
We Should Teach Media Literacy in Elementary School - chablent
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-should-teach-media-literacy-in-elementary-school/
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reaperducer
_We Should Teach Media Literacy in Elementary School_

We learned it when I was in elementary school. Through endless drills, the
nuns taught us how to separate fact from opinion, and to read between the
lines and spot what are now called "weasel words."

While it's a noble goal, I'd say that the two classes that should be brought
back are civics and geography.

Geography so we can start having adults who understand their role in the
world, and civics so they know how it works and how to change it.

I think if people knew how things (politics and government) worked, more
ordinary people would run for office and the halls of power wouldn't be the
exclusive domain of the rich and their lawyers.

~~~
dvtrn
_While it 's a noble goal, I'd say that the two classes that should be brought
back are civics and geography._

Did we really get rid of those two classes? I honestly don't know, and have no
children to know what is being taught these days. I graduated high school in
the early 2000's but to this day my favorite class was "Law and Government",
so much of this had to do with my teacher's genuine enthusiasm for the subject
matter. We did mock trials, a few of which I won as a fake public defender.

That class was wildly informative looking back, you really do have me
wondering what the state of that sort of curriculum is like these days.

(random addendum but a few years back I ran into the gentleman who taught that
class, at the voting booth-he was volunteering his time as a poll worker. Just
as civic minded as I remembered him)

~~~
existencebox
I was at a pretty typical city public school ~>15 years ago. Even then we
didn't really have "civics" as it were. There were "world history" courses and
things in that vein, mostly focused on europe and asia, with a gloss over the
other countries. (laughably so, looking back). There was a large course in
american history, but it was almost all rote, and had nothing to do with how I
would phrase "civics" in terms of pragmatic participation and impact. Similar
statements could be made re: learning about "the economy" in history and "home
finances" (writing a check) in home-ec but nothing about pragmatic long term
planning, college loans, any of that stuff.

I shouldn't sell it entirely short, if you took some more esoteric
extracurriculars/AP courses you could get some exposure but it was still very
academic and VERY niche.

To stop beating around the bush, speaking at least for my school (even around
when you graduated) had very little to prepare someone to actually be an
informed participant in society. This likely varies heavily by school however,
but polling my wife as well, she echos an even more bleak story. (private
Jewish school)

~~~
dvtrn
_I was at a pretty typical city public school ~ >15 years ago. Even then we
didn't really have "civics" as it were._

Interesting contrasts we have here, eh? I went to a public HS in a hyper-rural
area in the deep south. Law and Government I & II were classes required by
juniors and then seniors respectively.

My expectation was that city schools would _definitely_ have these courses,
it's interesting to learn in your case they didn't.

~~~
Jtsummers
It's state-by-state, usually. The curriculum in GA and NV (both states I went
to High School in) in the 90s required a US history course and a civics
course. In NV it was "US Government", a senior course (typically). In GA it
was, in my district, just "Civics" and was one semester, sharing the year with
a baby Economics course (which was really more personal finance than
economics).

School districts have some leeway to add additional courses, or to alter the
typical order of them. For instance, that civics course in GA could've been a
one year senior level course in a neighboring district. But the civics course
was required across the state at the time.

------
ergothus
Despite having a great elementary and high school system, I learned critical
thinking (at least in any obvious way) from exactly one class.

It was a Home Ec class in junior high. (7th grade had both Home Ec and Shop,
8th grade you picked one). We had just finished "how to order from a catalog"
(because I'm old) and the teacher passed out magazines and we were to find an
ad, then list 5 ways it was deceptive.

The first few were easy. Showing money, attractive people, fast cars,
happiness...but then things got subtle.

Once we did, we shared with the class. I don't recall my ad. I DO recall the
lesson that clicked for me. It was an ad for Bayer aspirin. "4 out of 5
doctors recommend", the ad said, something I had seen on countless
commercials. "Who picks the doctors?" asked the student.

Blam. Mind Blown. I had never considered that particular aspect. This opened
up that "clinical studies prove..." doesn't mean anything. Awards,
certifications...the idea that I could be told words that were technically
true but misleading went from something that could be told to me and that I
could recite back to something REAL, that I applied on my own.

I don't know that you can teach critical thinking, but I know that you can
push opportunities for it to 'click'. This was one day of one class out of
thousands of days of schooling. I learned lots of lessons in school, both
factual and personal, and while there were likely many other more subtle
lessons about critical thinking, this was a real moment of change for me, and
it feels like it could have so easily slipped by.

We should absolutely push students to be ready to accept evidence while also
questioning what is presented. Repeatedly. over and over again, because you
never know how many times it will take to suddenly start working.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It wasn't that long ago I realised that the company "voted best SME" or
whatever just bought that award in many cases, sometimes they created the
"Society for Careful Scrutiny" (!) that gave the award.

Want a certificate from an official body? If you've got money create the
official body in order to get the award. People seldom look past the austere
logo anyway.

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gambler
Is there any evidence this will be effective?

Critical thinking, analytical thinking and systems thinking are things that
should be taught throughout school, in all classes. Those are general skills.
But what exactly is media literacy?

 _article > More worrisome, contrary to the perception that the fake news
epidemic is a conception of malicious online news-bots, there is evidence that
suggests the public actually craves fake news._

Well, exactly. There are some people who have trouble figuring out what's
true. But in a lot of cases false information spreads simply because people
_want to believe in it_. This is less about critical thinking and more about
underlying psychology and sociology.

~~~
makomk
I doubt it will achieve much. Actual, professional journalists don't seem to
be able to refrain from spreading bogus viral claims on social media so long
as it fits their biases. It's surprisingly hit and miss as to whether they
even manage to catch the ones which are outright disproved by the very source
being linked to.

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ocdtrekkie
I remember one of my teachers senior year of high school showed us a bit for
Bowling from Columbine, and then demonstrated how clips from completely
different NRA events had been cut between to make it sound like something was
said right after Columbine which, had, in fact, been said at an entirely
different time in an entirely different place. There's a few articles online
about the other tricks Moore used in the documentary.

But yeah, I'd say the one time in school I was educated on how biased media
can be misleading was as a senior in high school, and I definitely think it
should be earlier than that.

~~~
EADGBE
Sadly, Michael Moore isn't the only one using this technique.

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compiler-guy
Any proposal like this should include, "And we should cut topic X to make room
for it."

Media literacy is absolutely a good thing to have, but schools don't have
unlimited time to teach every subject

Granted, some topics can be integrated into others, but piling things on is
not a sustainable thing to do.

~~~
labster
And we should cut cursive handwriting to make room for it. No need to prepare
kids for the 20th century when you can already sign documents with emoji.

~~~
garmaine
They cut cursive handwriting a long time ago.

~~~
gbear605
Maybe in your area, but definitely not universally in America.

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mgoblu3
I had this when I was in public elementary school between 2000-2005. It was
part of the library classes, and we were also taught information retrieval on
Google and some of the Google competitors at the time. Everything from how to
find sources and evaluate if they were trustworthy. It was obviously
simplified, but it's one of those things that I think really stuck with me.

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housingpost
Maybe what should be taught is “don’t trust anything you read”. That goes for
everything from textbooks to newspapers. Instead children are often taught to
memorize and obey, which leads to issues when you have to tell your child that
the teacher was wrong, and that a teaching certificate doesn’t make you
magically all-knowing.

~~~
amysox
Which is kind of what I was thinking. As soon as you start teaching kids not
to be swayed by "agenda-driven sources," what happens when they start
realizing that their _textbooks_ and their _teachers_ are also "agenda-driven
sources"?

Which is why this proposal will never fly.

~~~
jessaustin
Lots of kids realize the limitations of their teachers' intellects at some
point. Once you realize how dumb your teacher is, it's a short step to
realizing how dishonest she is. As long as smart kids can still be civil in
class, it isn't usually a problem. They just make their peace with the fact
that while their fellows learn in school, they have to find somewhere else to
do that. After all, a judicious combination of wikipedia and reddit is bound
to be more enlightening than a public school class.

------
blackaspen
I've been thinking about literacies a while ago and recently put together a
proposal for a talk on just this (mostly with regards to 'fake news'):

In order for students to know who and what to trust and not trust on the
internet, and develop the ability to spot fake news for themselves, it is
crucial that we don't just provide them with the conventional toolkit and
heuristics for spotting misleading information like paying close attention to
authorship, peer-review, and something's scholarly nature, but instead grow
their technical literacy to encompass a functional understanding of how
content flagging, search ranking, and content recommendation work in order to
h ave a more general and transferable understanding of why fake news can, in
fact, be seen as real news to some.

------
gammateam
I had critical thinking and current events classes all throughout elementary
school.

Was a private school but never thought about its utility or the idea that may
have been an exceptional part of the curriculum till this very moment.

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moneil971
Some schools do as part of the library/media time. Librarians rule!

------
Barrin92
I'd go a step further and suggest that a curriculum like this should also
teach responsible handling of digital content overall, use of technical
devices, privacy, and some related topics, a sort of maker space in the
classroom if you will.

Mobile devices seem to become the norm for young children on how to interact
with software and hardware, and the locked down and consumer-oriented design
leaves very little room for tinkering.

------
choko
When I was in high school (which wasn't that long ago), I had a dedicated
class on critical thinking, and a unit on critical thinking in another. It has
helped me very much in my adult life in spotting bias and emotional
manipulation in the media.

It's unfortunate that I'm unable to find a source that doesn't manipulate
language to achieve a desired emotional state in their readers.

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mrhappyunhappy
I think things are going fine as it is. The more ridiculous question the media
becomes the more discredited it gets and less people pay attention. Media is
inherently flawed since it seeks to monetize views. Newspapers, while still
relied on readership had less invasive ways of monetization. If you ask me,
the current cycle of distrust in media is well deserved. When you have all but
a few people controlling the worlds attention, we need to be highly skeptical
of anything we come across. Real news can be found on actual news source
sites, we don’t need political angles, spun opinions or clickbait titles to
get actual news. Things have a tendency to resolve themselves so let’s not
shove it down our kids throats at an early age. If we need something useful to
teach them how about we start with personal finance- you know, things that
actually matter to your life.

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mcculley
Such a course should include memetics and cognitive biases. I have long been
pondering what a memetics course for elementary students should look like. I
want to inoculate children against marketing, advertising, religion. I don't
think that would be politically viable in a lot of places in the world.

~~~
craftyguy
Exactly. It's a good idea, but there are way too many opportunities for its
implementation to be heavily skewed towards some bias or belief. If you
believe something is true because it is in some religious text, it'll be very
hard for you to teach children to question any news which appears to
condradict it, even if that news is factually (and technically) correct.

~~~
mcculley
I was thinking that, for religion, the most politically acceptable path is to
teach as many religions as practical to children. If they know the details of
many religions at an early age, they might be inoculated against one of them
being presented as the truth.

~~~
nsxwolf
You're describing using the government in a capacity to directly undermine the
religious teaching authority of a child's parents. That's probably not legal
if that's actually the stated goal of your plan, and it's not going to sit
well with parents.

~~~
mcculley
Certainly it would be legal, that the First Amendment is incompatible with the
First Commandment is not legally challenged. Lots of schools teach about the
world's religions in some way. One cannot understand world politics without
describing religion.

I'm not saying such a course would be politically viable, nor am I interested
in interfering with the indoctrination by those parents already infected. I am
exploring ways to protect those who have a choice.

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barbecue_sauce
I had to teach nurses media literacy in grad school (I was a TA for a class
called Nursing Informatics, essentially a course about evidence-based
practice, using EMR and information systems, etc. The instructional part of
the course was entirely online, and I had to administer labs in person and do
all of the grading and feedback, so I was their primary point of contact while
they never even met the actual professor). One of their labs was to pick a
site from a predetermined list, and evaluate whether or not the information
presented was reputable. The results were quite disheartening, particularly
because many of these people were adults that were re-training for new
careers.

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foreigner
I took a course in advertising which was invaluable. Recognizing different
sort of marketing appeals and strategies, etc... I've been trying to teach
that to my kids too.

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gdubs
My favorite course from college was called "Reason, Language, and
Argumentation". The teacher was amazing, and the content & class discussions
were vibrant. The central theme was learning about various logical fallacies
and then watching the news, reading articles, etc, spotting the fallacies,
discussing it together as a class, and so on. I could see this general
structure working at the elementary school level.

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amoorthy
Media literacy, or more broadly critical thinking skills, is good to teach but
hard to apply in practice when it comes to the news. This is because we get
our news so fast, and in so many places, it's hard to slow down and evaluate
pieces in-depth.

Pardon the self-serving comment but given the relevance, I hope it's useful.

My startup has built tools to simplify the evaluation so people can focus on
harder questions like "why did the media construct the message this way".
Here's a blog post we published today on why this is important.

[https://blog.civikowl.com/making-it-easy-to-apply-media-
lite...](https://blog.civikowl.com/making-it-easy-to-apply-media-literacy-
guidelines-every-day-a5a92653b6f9)

------
tekno45
How much are we going to teach kids in the future?

Every elementary kid should learn: programming, philosophy, Quantum physics,
Media Literacy, Civics, etc;

If we teach it to adults, the kids can learn it at home.

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mLuby
Pushing this onto the entire populace is a cowardly way to govern. What ought
to be done is simple, even if how it ought to be done isn't: _ban_ fake news.

We don't expect people to discern what foods and drugs are dangerous, so
neither should we expect people to have to discern what is true or not. If
it's untrue, someone should be able to bring a libel case.

~~~
the_jeremy
People can bring libel cases in the case that it's actually libel. Apart from
that, America doesn't protect the ability to give out poison in the
Constitution, it protects free speech.

~~~
mLuby
As I understand it, libel (and slander) only apply when someone's reputation
was damaged. I'm saying it could be made a crime to mass-broadcast false
information.

------
mnd999
We used to do it in the UK. Certain newspapers campaigned to have it removed
from the curriculum.

~~~
chrisseaton
> We used to do it in the UK. Certain newspapers campaigned to have it removed
> from the curriculum.

When was that?

------
LPDuppy
Media Literacy can be discussed and taught in current education structure, but
performance goals for teachers and schools have moved the focus from
critically thinking about a topic to getting enough students to remember one
correct answer. In elementary school, we learn that you should only speak if
you have the right answer and that being wrong is shameful. If the goal is to
get people to understand the five pilers of Media Literacy (access, analyze,
evaluate, create and act) we have to start by saying right and wrong are not
the only fields upon which you can play. My ideas about watching tennis are
different than your ideas but because you hold a different view of sport does
not equal one party is right and one wrong. Teaching kids to look at big
pictures can help them in media literacy. If one child hits another on the
playground, we want to hear the reasons behind the altercation but also want
the kids to understand that pain is uncomfortable and actions, even inaction,
have/has consequences. In this way, we tell them that all sides of the story
need to be considered (access). The person hit has one story, the kid doing
the action has another and the onlooking parent another (analyze). We express
that while the child felt justified they would not like it if someone hit them
given that same reason followed by bringing up other alternatives to the
action (evaluate). Then we encourage them to, in the future, find different
ways to settle differences and/or communicate more effectively(create). The
kids then go on their way, and we repeat this process as necessary, or the
kids display different actions in similar situations(act). Later in life
teachers ask kids how things make them feel, this is important in analyzing
media because when we can pick up on emotional cues, we are better able to
discern emotionally deceptive advertising. Teachers also encourage kids to
express themselves but look at what others are saying. These are great but
usually only last a short time before governments, districts, and the like
force teachers to cram facts and figures into kids heads so that enough kids
fill in enough correct bubbles that will compel the government to provide
schools funding they desperately need. Young people are brilliant. When
presented with a concept, like deception in advertising, they pick up on
countless ploys and manipulative language. We should encourage kids to go
beyond asking "What is Shakespeare trying to say in Macbeth Act I Scene V" and
also have them do this with print advertising around their town. Studying news
clippings published during WWI and then also having them pick apart current
news reports about Armistice Day. I sit here knowing that these are hopeful
ideas because of the funding structure for the American education system. A
more realistic option is for adults to talk to young people like adults. Age
does not limit your ability to grasp difficult concepts, lack of conversation
about these topics does. Be fearless and call deception as you see it. Watch a
movie with questionable morals with your niece? Start the discussion. Two news
anchors fighting about a trade war? Mute the TV, express that international
trade deals are complicated but shouting doesn't make someone correct. Should
media literacy be taught in schools? In some capacity it already is, what will
help a great deal is to encourage and promote critical thinking. When we
encourage people to tackle big topics, ideas, and analysis we are permitting
them to challenge presented convention so that they can establish their own
informed opinion. Which is the goal of media literacy.

------
ataturk
I'm teaching it to my kids already:

Lesson #1: Everything you see, hear, or read is someone else's agenda.

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nailer
The amount of adult human beings who, when asked for a reference, cite
wikipedia (rather than the reference wikipedia uses, if it has one) shows that
we should teach media literacy per-se - primary school would be ideal, but so
would anywhere.

~~~
nailer
Not complaining about the downvotes, but this is interesting - wikipedia
themselves recommend not citing wikipedia, as it's not considered a primary
source.

I've never heard anyone argue in favour of citing secondary sources, merely
not doing it out of ignorance - but obviously people seem to disagree.

~~~
gpm
For non academic non controversial things I highly recommend citing wikipedia.
Citing wikipedia transitively cites multiple usually high quality sources,
provides verification that the sources actually more or less represent the
consensus on the topic instead of being someone fringe idea, and is really
easy to quickly find.

Incidentally, Wikipedia insists you site secondary (third party) sources on
Wikipedia itself [0,1]. Wikipedia would be a tertiary source [2] though so I
think this is language thing and not a real disagreement between you and
Wikipedia's policy.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Citing_sour...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Citing_sources)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_source)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_source)

~~~
nailer
> I think this is language thing and not a real disagreement between you and
> Wikipedia's policy.

Yes, in wikipedia speak, I mean wikipedia want you to site a secondary sourc,e
and not wikipedia itself (which is considered a tertiary one).

> citing wikipedia transitively cites multiple usually high quality sources

Sometimes. Other times it transitively cites _nothing_.

------
Alex3917
While teaching media literacy sounds good in theory, in practice it may be
helping to radicalize people. The problem is that while the media is often-to-
usually wrong, when people try to fact check what they're reading some
percentage of them end up surfacing even more dubious information and then go
on to literally become nazis.

Danah Boyd gave a good talk on this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I7FVyQCjNg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I7FVyQCjNg)

