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

Posted by msmash on from the for-a-better-future dept.

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.

13 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Parents need to as well by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Parents need to as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most parents do not have those skills themselves.

    2. Re:Parents need to as well by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's even more fundamental than that. People just need to recognise simple things like only using anonymous sources for a story or separating the opinions from the facts.

      Stories in mainstream media are rarely outright fabrications, even rags like the Daily Mail usually have some small amount of truth to them. The bigger problem is that many people can't separate opinion and speculation from factual reporting, leading to them being mislead and screaming "fake news" in equal measure.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Parents need to as well by StormReaver · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This has been a problem since the beginning of human civilization. Christians, Muslims, and everyone else who can't distinguish fact from fiction need to be enrolled in the first classes.

    4. Re:Parents need to as well by dmiller1984 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Anonymous sources aren't always a reason to distrust a story. The Watergate story was broken using anonymous sources and that's just one example of a high-profile story that was anonymously sourced. It is good to treat anonymously-sourced stories with some skepticism, though. FiveThirtyEight had a great article over the summer that gave some tips on when to trust an anonymously-sourced article and when to be more skeptical.

    5. Re:Parents need to as well by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And grandparents. Especially grandparents. My mother-in-law is a wonderful 75 year old lady who believes everything she reads on facebook. She comes from a generation where broadcasting was expensive so if you saw it on TV it had a better chance of being true. This is an almost daily thing.

      She was eating garlic a couple of weeks ago because someone said it would help with blood pressure. When I say "eating garlic" I mean she was peeling the paint in the house when she breathed. Yesterday I couldn't find my brown sugar. Turns out white sugar has all kinds of dangerous chemicals in it and brown sugar is healthy, so she's going to try using that in her coffee. I tried to explain that brown sugar is white sugar with molasses added back in and what she was really seeking is something like turbinado sugar, which is only processed in a centrifuge. Whoever made the facebook video apparently doesn't know the difference, neither does she.

      It's difficult to take someone who doesn't have a working bullshit detector and try to install one in them.

      --
      Do you have ESP?
    6. Re:Parents need to as well by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It would be nice if it applied both ways.

      Don't want to look at nudey pictures? Don't look at them. Don't want to drink beer? Don't drink it. Don't want to stick your dong in another man's bunghole? Don't stick your dong in another man's bunghole.

      Instead they push for laws saying you can't look at nudey pics, can't drink beer and can't stick your dong in another man's bunghole.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper by MDMurphy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:That's the polite version by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    This is supposed to change that in the next generation.

    I could sum it up into a soundbite to be recited instead of the pledge of allegience:

    "People deliberately lie, grown-ups can be wrong about stuff even when they're not lying to you".

    --
    No sig today...
  4. They used to teach this in school by sycodon · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  5. Re:That's the polite version by tsqr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    Considering the number of commenters who accuse anyone disagreeing with them of being a Russian troll, your assessment of Slashdot readers may be a bit optimistic.

  6. Yet we routinely fall for clickbait here by raymorris · · Score: 3, Interesting

    > 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.

  7. George Carlin: there's a reason education sucks by Whatsmynickname · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.