This paper draws on recent research in English classrooms on media education, offers new evidence on the forms of media education currently taught by English teachers, and attempts to connect the current English-language curriculum debate with more general concerns about values and religion in the curriculum. The project involved 11 secondary school English teachers in England to see how they taught about media, specifically advertising, in the secondary classroom. Findings revealed that they visualized their aim as that of helping students to make up their own minds by recognizing that media texts are constructions that represent particular points of view. Most found enthusiastic student response and expressed surprise at the insights they had gained into student perceptions and preferred modes of working when teaching about media. The use of media in education is seen as a way to help students to learn values in an active and interrogative way rather than by passive absorption. Media education offers a powerful, accessible, and effective way to achieve reflection and aesthetic experience by discussion in the classroom. Many English teachers have the basic skills for this type of education because of their special expertise in engaging and developing the imaginations of students. It is suggested that media education opens up a form of literacy that is more than functional and that recognizes that information, in whatever format, is always value-laden. (Contains 16 references.) (NAV)