As a part of media education, media aesthetic education has been concerned and proposed by the Western education community since the 1930s. It has a history of more than 80 years of development. Due to the different political systems, cultural environments, media systems, and educational systems, media aesthetic education in the different historical stages of its emergence and development, it is inevitable to present unique historical paths and orientations. On the basis of collating historical data, this paper discusses the occurrence and development process of media aesthetic education concept, in order to clarify the conceptual category of media aesthetic education, and to understand the different characteristics of connotation ideas in various periods in the historical context, and then extract the stage composition, core content and main features of the paradigm of the “protectionism” aesthetic education.