Education Through TIME : Representations of U.S. Education on TIME Magazine Covers

Research on News Media and Education

There exists a growing body of international research concerning the role of the media in shaping education policy (Coe & Kuttner, 2018) as well as in representing education and teachers (e.g., Barwell & Abtahi, 2015; Ford et al., 2015; Shine & O’Donoghue, 2013). Specific to education in the United States, findings from this research reveal that education is minimally covered by the news media and, when it is, that coverage paints an overwhelmingly negative picture.

According to West et al. (2009), less than 1% in 2007, 0.7% in 2008, and 1.4% from January 2009 to September 2009 of national news coverage across a variety of media concerned education. In 2007, only four topics received less attention than education (the court/legal system, development/sprawl, transportation, and religion), whereas celebrity/entertainment (2%), lifestyle (3.4%), and sports (1.9%) received greater coverage (West, Whitehurst, & Dionne, 2009). Similar trends were observed in 2008 and 2009. Campanella (2015) found that only 2.3% of television broadcast national news stories addressed K–12 education. However, Campanella did find that local news coverage of education was on the rise in 2014.

Within this small percentage of national news coverage, education is generally represented negatively. Television broadcast news coverage of education tends to be triggered by specific events (e.g., school shootings, teacher strikes, the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 by the National Commission on Excellence in Education; Coe & Kuttner, 2018). Only 2.7% of the national news stories examined by West et al. (2009) presented positive educational messages.

While the research focused on the representation of education and education stakeholders (e.g., teachers, students) in the news media has increased, much of the existing research is limited to specific time periods or events (e.g., Campanella, 2015; Coe & Kuttner, 2018; Cohen, 2010; Gerstl-Pepin, 2002; O’Neil, 2012). To the best of our knowledge, no research has been attempted that examines news media coverage of education over a longer period of time.

Magazine Covers as Visual Artifacts

According to Hall (1997), “culture is concerned with the production and exchange of meanings” (p. 2). Visual artifacts (e.g., magazine covers) and resources have always been involved in the construction of social life (Rose, 2016), but now that we are fully entrenched in the digital era, “the world told” through language has increasingly become “the world shown” (Kress, 2003, p. 1) through visuals and graphic design. This means that visual artifacts are created according to how their makers understand the world. It also means that images contribute to how the world is understood and play a role in producing, reproducing, and contributing to the dominance of hegemonic ideologies that uphold the interests of those with power and status in society (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001). Reader-viewers (Serafini, 2012) can choose to accept, reject, or interrogate any text (Janks, 2010) and have the power to deviate from the “dominant” or “preferred” readings (Hall, 1997) intended by the artifact producer.

It has been argued that the front cover is the most important aspect of a text (Yampbell, 2005). The front cover is designed to lure the reader into consuming the product (Gilbert & Viswanathan, 2007) and should be considered a persuasive marketing tool with rhetorical goals similar to print advertisements. Williamson (1978) described how advertisements assume a certain spectator, positioning the audience in relation to the product being sold. Just like advertisements, covers often integrate ideological components to appeal to the reader (Jupowicz-Ginalska, 2018). Significantly, consumers do not have to purchase or subscribe to magazines before interpreting their covers. Readers can form ideas about the topics represented on covers through brief transactions at various sites of dissemination (Rose, 2016)—at newsstands, in dental offices, online, or in the hands of another person.

Defining Education

Historically, scholars within the field of education have made a distinction between education and schooling. Education is a process in which knowledge, including childhood socialization and acculturation, is transferred from one generation to the next, both inside and outside formal school environments (Brandwein, 1981; Shujaa, 1993). In contrast, schooling is a process that identifies the concepts, values, and skills that are deemed important by a community and transfers them through the constraints and power dynamics of institutional structures (Brandwein, 1981; Shujaa, 1993). While these definitions are accepted by scholars in the field, they are not widely known or recognized by the public or the media. TIME, for example, does not categorize covers or articles under the heading of schooling. Rather, the term education is used to categorize those covers and articles encompassing topics related to both education and schooling as defined above as well as covers and articles that discuss topics related to education and schooling that are not included within those definitions. TIME only refers to formal schooling when it uses the term education, not for the entire range of educational activities.

Within the context of this study, we define education as the process of teaching and learning of individuals in prekindergarten through postsecondary in the context of public, private, charter, and home schools within the United States. Education also encompasses the experiences and perspectives of various stakeholders (e.g., students, teachers, parents, and administrators) within and around the contexts mentioned above.

Data Set

TIME maintains an archive of all magazine covers published in the United States at their website (www.time.com/vault). When we began the project, the archive was still in development, so not all covers were represented. As of December 2019, the archive contained 4,823 covers. This includes special issues as well as magazines that had multiple covers. Both were included in our data set. Covers in the archive can be viewed by year or subject. Underneath each subject heading are a series of subheadings.

It was not our intent to analyze all of TIME’s covers. Our initial focus was on covers published between 1983 and 2016, the year we began this project. We chose 1983 as a point of demarcation because this aligned with the publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), which historically is connected with a deficit framing of schooling (Ulmer, 2016). Originally, we collected 42 covers published within this time frame. However, during our analysis, we began to anecdotally notice similar patterns on older covers to what we were seeing in the initial data set. This challenged our assumption that A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) signaled the beginning of a deficit view of education. Therefore, we extended our analysis to include all TIME covers.

We collected all covers (n = 56) aggregated under the subject subheading “Education,” which is nested under the parent heading “Politics.” Additionally, the TIME staff have tagged each cover with a series of “related categories.” We searched each year and collected all the covers (n = 175) that were tagged with keywords that could be related to education (e.g., school, student, teacher, child, parent, etc.). Then, we visually scanned the archive for and collected additional relevant covers (n = 12) that may have been missed by the subject headings or related categories utilized by TIME. We looked for keywords related to education, objects commonly associated with education (e.g., desks and chalkboards), and individuals who during the time the cover was produced were associated with education.

After collecting the covers, we reviewed the developing data corpus for redundancy. Then, we compared the covers with the definition of education used for this study to determine if the collected covers fell within the scope of this project. Within the images, we considered who (e.g., students, parents, teachers) and what (e.g., universities, schools, classrooms) were represented. Within the text, we considered the words (e.g., college, homework, dropout) and how they were used. Those covers that did not align with our established definition were eliminated.

When excluding covers, images and text were considered both independently and holistically. As multiple connotations are possible for both words and images, many covers required discussion and consideration of context. For example, the March 22, 2010, cover, which features the image of a digitized hand balancing a lightbulb atop one finger alongside the headline “10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years” was ultimately eliminated from our data set. We agreed that the lightbulb could be connected with education because of its common association with bright ideas. However, when considered in context, this lightbulb seemed more closely connected to innovation and future thinking, through phrases like “bandwidth is the new black gold” and “TV will save the world,” than to education as we defined it.

After elaborating on our findings, we revisited the covers we had initially excluded from the data corpus. We considered whether each cover had been prematurely eliminated and discussed if and how each cover would reinforce or challenge our findings. Ultimately, we found that the covers we had debated on and excluded would not have altered our findings. The final data corpus consisted of 115 covers related to education published between the years 1923 and 2019.

Qualitative Multimodal Content Analysis

To better understand visual and multimodal data, researchers have begun to blend theories of multimodality with a variety of qualitative research methodologies (Jewitt, 2009), such as content analysis. The goal of qualitative content analysis is to provide “a systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes and patterns” that aids in the subjective interpretation of data (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p. 1278). Historically, qualitative content analysis has been used to examine textual or linguistic data (Kohlbacher, 2006). By utilizing theoretical perspectives and analytical processes that consider the nature of multimodal texts, representation, and communication, the potential of qualitative content analysis can be expanded to address visual media (Bateman, 2008).

To analyze our data corpus, we utilized a qualitative MMCA approach (Serafini & Reid, 2019). This methodology brings together qualitative content analysis and theories of social semiotics and visual culture to better understand the potential meanings of multimodal texts. MMCA permits investigation of broad data corpora. It differs from other multimodal methodologies that focus on single multimodal phenomena (Lim & O’Halloran, 2012). When encountering a collection of multimodal artifacts, such as print advertisements for particular products or movie trailers, using MMCA allows investigators to look across the collection of artifacts to construct thematic patterns and findings.

Analytical Process

Names Suggest Authority, Power, or Relevance in Education Circles

Beginning as early as 1924, the most common trend found across TIME covers was the use of names of people and places to suggest authority, power, or relevance in education circles (n = 76). University presidents, college professors, education philosophers, superintendents, education commissioners, and education secretaries are all named, as are students, teachers, and administrators. See Appendix C for a complete list of covers in this category.

Such centering of individuals was by design. According to Angeletti and Oliva (2010), Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, TIME’s creators, believed that “the forces of history were better understood through individuals” (p. 141), and thus, for decades, sketched and photographic portraits of people were featured on the covers of the magazine. In many instances, the names and faces of these individuals stood alone, the assumption being that each individual had enough national acclaim for the reader-viewer to recognize them. Thus, many of the covers in this category largely offered conceptual representations (i.e., the actor was posed but not engaged in any action; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). For example, sketched portraits of education philosophers John Dewey (June 4, 1928) and Dottoressa Maria Montessori (February 3, 1930) stand alone on the covers with no other words to specifically link them to education. In other instances, the name of a university precedes the name of the individual, lending that university’s authority as an institution of higher learning to that person. Dr. Harold Willis Dodds (June 18, 1934) became “Princeton’s Harold Willis Dodds” as he gave his first presidential commencement address in the spring of 1934 at Princeton University. This strategy was also used on the May 5, 1966, cover, which featured 10 White, male college professors identified by their affiliated universities and as great teachers. Coincidently, this was the only cover that presented teachers and education in a positive light.

It was not until the 1940s and 1950s that covers began to consistently include backgrounds that provided readers with context that hinted at why a particular individual was featured (Angeletti & Oliva, 2010). Interestingly, within our data set, this shift also signals the beginning of a deficit framing of education wherein the individuals named on the covers become saviors of a broken or failing system. While a few covers prior to the 1940s included backgrounds, an uninterrupted trend of contextualized covers began within our data set, starting with the September 23, 1946, cover, where president of Harvard, James Bryant Conant, appears against a backdrop of ivy and the Harvard shield, which is suggestive of his affiliation with Harvard.

K–12 schools’ names were also featured, as were the names of students and teachers. In contrast with the prestige affiliated with institutions of higher education, K–12 school building names tend to be linked with tragedy and disaster. Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Parkland were used to signify their importance in an ongoing national conversation about guns and school shootings in the United States. Columbine High School, in particular, is mentioned by name four times on TIME covers, and the faces of the shooters are displayed twice. Photographs of the Columbine victims also appear, as does a photograph of Parkland survivors and activists.

Photographs and names of public school teachers also appear. Most notably, there are three different versions of the September 24, 2018, cover. On each cover, an individual teacher appears along with a brief description of their financial hardship. Each description ends with the statement “I am a teacher in America.” Unlike the majority of covers in this category, these covers are narrative representations (e.g., the participants were engaged in actions signaled by vectors; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). The covers displayed photographs of teachers who were affected by low pay and difficult working conditions. The teachers’ reactions to their working situations were nontransactional (e.g., their gazes did not signal a clear goal, and their stillness of pose did not denote action; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Their names and faces paired with their hardships are designed to generate empathy in the reader-viewer. Here, the names of schools and the faces of individuals come to represent broader issues and, in the process, become iconic. Importantly, the nontransactional nature of the images and the teachers’ lack of action might send the message that the featured teachers may need others to problem solve on their behalf.

Learning and Schooling Have Not Changed

Across the decades, TIME has repeatedly used traditional symbols to represent learning and schooling (n = 67), such as the one-room schoolhouse, chairs with attached desks, graduation regalia, apples, and chalkboards (Appendix D). Such objects, or symbolic attributes, are often made salient in the images and are “conventionally associated with symbolic values” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 105; e.g., apples symbolize teachers). These symbolic attributes appear as early as 1927 and continue through 2018, suggesting that little has changed in general perceptions of education.

TIME’s repeated use of these symbols on the covers evokes a sense of nostalgia for traditional ways of schooling. For example, the October 10, 1983, cover displayed a one-room schoolhouse undergoing repairs and receiving a new coat of red paint. The image mimicked Norman Rockwell’s art, stylistically referencing education’s past in an affectionate manner. When the image is matched with its headline, “Shaping Up: America’s Schools are Getting Better,” a reader might infer that returning to the education systems and policies of the past is the way forward for America’s schools. This “back to basics” approach to education is clearly referenced in other covers. The February 20, 1950, cover advocated for a return to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic—essential skills referred to as the three Rs. The one-room schoolhouse appears again on the October 27, 1997, cover, dedicated to “what makes a good school.”

Thus, through these covers, TIME seems to suggest that a high-quality education is neither future forward nor technologically innovative. For example, the conceptual cover dedicated to building 21st-century students (December 18, 2006) shows a single desk/chair, a stack of textbooks, and an apple. Everything is white except the apple. While the white color of the room, chair, and textbooks seems to reference modern room design, there are no other components that index, or signal, the 21st century. The room and desk are devoid of technology and, therefore, do not indicate the digital skills a 21st-century student might need. Only two covers in our data corpus featured a computer (September 8, 1986, and August 31, 1987). On TIME’s covers, students read physical books and write with pencils on paper.

Another symbol that appears on many covers is graduation regalia. The regalia on the early covers signaled academic prestige and intellectual prowess. For example, caps and gowns were worn in the portraits of both Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur (February 28, 1927) and Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler (February 15, 1932), who were the presidents of Stanford University and Columbia University, respectively. On later covers, graduation regalia is linked to students finding careers postcollege. Across the decades, the individuals wearing graduation regalia are overwhelmingly white and male. It is notable that high school graduation regalia is not worn by any student on any TIME cover. The February 24, 2014, cover mentions a 6-year high school diploma, but the cap worn by the white male student reads “Just Hired,” suggesting that traditional high school has been extended to include the college years. If high schoolers were depicted in graduation robes, such depictions might imply that the institution of schooling does not need fixing, which might run contrary to covers suggesting that American students struggle to succeed. The emphasis on graduation is important because graduation is positioned as the end goal to K–12 education and viewed as a status symbol that separates the successful from the unsuccessful. TIME presents graduation as a perpetual indicator of an education system’s good health.

Overgeneralized and Metonymic Representations Stand for Education Stakeholders

Beginning in 1950 and continuing through 2014, schools and stakeholders were represented through the use of overgeneralizations or through metonymic representations that overlook the complex and diverse nature of education (n = 42; Appendix E). Metonymy is a function in which one signified (i.e., word, object, or item) is used to stand for another (Chandler, 2007).

Schools were presented as a singular collective. The institution of schooling became the decision maker, not a public institution composed of individuals responsible for making decisions. On the March 17, 1997, cover, the headline “How Colleges Are Gouging U” implies that the institution of college, not the individuals who set college policies and procedures, is doing the gouging. Similarly, the institution of college is overgeneralized as a “trap” for college athletes (April 3, 1989) and as “strapped for money” (April 13, 1992). Certainly, these issues of rising tuition, university funding, and paying college athletes are concerns that affect a number of universities. However, overgeneralizing these issues as being of concern in every college fails to acknowledge the sheer variety of college experiences.

TIME covers also present K–12 schools in an overgeneralized manner. Cover headlines suggest that schools do not “make sense” (February 20, 1950), are “in trouble” (November 14, 1977), or are “shaping up” (October 10, 1983). Education is considered “too important to be left solely to the educators” (October 14, 1965), and America is presented as a “dropout nation” (April 17, 2006). Such statements overgeneralize K–12 education by implying that the conditions at all schools don’t “make sense” or that all schools are “in trouble.” These representations fail to acknowledge the systemic and socioeconomic disparities between schools.

When representing key stakeholders (e.g., children, teachers, and parents), covers tended to rely on metonymy. For example, the January 25, 1999, cover features a white, male, middle-class student paired with the headline “Too Much Homework! How It’s Hurting Our Kids, and What Parents Should Do About It.” This child functions as a stand-in for all students. However, this is a metonymic fallacy, wherein who or what is represented “is taken as an accurate reflection of the whole of that which it is standing for” (Chandler, 2007, p. 133). This is a fallacy because the experiences of this child will be vastly different from those of children of color and other genders. Such metonymic representations do not acknowledge the wide variety of experiences had by individuals from different racial, gender, social, and economic groups. Nor do they acknowledge the uniqueness within categories of stakeholders, and as such, they present these categories as fact or truth (i.e., this student’s experience is the only experience). Not all metonymic representations utilized people. The November 3, 2014, cover portrays a gavel smashing an apple alongside the headline “Rotten Apples.” This absence of complexity in representation serves to dehumanize schools and key stakeholders.

Schools Are in Need of Fixing

TIME covers across the decades have represented education and school as social entities in need of fixing (n = 32; Appendix F). The covers have highlighted a range of issues, from America “flunking” science (February 13, 2006) to America’s status as a “dropout nation” (April 17, 2006), to America “failing” its “smartest students” (August 27, 2007), to administrators finding “it’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher” (November 3, 2014). The February 13, 2006, cover suggests that America has fallen behind the world in science while “other countries are getting stronger,” depicting a school-age science student (as indicated by the lab coat, protective goggles, flasks, and test tubes) surrounded by ash, glass debris, and the final flames of a failed experiment. While potentially a humorous image, the visual presents this student as a representative of science education’s failings and as an inept and foolish scientist whose “slacking off” has resulted in failure and near disaster. When coupled with the emotive nature of the language, America’s science education becomes portrayed as a dangerous embarrassment that has elevated other countries above America.

While the aforementioned covers focused on students as the victims of the institution of schooling, a number of covers also isolated “bad teachers” as a reason for the failing of American education. The October 15, 1965, cover, featuring Commissioner Keppel, a renowned Harvard University educator and U.S. Commissioner of Education (from 1962 to 1965), displays the following statement: “Education is too important to be left solely to the educators.” The visual contains a portrait of Keppel and an image of the classic one-room schoolhouse with a giant funnel whose vertical vectors (in this case, visible lines) draw the eye down through the funnel, channeling dollars and resources into the chimney of the building. The notion of “bad teachers” was repeated on the November 3, 2014, cover, which declared the presence of “rotten apples” in America’s classrooms. This cover decontextualized the situation and separated the headline from the real-world impact of the Vergara v. California lawsuit, in which nine student plaintiffs challenged five California state statutes that provided employment protections for teachers (Powers & Chapman, 2017).

While good K–12 classroom teachers are not represented, other education personnel are represented as potential saviors of the education system. The November 15, 1963, cover presented Calvin Gross, New York City’s superintendent, and the October 15, 1965, cover presented Commissioner Keppel as powerful public administrators with dollars to dedicate to schools. The September 16, 1991, cover asks if the then education secretary, Lamar Alexander, is capable of saving America’s schools. The cover shows him framed by a ray of light against the backdrop of a darkened classroom. On the December 8, 2008, cover, Michelle Rhee, the then head of Washington, D.C., schools, posed with a broomstick to show how she was preparing to “fix America’s schools” by cleaning schools and ridding them of bad teachers. The broomstick also indexed her vilification as a result of her “battle against bad teachers.” Neither image shows these saviors interacting with the classroom environment or with any education stakeholders. As conceptual representations, these images do not visibly show the actors’ specific goals and actions. These saviors emanated from spaces outside of school buildings and districts, suggesting that an outside overseer is needed for our education system to work. Importantly, the outside personnel must have money.

Schools Are Sites for Larger, Sociopolitical Debates

TIME covers represented schools as cultural, political, and religious battlegrounds (n = 24; Appendix G). This category included covers that fell outside specific issues of teaching and learning (e.g., quality of teachers, dropout rates, or the role of technology in classrooms) and highlighted cultural, political, and social issues that are part of larger, sociopolitical debates. Such issues included gun violence/rights, women’s rights, segregation and integration, sex, rape, and evolution. Ultimately, these issues are larger than schools and education. These debates are grounded in the political, religious, and cultural perspectives of different groups.

These covers present dichotomies and divisions. The November 15, 1971, cover addresses White and Black citizens’ vocalizations of their disagreements regarding forced busing, a required element of many court-ordered school district desegregation plans. This cover displays a school bus against an orange background, which is divided in half by a vertical vector with one half painted white and the other black. A young Black girl stands next to the white half of the bus, and a young White girl stands next to the black half of the bus. In the two front windows, two different landscapes are presented—one a suburb and the other a cityscape. On this cover, black and white are presented in opposition, as are inner cities and suburbs.

Other covers attempt to humanize the issues. To accomplish this, many of the covers utilized staged photographs of models. In doing so, TIME cues the reader-viewer to accept that the people displayed are the ones experiencing the circumstances represented on the cover, thus lending a human face and experience to the situation. For example, the April 29, 1996, cover presents a photograph of a young Black girl seated at a dilapidated school desk in a classroom with a 1920s aesthetic. She gazes directly out at the reader, as if demanding a response (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Below her image reads the headline “Back to Segregation: After Four Decades of Struggle, America Has Now Given Up on School Integration. Why?” This cover implies that it is this child who will suffer now that America has “given up on school integration.” It is she who will experience a 1920s education in a 1990s context.

In some cases, the covers featured photographs of specific individuals to both humanize issues and shock audiences. The high modality (e.g., the degree to which an image represents itself as real) of the photographs and their depiction of real humans are reminders of the people and reality involved (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). This is particularly evident on covers connected to gun violence. Gun violence is first referenced on the April 6, 1998, cover, featuring Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, who shot five of their middle school classmates in Arkansas. Class photographs of both boys make them appear “normal,” while a childhood photo of one holding a gun works to shock and titillate by juxtaposing the apparent innocence of childhood with the apparent violence of firearms. Similarly, class photographs of the Columbine shooters appear on the May 3, 1999, cover, while on the December 20, 1999, cover, a still image taken from security camera footage is featured. Photos of victims and survivors are also utilized. Victims of the Columbine shooters also appear on the May 3, 1999, cover; victims of the Virginia Tech shooting are featured on the April 30, 2007, cover; and the April 2, 2018, cover displays five Parkland, Florida, student survivors. By giving the reader-viewer the faces and names of real people and, more specifically, real victims, TIME seeks to trigger sympathy in the heart of the reader-viewer.

Directs Attention Away From People and Communities

The use of symbolic objects and metonymic representations directs the viewers’ attention away from individuals and communities. Using visual and textual metaphors such as “bad apples” to represent teachers hides the people who teach the nation’s children, keeping their humanity, the complexity of their work, and the multitude of possibilities for why they might be deemed a “bad teacher” out of sight. Furthermore, to portray the classroom in terms of traditional symbols of learning, such as pencils, books, desks, and chalkboards, is to ignore the human, personal, and affective dimensions of learning. A maintained focus on such symbols also hides the technological, digital, and global potentials of education in the 21st century. A review of current education research and practices reveals that learning environments, student demographics, and the tools and curricula used by teachers and administrators have changed and responded to digital and technological innovation (e.g., Beach & O’Brien, 2014; Mills, 2016; Smagorinsky, 2017). Yet TIME continues to perpetuate a distinctive definition and visual representation of education. Schools are always brick-and-mortar structures, students are seated at desks, materials are in disrepair, and teachers are portrayed as overwhelmed, villainous, or eager to change their practices. As Dewey (1938) observed, to focus on the traditional objects involved in learning is to ignore the experiential component of education for which teachers are responsible.

Sells Quick Fixes to Education

The use of oversimplifications, overgeneralizations, and metonymic representations also promotes the view that education is simplistic and, thus, can be easily fixed—by a person, an injection of cash, new practices, or technology. This perspective fails to recognize that problems may vary from school to school, district to district, and state to state. The issues that Michelle Rhee was trying to address in Washington, D.C., are likely not the same issues faced by schools elsewhere. Education separated from its local and broader contexts appears to be a much more manageable and fixable entity than to see each school and district as unique entities whose problems require unique solutions. Such an oversimplified view also ignores the social actors—the teachers, students, administrators, and parents—who inhabit these school spaces. To see schools and districts through their local and situated contexts is to embrace their individual complexity.

Offers Conflicting Messages About Education

When education is presented in such a simplistic fashion, the broader responsibilities of schools and education are missed. While college and career readiness is certainly one of the purposes of schools and education, these covers force us to ask, college and career readiness for whom? Considering the number of White males depicted wearing graduation regalia, the message becomes clear that college and career readiness is reserved for White men. In contrast, the finding that schools are sites for political and social debates reminds us that schools and education are not neutral but, rather, are tied to the values, beliefs, and attitudes of society. As such, schools and other educational contexts become places where political, religious, and social ideologies are tested. The Parkland students-turned-advocates presented on TIME’s cover became both individuals who have been shaped by the events of their individual school context and symbols for the antigun movement. Thus, TIME does occasionally offer the message that education shapes citizens and citizens shape the future of the United States.

Future Directions

This study focused exclusively on the covers of TIME. Analyzing the articles affiliated with the covers might reveal that TIME presented a more nuanced or balanced narrative about education. Furthermore, considering the letters to the editor about affiliated cover stories might reveal how the public during particular time periods viewed or responded to such representations. In the future, we propose to examine both. We also plan to examine the covers and articles of other weekly news magazines, such as Newsweek, to gain greater understanding of media representations of education and public consumption of those representations. They might offer different perspectives or counternarratives about the state of education at particular periods of time. Finally, we acknowledge the inherent subjectivity of qualitative research and recognize that other scholars may interpret these covers differently depending on their own experiences and analytical lenses.

We invite other education stakeholders to examine representations of education in TIME and other news media outlets from multiple analytical perspectives. Such interrogations might help us reimagine public perceptions of education. Furthermore, we see opportunities through MMCA for scholars in critical literacy, critical media studies, and critical pedagogy to question problematic representations of education in all media and multimodal discourse. Education historians and policy scholars might apply MMCA to help illuminate how society has come to understand education and various education stakeholders through visual and multimodal images. Such an understanding might aid educators and policymakers in resisting pervasive perspectives. We also see potential for K–12 teachers to work with students to examine and (if they deem necessary) challenge how they are both represented not just on the covers of TIME but in other texts too.

Conclusion

As our study shows, TIME and its covers offer particular interpretations of education. These representations are communicated to its consumers, as well as to anyone who happens to view the covers. There is a consistency of message that is not visible to an individual consumer viewing a singular cover at a particular moment in time. Rather, these trends are only revealed when considering the whole of TIME’s publication history. Ultimately, A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) is not the demarcating line for deficit language used regarding education. Rather, the representation of education and schooling as institutional and social failures has a much longer history.

Today, the media continue to disseminate images and stories about how education in the United States is failing students, how the education system itself is corrupt, and how parents and advocates need to take action. With the infrequency with which the media discuss education topics (Campanella, 2015; Coe & Kuttner, 2018; Dionne et al., 2009), some members of society who are unfamiliar with education beyond their own experiences as students may come to know about education solely through these outlets. Such infrequent and specific perspectives may disguise the multifaceted and complex nature of the field of education.

There is a need for publicly shared interrogation of these images and for the U.S. public to critically view constructions of education. Other texts and viewpoints on education should be sought and also examined. We believe that all stakeholders in education and education research should address problematic representations and provide counterstories in response. Alternative narratives may become increasingly necessary, especially as the roles and lives of K–12 educators and students garner national attention due to the pandemic and the systemic failures exposed by the Black Lives Matter movement.