Efforts Grow To Help Students Evaluate What They See Online (apnews.com)

Alarmed by the proliferation of false content online, state lawmakers around the country are pushing schools to put more emphasis on teaching students how to tell fact from fiction. From a report: Lawmakers in several states have introduced or passed bills calling on public school systems to do more to teach media literacy skills that they say are critical to democracy. The effort has been bipartisan but has received little attention despite successful legislation in Washington state, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Mexico. Several more states are expected to consider such bills in the coming year, including Arizona, New York and Hawaii.

Advocates say the K-12 curriculum has not kept pace with rapid changes in technology. Studies show many children spend hours every day online but struggle to comprehend the content that comes at them. For years, they have pushed schools to incorporate media literacy -- including the ability to evaluate and analyze sources of information -- into lesson plans in civics, language arts, science and other subjects.

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Re:Parents need to as well

[blindseer]

You can make fun of Judaeo-Christian habits, doctrines, and beliefs if you like but the modern world we live in is based on what those beliefs have encouraged and allowed. Much of what we understand of genetics and astronomy came from Catholics. Even the word "university" comes from the tradition of sending people off to learn of what they believe God created.

Compare this with other religions. Picking one at random we have Islam as an example. They believe in an all powerful god, capable of doing anything for people so long as people believe in this god and worship him with sufficient vigor.

An example. An Army friend of mine got called up to go "play in the sand" and part of his duties while there was to train the local soldiers how to shoot a rifle. This is something that in the US Armed Forces an enlisted person is expected to master in a week or three of intense training.

He saw this indigenous soldier shoot wildly at the target before him and stopped him to ask what he thought he was doing. He said that all he had to do was shoot in the general direction and his god would make the bullets find their target. How do you create a prosperous, or even functioning, society with that thinking?

There's even a term for this idea of hard work relating to prosperity, "Protestant work ethic". Sure, this work ethic comes with a lot of baggage from an imaginary friend in the sky. I'll take that if it means people are free to question the nature of the universe, free to teach their daughters how to read, and think that "God helps those that help themselves". This isn't a binary here, you believe in causality or you believe in a god. Both can be true at once. People can understand that there are rules to the universe and that there is a god that is worthy of worship. So what if it means taking a few hours a week to pray to nothing. At least they aren't praying for their god to bring them success in life.