Vanessa Melius of C-SPAN had just explained to Bridget and her peers at Crews Middle School in Lawrenceville how different shots of political candidates can manipulate viewers' feelings.

Shooting a candidate from below can make him look tall, powerful, like a leader, Melius said. Shooting from above can make the politician look short, unimportant, inconsequential.

"I never thought about that before," Bridget said, standing beside the $1 million traveling classroom. "They have a lot more power than I thought."

State education officials are hoping more students will get lessons like this one by requiring for the first time that public schools teach pupils to be savvy viewers of television news, commercials, movies, music videos and other media.

Under Georgia's proposed revised curriculum, which the State Board of Education is expected to vote on in June, all students would be expected to demonstrate mastery of "viewing" in their English classes, along with traditional skills like reading, writing, speaking and listening.

"When our students go home from school, they watch TV, they rent movies, they play video games, they surf the Internet --- they live in a world of visual text," said Gerald Boyd, associate director of curriculum and instructional services for the Georgia Department of Education.

"But . . . students don't have the discernment skills for visual text," Boyd said. "That's what we're trying to give them with these standards."

The state has never had such requirements before, but Gwinnett County, which has Georgia's largest public school system, has used similar standards since 1996.

As early as next year, sixth-graders throughout the state could be expected to identify propaganda in television commercials or explain the appeal of a popular television show like "American Idol." Eighth-graders may be asked to interpret how news photographers influence people's opinions, and high school sophomores might be expected to analyze NBC's coverage of the Iraq war vs. that of Fox News.

As has been the case with much of the curriculum, the viewing standards have been adapted from practices in other states, principally Kansas and California. All states now teach some form of so-called "media literacy," either in select subjects like English, social studies and health, or across disciplines. Georgia officials included the viewing component in English/language arts for all grades, from kindergarten through high school.

"I think it's good, it's solid, it's something that we need to do," said Alan Perry, president of the Georgia Council of Teachers of English. "But we have to be careful. We can't just turn our classrooms into theaters."

Skeptics of media literacy programs question the merits of teaching what appears to be pop culture, and adding to teachers' already crowded schedules. Supporters of the programs say media literacy can be integrated into every class, and that it helps prepare students for an information-driven society by making them better thinkers and higher achievers.

"If you look at Canada, England and Australia . . . we're in the Dark Ages," said Dave Yanofsky, executive director of Just Think, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group that has been teaching young people how to evaluate and create media messages since 1995. "We're the only English-speaking country that doesn't have media literacy integrated into the curriculum --- and we're the country that needs it most."

In Gwinnett middle schools, for example, social studies students are expected to analyze different interpretations of the same event.

In some English classes, students may be asked to compare a book and a film about the same subject.

But it's unclear whether even Gwinnett students are getting in-depth information beyond topics like propaganda or fact vs. opinion.

The Crews Middle School students --- and some teachers --- seemed genuinely surprised at what they learned on the C-SPAN bus, which travels the country and occasionally visits metro Atlanta schools.

Although the lesson only touched on how television is produced, eighth-grader Brittany George said she would definitely be watching TV differently now.