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They’ve grown up online. So why are our kids not better at detecting misinformation?
(www.thestar.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Technology
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Because media litteracy and critical thinking are not subjects taught being taught in schools.
Inquisitive and skeptical minds do not make for good worker drones.
I’m a teacher. This is very false. The issue is that being taught in schools and being learned in schools are completely different things. Between No Child Left Behind and IDEA, schools are being incentivized to graduate students regardless of the learning done in the school.
I know for a fact that these skills are taught in 6-8th grade social studies classes, as well as digital literacy classes. Hell, I teach 2 classes that are entirely based around critical thinking.
It also doesn't help that we literally have decades worth of media indoctrinating kids (now parents) into thinking "teachers don't teach you anything useful". How many nicklelodean kid sitcoms involved mean teachers who "don't even understand what they are teaching?"
I don't know what current kid shows are teaching. But I know my sister's husband very much likes to "make jokes" about his kids' teachers to them. I do what I can when I visit but I can already see them shifting from "Wow, school is cool... why is everyone staring at me?" to "Ugh. I hate having to do homework. I am never going to use any of this in real life".
This isn’t helped by the fact that in many school districts it isn’t possible to hold a child back. We literally have students entering high school that haven’t done anything since 3rd grade but have been advanced to the next grade anyways. Then we get surprised Pikachu face when they can’t do the things they need to graduate.
That actually ignores the whole “make up credit” classes where answers to every question are literally a google search away.
I literally had a student in one of my math classes who pasted a “couldn’t find results for…” as an answer to a homework question because they had mistyped the question.
Curious: What is the root cause of students/less intelligent people like this? Poor upbringing? Genetics? Effort? Somewhere down the line there’s a cause.
There’s no motivation to do the work. Students that work hard get a diploma. Students that don’t do anything…still get a diploma.
We have students who can barely read and can’t do basic math, but they still get a diploma. Why do work for the same result?
I don't know, how many?
My experience as a parent:
It has nothing to do with education. It had nothing to do with knowledge.
It has everything to do with trust. They trust youtube/insta/Tiktok. They trust the influencers.
This is nothing new or exclusive to kids. Don't believe me? The antivax movement. You know: "educate yourself." That. Grownups are not immune.
This is nothing new.
Quality education is locked behind a very expensive paywall.
I went to a public high school in the renaissance of MySpace and Angelfire and Geocities. My Current Events class was entirely breaking down political speech and recognizing the undercurrents. World History was as much about what happened but also how the situation developed, including a stint on understanding modern journalism through the development of Yellow Journalism.
Public school can do exceptionally well if it’s actually funded like it’s supposed to be.
per 2022? A little over $58k, so definitely not bananas
I think you mostly get out of education what you put into it. You don't need a ton of resources to educate someone who is intelligent, wants to learn, and is willing to put in time and effort.
If someone doesn't care or isn't interested, more money allows for more resources to be allocated to working with that individual. More resources may improve that person's education compared to what it would have been without those resources, but it doesn't necessarily mean that their education is superior in quality relative to others because it consumed more resources.
I think it's less that "media literacy is not taught" but that media literacy is not learned. Like @audiomodder said, everyone is graduated regardless. So, on one hand, there are students who either will not or cannot learn the material (for one reason or another, such as disability, stress, family, etc.) and teachers who get a laundry list of things to teach and not enough time or support to teach it.
Ultimately, the problem is a lack of focus on education as a society. Children are pulled in too many directions, and teachers aren't given the resources needed, so we end up with a broken educational system.
Blue state or red state?
Very red.
I had a class in 2nd grade back in like 2002 that taught us about how to spot fake websites, what TLDs meant, and witch ones we could probably trust. One of the examples was a fake site made either as a joke or for these kinds of lectures about tree squids. It was photoshopped octopuses high up in a tree. As with everything in the education system, it's not that theyre not being taught these skills, the students are not interested in learning them. There are classes that taught me things that people who sat next to me in those classes denied beging taught.
Have you talked to a parent or child recently about current grade school? Tech literacy education has basically vanished, at least in US public schools. They pretty much expect kids to have figured out tech literacy in their own time, since computers and smartphones are so ubiquitous now.
I, too, had classes like what you described when I was in grade school, in addition to typing and Microsoft Office classes. The school I went to doesn't have any of that anymore, just a couple carts full of Chromebooks that the students share for writing papers.
Considering I learned how to type from playing RuneScape, not from the 4 separate typing classes they put us through, I don't really think most students would learn tech literacy from public education if they teach I or not. Look at the people complaining that no one taught them how to do their taxes dispute the mathematics required do your taxes being taught to 100% of the US population before they enter high school. It's not the education system, kids don't care. The only fix is to kake the kids care, but if you just push them through regardless of their qualifications for the next classes, no one cares if they fail. People would benefit a lot from learning how video games retain players because it's exactly the same philosophy behind policies like no child left behind. They give out rewards to everyone regualrdless of performance or difficulty of content and people become complacent and comfortable. Unless you give incentive for progression, in this case probably the pressure of not going to the next grade with your peers, everyone will find a spot to spin their tires and do so until they run out of gas or the tire explodes. Meritocracies might not be perfect, but they're core to a proper education system.
Again, I don't think your experiences from 20 years ago are relevant to the current day. With how far smartphones have come, it's actually very common for families to not own a single laptop or desktop computer. Modern children game on phones/tablets and consoles/handhelds way more than they do on computers. For many, school is really the only place they have access to a computer.
The above isn't just relevant to typing - young kids are becoming increasingly ignorant of concepts that smartphones abstract away, e.g. filesystems
The experience from 20 years ago is that all of these people instantly forgot everything they learned and complained that they were never taught it. I don't think you understand the problem here.
If that were true, nobody would be literate or be able to do basic arithmetic…
I see you failed to learn nuance in your schooling.
They were taught in school in the 00's but they discontinued them because "kids already know how to use the internet." This was evidently a mistake.
It appears spelling has been dropped from the curriculum as well.
Egads, an typo! My hole point is ruined!
It supports the idea that the education system you are a product of needs improvement, if that was your point.