(The hill) – Schools are faced with the challenge of teaching children to recognize and deal with misinformation without becoming political, especially in recent days as false claims emerge surrounding recent hurricanes and the upcoming election.
Some schools choose to hold a single annual school-wide meeting on the topic, but others offer training courses to teachers so they can integrate the topic into their teaching.
“We are based in upstate New York and our community is very conservative. So there’s a lot of information out there about the term ‘fake news,’ about what is presented to students, how information is collected and then what we do with it.” “As soon as we get it,” Middleburgh Junior/Senior Principal Matthew Sloane said high school. “Students are often manipulated by what is presented to them. So when they’re on a particular website or talking to a relative and they have a strong opinion, they take that as fact and, to take it a step further, they don’t really understand the process of checking the facts.”
“So in school we really focus on being curious. If you think something is a fact, how do you know it is a fact? “How do you check that?” he added.
Misinformation in general is a growing concern, most recently with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) response to the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is among those making false claims, such as that the government is in control or that FEMA is only offering $750 to those who lost their homes and livelihoods in storms.
Former President Trump also said incorrectly FEMA specifically withheld aid to Republican hurricane victims.
Some teachers try to address these issues directly.
“Something like the storms developed into a huge media circus on all platforms, customary media and even social media. And that’s why educators, I know some of my local educators, most likely want to talk about the substantial trends that are happening in their children’s lives, especially something that can be scary,” said Merve Lapus. Vice President of Education and Engagement at Common Sense Media.
“This year you’re probably going to see a lot of these conversations in schools about misinformation related to the presidential debates and the political ads that are out there because it’s more of a tactic,” Lapus said. “It’s like misinformation was made not just to spread, but just to troll people or try to mess with people. It’s a deliberate strategy to get people to think differently about something, and that really changes the way our kids need to think critically about the content they come across.”
And the age of misinformation is only getting worse as AI makes it possible to alter photos and videos.
Schools are already struggling with this AI bullyingincluding students creating fraudulent nude photos of classmates and an incident in which an administrator was nearly fired for faked racist audio recordings.
“Decisions are made on a school-by-school basis. “Every school district in the country really has a lot of latitude in deciding how they want to teach certain subjects or skills,” said Erin McNeill, CEO and founder of Media Literacy Now.
“So anecdotally, we know that some schools are doing some kind of one-on-one presentation about media literacy or how to recognize the social media posts that you see […] And then there’s a whole other area where some schools and some teachers in the district are really trying to integrate media literacy into the curriculum. “There are some places — usually, we hear, mostly in the upper grades — where motivated teachers have an elective that really focuses on media literacy in general,” she added.
At Sloane’s school in New York, the focus is on “teacher professional development” to ask vital questions about how students discover facts and integrate them across different subject areas.
“I think it’s mostly discussed in social studies classes when they talk about American politics and society in general, but in our English classes, in our humanities classes, I would say it’s talked about a lot,” he said.
