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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.
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.
Don't count on the schools to do this. Parents need to spend a lot of time teaching these skills. An important concept is that just because many people/reporters say the same thing, it doesn't mean its true. I find examples of stuff that gets repeated in multiple news articles that is wrong, then show them how to figure out its wrong. My one kid is a natural skeptic, the other tends to believe everything. Personal traits are a big factor
No it doesn't. When it comes to evidence based things like global warming, evolution and other things that have scientific data and facts behind them, conservatives ignore or just deny those facts and keep their beliefs.
And because their people are making policy, in the long run America will be weak and behind the rest of the World.
Belief == opinion with no evidence.
Any of the web sites run by Jestin Coler would count. Most are defunct now, but Firebrand Left and Conservative Frontline are both excellent examples of fake news sites.
Oh, and InfoWars.
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I hereby christen a New law...Gore's Law. It states that any discussion about facts will ALWAYS involve Global Warming, because all you Cowards go there first. So, to save time, just use Gore's law.
Quite the opposite, actually. The tendency is for people to blindly accept even the most vague or ambiguous evidence when it supports the conclusion that we went it to, and to treat with extreme skepticism any evidence that supports a conclusion we don't want to be true.
There's a name for the phenomenon, confirmation bias.
For example, look at "creation science". A significant number of evangelical conservatives who treat climate change with skepticism are perfectly willing to unquestionably accept conclusions about the origins of canyons and other geological features that are based on extremely dubious methods of inquiry.
These are the same schools that want to teach intelligent design; that slaves were immigrant workers; and that competition is everyone gets a trophy.
There's no need to teach self-defense in schools.
Teach the goddam curriculum and the rest will take care of itself.
Shit fire.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Teaching this in school? Too late.
Critical thinking skills start (or fail) long before then. Sure, some of that can be taught later. But getting the foundational how-to-think pieces in place starts (or fails) long, long before that. This is parent stuff first, and is somewhat dulled or honed later on by school teachers. Specific awareness of how to use, say, Google and a fistful of less-bad fact checking resources to tell a kid when they're being lied to is sort of like learning lab techniques. But an embrace of activity in a lab class only comes in kids that have already had their curiosity and some intellectual rigor stoked at home, well before that class happens.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If I tell you that Jesus healed the sick many dismiss it although I can produce reams of historical documentation
Just because someone wrote something down doesn't make it true, especially not when making extraordinary claims.
The true version is that vast numbers of parents haven't got a clue, and are stupid. Sad but true. By definition Slashdot readers are wildly atypical.
Parents do not create critical thinking
Indeed, the more conservative the parent, the less tolerant of critical analysis of the myths they love (Reagan most beloved President ever for instance) than liberals.
Critical thinking begins when religion is brought into doubt.
Pity we can't teach that as a mandatory pass / fail in grade school
,,, should not be a course tailored for a specific subject.
We're talking about a single "threat," here.
When another single threat surfaces down the road are we going to teach critical thinking about that?
Schools should be preparing students in the general art of knowing the difference between bullshit and wild honey.
That won't happen until teachers are allowed to teach without the guidance of vacuous-minded outsiders like DeVos, batshit crazy right-wing Christian Evangelicals, and the Texas textbook industry (that mentions Blacks slaves as migrant "workers").
That won't happen until adults with more sense than god gave a piss ant start voting rationally.
I'm not optimistic.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
https://www.amazon.com/Mathema...
I gave this book to a young friend when he first left for college. It's a good read and a good teaching aid for critical thinking, especially when it comes to the media. Since it's math-based it's easier to see how "facts" can be presented in a way that distort the "truth".
Another book I've said would be a great one for high school seniors would be "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter". I found it an enjoyable book that weaved fact and fiction. For students, it might be easy to separate some the extremes as fact ( Lincoln becomes president ) from fiction ( vampires living for centuries ) but there's a lots of other parts that would take knowledge or research. The book was not intended to deceive, so it could be an enjoyable project for students to analyze. It would also be less political than using a news story to learn to separate the wheat from the chaff.
It is called critical thinking, and it is something that should have been taught before and should be taught now. It will be interesting to see if legislators will be willing to give the schools money for this task.
Other postings have emphasized the need for parents to address this issue, and I agree with that. Once, when one of my children was around 10, she said something that was not true. Both my wife and I said that was wrong. She said, "I saw it on the internet." We then had a discussion about how to evaluate information on the internet and other places.
It's not that science is too hard for the precious little ones, it's that it's too expensive and controversial for their parents.
Yes, science can be hard, but it rewards effort. But you know what's hard but not rewarding? Sitting through an overcrowded biology class taught by someone who barely knows the subject, or worse, thinks Adam and Eve rode around on dinosaurs.
Because of the unique way we do education in this country, the quality of science education you get varies from world class to third world depending on which state you live in, and for states at the bottom which town you live in. In fact the list of the best high schools in the country are dominated by states ranked roughly in the second quartile from the bottom.
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This. A major difference is that crossing a river isn't exactly a difficult feat - I've done it myself, occasionally.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The class was called Critical Thinking.
I think it was replaced by some kind of "studies" class because Critical Thinking contained too many awkward, yet true, facts.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
> By definition Slashdot readers are wildly atypical.
That's probably true. Yet, I often read the articles and find that the headline and summary posted here is very misleading clickbait. In the last several weeks many articles from Verge have been posted here. Most are very misleading, but nobody here questions them.
First and foremost you need to teach them debating, teach them dialectics, teach them sophistry. Teach them how to put blinders on people so by cherry picking and by locking off modes of thought even truthful science and hard logic can be used to make almost any point.
If you don't go back to the classics you aren't even trying, science is a false god.
And what about US law makers who regularly propagate fake news, fictions, and denialism? You know those idiots who say things like women who are raped don't get pregnant or that the science on climate change isn't settled. An irresponsible and poorly informed leadership isn't going to help cultivate a responsible and informed citizenry. Then there's Fox News...
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
This is very true, I grew up in the mid-west and went to a small high school with less than 100 students. The town sits on a lake at the mouth of the river that feeds it and has a lot of tourism making it a wealthy community. There where 19 students in my class 100% graduated and 14 of them went on to college.
The place I live now 36 miles away has much larger classes with about 1,800 students at the high school and a 76% graduation rate.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
Anyway, be assured that the politicians want students trained to think the way politicians want them to. Only the "other guy" is fake news
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
This video explains it all
There's a reason education sucks
(Paraphrased) There's a reason education sucks. It's the same reason it will never be fixed. Because the "owners" of this country don't want that. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want people smart enough sitting around the kitchen table thinking about how badly they are getting screwed by a system which threw them overboard 30 years ago. They want obedient workers. They want people just smart enough to run the machines, but dumb enough to passively accept increasingly shittier jobs with lower pay and longer hours.
Lesson 1: Don't trust anything I write.
Lesson 2: There's no Lesson 2.
Then, logically, is there a Lesson 2?
Let's start off being nice...
I'm in this college course, Modern Western Civilization, or something like that. When we get to the chapter on the years leading up to World War II we are told about the horrendous stuff taught to children in public schools by the now dominant National Socialist party. Things like mathematics problems on how much money has to be taken from the able bodied workers to pay for the care of the invalids. When these children grow up they will have learned that it's just math, we have to kill the mentally retarded or they will bring down the country. That's terrible, right? The public schools being used like that is just terrible.
Then next week comes the chapter on the post war period. We're taught on how the UK had this "lost generation" from all the people killed and injured in the war. To combat this problem what did the UK government do? Well, they set up public schools to make sure all the orphaned and single parent children got an education in a time of need.
So, I raised my hand and asked what I thought was a simple question. What kept the public schools in the UK from indoctrinating the children like what happened in pre-war Germany?
The professor asked me to repeat the question, and I did. What kept the UK public schools from teaching horrible things to children like the proto-Nazis did? He thought for a second, waved me off like he didn't have time for that, and moved on with his lecture.
I saw this as not only a failure of past public schools but also of the present. I was in a room with 20 or so students that were presumably largely educated by public high schools and no one thought to ask this same question. Even more damning is this professor, with a doctorate in history and years of teaching this same course, was not prepared to answer this question. That tells me that while he was doing his studies he didn't have a classmate ask this question, he didn't think to ask this question, and none of his previous students thought to ask this question.
I'm quite certain I know the answer. There was nothing to keep post-war UK public schools from teaching horrendous things to children. Public schools can only take people's money for education and add the government slant to everything taught, even mathematics, and skim a bit off the top of that money for the administration of the schools. Does a lack of public schools mean children are left ignorant? Unlikely, that money taken from the people to educate their children in public schools is only diluted with government bureaucracy and indoctrination. Even if you have some parents that would rather spend that money on beer and horse races means that at least the public schools are teaching EVERY child what we'd rather not have them taught.
Public schools are inherently bad. There is no way to fix them. The government should not be teaching your children. You should be free to choose who teaches your children. There were schools before the government came along to fund them. Quite good schools too. High schools used to teach people to be a capable workforce. Education beyond high school was quite rare until fairly recently. Now we have people with doctorates in history unable to answer a simple question from an ignorant undergrad student taught in a private high school.
I have to wonder if I got a better education in a private high school than that professor got in graduate school.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
How can you tell if a politian is lying ? Answer: their lips are moving. Also applies to advertising, used car salesmen ( anyone wanting to sell you something really ), and almost all social media.
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
The separation of church and state was not to keep religion from government but from government to stay out of religion. Both are important, which I hope is obvious.
The separation of church and state is often misinterpreted as "freedom from religion" as opposed to "freedom of religion". What has happened is we see students and teachers in public schools punished for wearing a cross on a necklace, or praying silently before a meal. That is not what separation of church and state was intended to do.
We saw same sex marriage become law. That in itself is meaningless in the separation of church and state. What we are seeing now, and we were warned would come, is now churches being compelled to perform same sex weddings. The legal argument is that a preacher is performing a civil act when witnessing a marriage, therefore by denying the act of witnessing a civil marriage the preacher is discriminating based on religious belief.
The same sex marriage people did not ask the government to stop recognizing religious wedding ceremonies, which is what has happened in many other nations that had this same separation of church and state. They wanted religious ceremonies to become a civil act.
If you want your government fact separated from religious fiction then I'm fine with that. Keep the government out of the church, God damn it!
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Don't trust over 30? I take it your not old enough to have a teenager, they won't believe anything you tell them no matter how true.
I doubt this generation is going to be any more critical than the last. If anything it might be less; we've been chipping away at our public school systems for 40 years now. Education more than anything is what gets folks thinking critically.
It's why we had all those English classes and read all those dull as paint drying books. They're dull because they're complicated. You want a critical and smart electorate? Fund public education evenly. Decouple funding from property taxes. Worked for Norway.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Interesting where this article comes from. A little state like Iowa had the idea that we should be teaching critical thought in public schools. Why would it come from there?
I have a theory. Iowa sits between the Bible Belt and the socialists in Illinois and Minnesota. A quick internet search tells me that there's a mix of Protestants, Catholics, atheists/non-religious, and even a few Muslims. They've seen the disasters from the religious right to the south and the liberal left to the north. What separates the indoctrination of the Muslims that are becoming problematic in Minnesota from the problems of the Christian doctrine in Missouri? Could that be having a critical view of both?
Why isn't this coming from a predominately urban or secular state? 80% of Iowans identify as Christian. Could it be the large agricultural community? I mean farmers, ranchers, and those that depend on them, must have a very real understanding of cause and effect that might not be so apparent in urban communities. An urban society is insulated from things like a drought affecting their income like a rural community. They don't see this cause and effect like people that have to deal with bad weather and the lasting effect it can have on them.
I had to look at how many people in Iowa completed high school compared to other states. To my surprise Iowa is at the top, 90%. So, how did Iowa do on rates of college graduates? 26%, which is average or perhaps a bit below average. Interesting.
Maybe those hicks in fly-over country aren't so backwards after all. What's the definition of a farmer? A man out standing in his field.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
What has happened is we see students and teachers in public schools punished for wearing a cross on a necklace, or praying silently before a meal.
I have no problem believing that this has occurred a handful of times. On the other hand it's ludicrous to suggest that this is policy, that it happens often, or that it is an actual problem in our society.
Ironically enough, you are a perefect example of the original topic: we need to teach kids how to properly evaluate their news sources. If you had learned how to do that you would not be discussing anecdotes as if they were broad trends.
That example is too remote for most people and it heavily underestimates how important it is and how much it applies to everyone. The article even refers to it: " a systematic error of inductive reasoning". The key concept is 'fit' and we all use it all the time. The new information has to fit with what you know already. It has to fit with the sources. If it is about people, it has to fit with the people. This is not unreasonable and it is tightly related to trust. If there are conflicts between authorities you look for minimal tension.
If the NYTimes tells you something bad about a bad person, you believe it because the NYT has good reputation and the bad person bad reputation.
The idea of proof is then a more advanced idea of fit: it has to fit with statements that have more solidity to them.
So what does mainstream media do? it comes with a package of what to trust: reputable papers, official sources. Dissident sources should be distrusted. Never trust a mere blog. Don't trust anything our enemies say.
And what is the supposed remedy? Be critical and verify for yourself. I think that is both valid and fooling oneself. If you have an average intellect and a limited amount of time you use trust almost all of the time. You trust authoritative sources and if they show proof and you read the proof, you trust that the argument is valid wherever you have doubts. If you build up enough confidence in your own thinking you may be able to contradict an official source, but rarely by yourself alone: trust in the official media lowers and trust in other sources is raised who confirm your dissident ideas.
People like to think they are individuals who decide things for themselves. I think this is fooling oneself. It's bloody hard to get to any decent level of individuality , and starting by accepting how much we rely on other's authority is a good way forward.
I'm pretty sure that's all in line with my "teaching students how to tell fact from fiction" joke. In fact it's what I had in mind.
Ezekiel 23:20
The Church of Turing?
Ezekiel 23:20
Logically, lesson 2 is wrong.
There is no substitute for common sense. Especially, no body of rules will do.
Oh, and InfoWars.
You mean fluoridation ISN'T turning frogs gay? Shit. Time for Plan B.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
...this seems like either teaching kids HOW to think or WHAT to think.
Guess which the government would like to choose.
Guess which one rational people should demand.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It people can't figure out for the most part what is true or not without government mandated education in schools then it should be back to your momma's teet, regardless of age.
Seriously government funded schools with courses teaching students what is truth is such an oxymoron.
Maybe it is just the idea that the mainstream media isn't honest enough nor has enough integrity to push out a provable truth. Their bias and lack of journalistic integrity is the cause shown clearly by their headlines being so specious, meant to draw clicks for ad dollars -- that takes precedence over well thought-out and researched stories. People just can't figure out who to believe. It is so pathetic. Glenn Greenwald has been trying to report this for the past week and that's sad that so few are taking note. When the news media are unchecked, unlike the branches of government, and they are so wealthy or funded by the elite super rich that even the people don't matter and they continually day in and out feed propaganda that meets their oft hidden agenda then noone will get the truth, ever. Even so, courses teaching truth is insanity. Go back and ask your parents. That's what wisdom is for, it's what age brings.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Actually it is lying. When you know the facts and leave out on purpose that which doesn't fit your agenda it is lying, and the worst kind. It is flat out a lie.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.