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Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

npr.org

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Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#61

Post by chiefalchemist »

The core of the course should be critical thinking, with a heavy lean in on problem solving. The passive consumption of "stuff" - whether that's food or information - is the basis for so many of our so called crisises.

But - warning: editorial - The System is intentional in creating this mindless mindset. Not to worry Big * has it covered. Don't think. Just follow contentional wisdom, follow the narrative.

Moi? I spend a fair amount of time reading / listening / watching for what isn't said. This forces me to duck the click bait, hyperbole, sensationalism, etc. So often there are obvious questions that are ignored. That's a tell. I'm also recommend becoming hypersensitive to language and words. When there are big sweeping phrases (e.g., "everybody...") it's another tell.

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#62

Post by rootsudo »

Growing up, we had classes where our English and History teachers reviewed current events and historic periodicals (w/ original newspaper!)

This just seems to be instilling propaganda from a young age.

--

" That can be as simple as opening a new tab and leaving the post to find more about the source of information. It appears to be effective. "

And then the article goes more depressing from there, it's not per se news literacy, but general information technology literacy.

Anyone can spin up a LAMP stack and run a web server, or a blog and post content, buy a $9 domain and put a portrait of someone who does not exist - and link it to some scientific or even hijack an accredited offical.

What then? You're going to teach students how a WHOIS works?

(Granted I knew about WHOIS since middle school, but 99% of students though and todays generation I'm sure don't even care how the Internet works outside..)

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#63

Post by Vaslo »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #22
eplanit wrote: post #2

Given the primary example used on the kids, the 2016 election, this seems more about instilling bias under the name "news literacy". Are they going to do a section studying the "coverage" of hunter biden's laptop? Remember, for weeks it was cast as Russian propaganda. What about the origins of covid.. will they discuss how at first the lab leak theory was discarded as "misinformation"? I could not trust a public scho…

This is as comforting as hearing that schools are teaching religion. You could have spared yourself that dig, it's beside the point and stupid. The comparison with religion is actually good. In some countries religion is taught in school because religion is part of human culture, which is firmly within the bailiwick of school. So teachers teaching religion must be accredited by both the government (for competency) an…

I’m sure all the sources will be “neutral” given the far left leaning of the teachers union.

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#65

Post by temp8964 »

minikites wrote: post #48

I'm surprised to see such negative reactions to this effort. Information and media literacy is sorely lacking in the present day USA and we could be doing much more to educate future generations on topics like this to help them make sense of an increasingly complex world of information.

I think the idea is great, but I just don't trust the people who will be implementing the idea. They could simply use it to create more bias.

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#66

Post by mrfusion »

eplanit wrote: post #2

Given the primary example used on the kids, the 2016 election, this seems more about instilling bias under the name "news literacy". Are they going to do a section studying the "coverage" of hunter biden's laptop? Remember, for weeks it was cast as Russian propaganda. What about the origins of covid.. will they discuss how at first the lab leak theory was discarded as "misinformation"? I could not trust a public scho…

I mean one way to teach this class would be to simply cover current events in an over the top, biased way and then discuss the tricks used and concerns.

(Maybe students get credit for credibly challenging anything mentioned in the class)

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#67

Post by zrail »

mwint wrote: post #45
vmception wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've run into a variety of people that made savings, travel and career choices based on that idea, and it wasn't good for them. Of course they were from the midwest and so likely all of their influences would have been reinforcing the words of the President , but I also don't understand how that would be convincing, given how viruses work. Given how this virus works and spreads.

I was once of the “this’ll be over by the end of April” people, but I didn’t mean the virus would be gone. Only that the initial response would be over (“flatten the curve”) and we’d go back to normal, accepting the deaths. I didn’t think the new goal would become “no one can ever die of this”. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have said this would be over soon.

As far as I can tell, most public health decisions made up until this summer have been about preventing collapse of hospital systems. Individual health is of secondary importance to the system being able to handle ordinary levels of non-covid events.

Something changed a few months ago and now some states in the US are making decisions seemingly designed to collapse their health systems. It's tragically short sighted.

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#68

Post by zapataband1 »

oefrha wrote: post #14

IMO the most effective and most widely deployed (especially among the supposedly more reputable publications) propaganda tool isn’t outright lies, but rather, selective reporting of cherry-picked facts and omission of others to shape stories into their predefined narratives. TFA doesn’t address that at all. It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather th…

Did you people even read the article or do all of you need to take this course?

it says right in the article what they're teaching kids and no it's not 'these news sources are the right ones' it's how to analyze the news like the headline says.

Re: Illinois Is the First State to Have High Schools Teach News Literacy

#69

Post by ODILON_SATER »

This is a terrible idea. A lot of people are failing to realize that this is a bad precedent.

Even though the article spends most of the time talking about an example orthogonal to politics, it is clear that politics will be the main topic of this course. I have zero faith in the system to show the numerous examples of bad articles by the NYT, WP, NPR... anybody remembers the Covington kid?

The issue goes beyond self criticism of course. The state should not play a role in telling kids what they should or shouldn't read as a news source - because that's what will end up happen. I have zero faith that such class will actually engage in fruitful debates.

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