newspaper equipment consultant. It was developed into a teaching aid to help children acquire reading and writing skills. Like the pronunciation key in a dictionary, Unifon matches...

, a 40-character phonemic English alphabet, to combat illiteracy.

On October 7, 1974, he testified before the House Select Subcommittee on Education, which later decided to create the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...

 as an independent agency.

Culkin formed Hearth Communications, a private consulting firm, with business partner Frank Maguire. Their consulting client list soon became a who’s who of international corporations and organizations.

Indicative of his varied interests and expertise, Culkin published many articles and wrote several books. He analyzed how a story might be told in print
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....

, film and television in a book called “Trilogy”. Other topics for his articles included theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

, the Chicago Cubs
Chicago Cubs
The Chicago Cubs are a professional baseball team located in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the Central Division of Major League Baseball's National League. They are one of two Major League clubs based in Chicago . The Cubs are also one of the two remaining charter members of the National...

, Trachtenberg system
Trachtenberg system
The Trachtenberg System is a system of rapid mental calculation. The system consists of a number of readily memorized operations that allow one to perform arithmetic computations very quickly. It was developed by the Jewish engineer Jakow Trachtenberg in order to keep his mind occupied while being...

 of Math, the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard
Dvorak Simplified Keyboard
The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is a keyboard layout patented in 1936 by Dr. August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, Dr. William Dealey. Over the years several slight variations were designed by the team led by Dvorak or by ANSI...

, and how to make our calendar
Calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...

 more accurate.

The Media Ecology Association annual awards includes The John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in the Field of Media Ecology.

Selected works

  • Films Deliver: Teaching Creatively with Film. Anthony Schillaci and John M. Culkin, Editors. New York: Citation Press, 1970. ISBN 0590091557
  • "Quality and the True Cost of Child Care", Journal of Social Issues, Volume 47, #2, 1991, Mary Culkin, John Morris, and Suzanne Helburn
  • Film study in the high school: An analysis and rationale (1995) ISBN 0964972301
  • Doing the Media: A Portfolio of Activities, Ideas, and Resources (1978) (as editor?) ISBN 0070103364

Quotes

Culkin summarized the driving force behind his life work in a 1981 interview with Maria P. Robbins, then a Contributing Editor for Television and Children Journal.


“So trying to keep certain things off television or out of books is futile. That same energy should be applied to helping children develop their own capacities for judgment, taste and sensitivity, so that they know how to make decisions that are based, we hope, on positive values.”
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