Dragnet was an iconic tv cop show in the 1950s, starring Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday. The show, the character, and the actor became famous for the catchphrase, “Just the facts, ma’am,” which he would frequently utter to some well-meaning but overly talkative female witness to get her to stick to the essential information, relevant to the case.
The phrase leapt off the tv screen (well, not exactly) and into our
everyday life conversations and arguments, when one individual would encourage
another to hurry up and get to their point. I can remember my sixth-grade
teacher saying, “Just the facts, ma’am” or “Just the facts, sir” when one of us
(often me) would begin rambling on when giving an oral report – usually a book
report −in front of the
class.
The reality is that Joe Friday never actually said: “Just the
facts, ma’am.” He came close, when, in one episode, he said: “All we want are
the facts, ma’am.”
So the statement that Joe Friday frequently uttered the phrase:
“Just the facts, ma’am” is verifiably false, because tv geeks took the time to
watch, from start to finish, all 276 episodes of Dragnet in search of
the famous phrase and failed to find it.
That, my friends, is research, though you might consider the point
of this particular research rather trivial. But it means something to me
because it’s a perfect example of how misinformation can become “sticky” and
how any information, whether true or false, could go “viral” well before the invention
of the internet.
I attended Meadowbrook Junior High School (now the Charles E. Brown
Middle School), in Newton, Massachusetts for eighth and ninth grade, which were
the academic years beginning in 1961 and 1962. At the beginning of a ninth-grade
social studies class, several instructors from Harvard showed up in our classroom
to conduct a mini-course that would take place over several consecutive
classes.
We had been told earlier that year that we should expect to be
participants in special programs run by educators who specialized in those
special programs. “Guinea pigs,” we joked.
Our social studies teacher, whose name I don’t remember, introduced
the three visitors, told us we were in for a treat, then took a seat with the
rest of us.
One of the instructors said, “We’re going to explore some
concepts,” then went to the blackboard and wrote, in big letters: CRITICAL
THINKING, and then asked us for a definition. Hands went up and the class
was underway. Every time one of us offered a definition, the instructor asked:
“Who else?” or “Give us an example.”
The two other instructors, positioned in different corners of the
room, would throw out questions. What did we think about that definition?
Other hands would go up.
They frequently asked us: “Who agrees?” and “Who disagrees?”
If my memory is correct, I had never before heard the term critical
thinking and I believe that was true for most, if not all, of us.
This team from Harvard certainly knew how to engage a class. It was
fast-paced and there were smiles and laughs all around, from them and from us. The
room was energized as I had never before seen it.
But did we reach a consensus on the definition of this unfamiliar
term − critical
thinking? Not exactly. We came up with multiple definitions, which we
eventually decided were all partial definitions.
Then, the instructor at the blackboard, who had been madly jotting
down key points, smiled, shouted “Aha!” and wrote this, or something very close
to this:
Being able to distinguish between fact and
opinion is fundamental to critical thinking.
It might have been one of the instructors or it might have been one
of us who suggested that we call that the “first cardinal principle” of critical
thinking, which didn’t matter because it ended up seeming like a group
decision.
So just how competent were we at distinguishing between fact and
opinion? If we were going to consider ourselves critical thinkers, we would
have to assess our competence and we would begin that process by defining those
terms, which brought us to our “second cardinal principle.”
(This may not be exact but it’s pretty darn close)
In a serious discussion or debate, always
define your terms, even when you believe the definitions are shared by everyone
in the conversation.
And here the mood in the room would dramatically change.
The man with the chalk wrote FACT on the blackboard, underlined it,
and asked us for the definition.
A hand went up. “A fact is
something that’s true,” one of us said. “Who agrees with that definition?” asked
one of the instructors. Every hand, including mine, went up.
The man with the chalk wrote a definition on the blackboard, and
then turned around to gauge the class response. After giving it a minute or two
to sink into our heads, he read this definition:
A fact is any assertion that can be proved to
be true or false.
I am sure we all looked puzzled. This was not the definition we
grew up with. How could “The moon is made of blue cheese” possibly be called a
fact?
A Way With Words is a radio show/podcast that deals with language. One episode, which aired in 2012, is titled: Can Facts Be False?
Here’s their introduction to the episode:
“Does a statement have to be true to be a fact? When it comes to
the difference between facts and opinions, some may argue that facts are merely
claims that can be proven true or false. Most dictionaries, however, assert
that in order for an assertion to be a fact, it must be true.”
And that last sentence is true. Most current dictionaries define
fact as a true statement. When dictionaries do list (what I will call) the
“Meadowbrook definition,” it was well down the list of preferred definitions.
A listener to the podcast, named Eric, called in to relate this
story. One morning he heard his eight-year-old daughter, a third-grader, saying
aloud: “fact, fact, fact, fact.” He walked into the kitchen and saw her reading
a cereal box. When he asked what she was doing, she explained that she was
practicing a lesson taught at school on identifying facts and opinions.
In the course of telling him more about the lesson, up popped the
definition of fact. And – as you may have guessed – it was the “Meadowbrook
definition,” which Eric found disturbing enough to question her teacher, who
explained that words change their meaning over time. And this was the “evolving”
definition.
Eric wasn’t convinced. He remained disturbed by this changed
definition and the two hosts of the podcast sided with him. They all agreed
that a fact must be true or it is not a fact.
But wait! A commenter to the podcast, named Glenn, made my day with
this written comment:
“Back when I was in 4th or 5th grade in 1980, I remember being
taught the exact same lesson about facts being any verifiable piece of
information vs. opinion. What’s remarkable is the fact that I remember that
lesson clearly (yup, just as sticky for him as it was for me) − in my
opinion, a great lesson that helps kids think. To this day, especially when
talking politics with special relatives or friends, I often say ‘yes, those are
your facts, but I can prove them wrong,” and I always think back to that lesson
30 years ago.’”
Exactly!
Have you watched a political debate, or two, when one candidate addressed
the audience and said, “My opponent is entitled to his own opinions, but not his
own facts?”
For Glenn, me, and some unknown number of others, everyone is
entitled to their own facts and we are entitled to do the research, present the
evidence, and do the thinking required to prove those facts false. It’s what
our brains are wired to do and with the right training, it’s what our brains
will do.
Does it matter that my definition of fact has lost the popularity
contest? No. What’s important is knowing that our own facts are verifiably true
and being competent at defending our true facts and at debunking their false
facts. And that takes critical thinking.
Of course, people who stubbornly embrace their false facts are
unlikely to be persuaded by logic. Can they be educated? Or should we regard
them as hopeless? That’s a long conversation for another day.
I expected the next segment of our Meadowbrook mini-course – a
simple fact/opinion quiz − to be entertaining and easy. The instructors would present a
statement and we would raise our hands and answer either FACT or OPINION. It
started with easy ones to lull us into a fall sense of self-confidence and then
it got tricky.
Guess what, if you take a commonly held opinion and dress it up to
look like a fact, you can fool even the so-called smart kids. And, when that
started happening with statement after statement, fewer hands were being raised
and most of those were kind of tentative.
I can’t specifically remember any of those dressed-up questions but
some of them probably resembled this one:
Spinach is a healthy food.
Well, of course, that’s a fact. We’ve all been told often enough by
parents and health experts to eat our spinach. But what about those who are
allergic to spinach, where the symptoms range from a rash to anaphylaxis? Definitely
unhealthy for them. So the sentence would have to be modified to be true.
How about this: Spinach is a healthy food except for those with
a spinach allergy.
It sounds true to me but can it be called a fact or is it just an
extremely popular opinion? Honestly, I don’t quite know where to put it, but
had it not been for my mini-course in critical thinking, back in junior
high, I might never be asking myself that kind of question.
Whenever I do find myself asking that kind of question, I
automatically think back to my almost 60-year-old classroom experience, just as
the commenter Glenn thinks back to the lesson he was taught 30 years before he
listened to the All About Words podcast.
And now you will understand why this recent headline grabbed my
attention.
ILLINOIS WILL NOW REQUIRE HIGH SCHOOLS TO TEACH
MEDIA LITERACY
Here’s the opening to one reporting on this
story:
“This academic year Illinois became the first state in the nation
to require that media literacy be taught in high school classrooms. It’s an
effort to combat misinformation.
The Literacy Education Law was signed in July of 2021, but went
into effect this year and now requires a unit of instruction on media literacy
that includes lessons on how to access information, evaluate media messages,
create media, reflect on media consumption and explore one’s social
responsibility to ethically consume media.”
My first thought was: Media
literacy? This sounds like critical thinking expanded for a world
where anyone with a smartphone can become a ‘trusted” information source.
My second thought was: Illinois? Not Massachusetts?
Being a critical thinker, since ninth grade, I naturally pulled up
multiple articles written about the Illinois law and began reading the slightly
different definitions of media literacy. Here’s one that I found both concise
and comprehensive:
“Media literacy means the ability to
access, analyze, evaluate, create, and communicate using a variety of forms,
including, but not limited to: print, visual, audio, interactive, and digital
texts.”
Can I sum up media literacy as critical thinking for
those who consume media content and for those who produce it? I think so.
Illinois State Representative Lisa Hernandez, who championed the
law, stated the obvious when she said: “it’s more important than ever that
young people learn to discern truth from fiction."
Is it ever!
As ninth graders in the 1960s, many of us had one or two daily
newspapers delivered to our doorsteps and we had three national news magazines
and three network news programs to choose from. In my house, it was Time
Magazine and usually the CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite. One smart
kid in my Meadowbrook mini-course voiced the opinion that U.S. News and
World Report was his choice because it was “less biased.”
I think it’s safe to say that most of us didn’t worry about media
bias back in the day. Most of my generation would likely agree that, compared
to now, those were much simpler times for consuming information.
Our diet of generally reliable information, coming from mainstream news
sources, may still arrive at our doorsteps and on our tv screens but now, through
our electronic devices, information along with misinformation and
disinformation constantly knock on our internal doors and ring our mental
doorbells, begging, tempting, demanding to be let in. Without discipline, it’s
easy to succumb to the noise.
According to a Pew Research 2021 study, 48%
of U.S adults say they get their news from social media “either often or
sometimes.” Of that 48%, 31% say they “get their news regularly” from
Facebook, 22% from YouTube, 13% from
Twitter, and 11% from Instagram.
As for teenagers, an Ofcom survey revealed
that more teens use Instagram as their main news source, with TikTok and
YouTube coming in a close second and third. Perhaps most alarming is the fact
that more TikTok users (47%), according to the study, get their news from “other
people they follow” than from any news organization (24%).
Social media influencers, with millions of followers and few if any
credentials, deliver misinformation to young people with such speed and in such
volume that fact-checkers can rarely keep up. Information and misinformation in
the age of Joe Friday could take months to go viral. A tweet from Taylor Swift or
even about Taylor Swift can go viral in a matter of minutes.
One high school student, Braden Hajer, was acutely
aware that teens need help in “deciphering fact from fiction.” As part
of a project that he chose as a student at Naperville High School, he helped
write the Illinois legislation and helped move it through the state
legislature. State Rep Hernandez credits his efforts for “providing the
inspiration” to get it done.
Once that mission was accomplished, Braden Hajer had this to say
about integrating media literacy with standard curriculums:
“People love to complain about how school doesn't teach you what
you need to know. Hopefully, this is one of those times where someone can look
at a class and be like, huh, that's pragmatic.”
Before covid, Illinois began running pilot programs at schools
across the state, where these skills were taught in biology and geology classes
to ninth-graders, under an integrated curriculum called Civic Online Reasoning.
Here’s a discovery that shines a light on the problem:
Biology teacher Adrianne Toomey at
Neuqua Valley High School, in Naperville, Illinois, asked her ninth-grade students,
who were looking for information on the health effects of caffeine consumption,
if they should trust the accuracy of the website foodinsight.org.
The biology teacher found that students tended to assume dot-org
websites to be trustworthy. But after digging deeper, the students found that
foodinsight.org was supported by beverage companies with a vested interest in selling
caffeine to consumers.
This is exactly the kind of active, eye-opening discovery that makes
a lesson stickier for young learners versus having passive information drummed
into their heads. Such discoveries were not just eye-opening for the students,
but for the teacher as well.
Toomey says that when she started integrating media literacy, “she
would never have guessed that identifying health and science misinformation
would become as important inside and outside of the classroom.” She had
expected that media-savvy teenagers would be good at fact-checking, but they
weren’t.
In videos featuring individuals wearing scrubs, Even her “smartest
kids” were fooled into assuming that those individuals were doctors.
“Overall,” she says, “they were much more adept at spotting
disinformation by the end of the year.” But she adds, “it’s going to take a
lot more practice across every subject to make media literacy second nature to
them.”
I am encouraged by what is happening in schools across Illinois and
in other school districts across the country, but I happen to live in Watertown,
Massachusetts and I wonder if we have teachers like Adrianne Toomey and if we
are nurturing students like Braden Hajer.
I wonder what our educators are doing to make critical thinking
and media literacy second nature
to our future adults, given the challenges that await them. I wonder what our administrators
and teachers are doing in the face of an international media il-literacy
crisis.
And I think about Eric’s cereal-box-reading, eight-year-old
daughter, whose third-grade teacher set her on a course of critical thinking
to prepare her for navigating the information minefields she is sure to
encounter for the rest of her life.
Do we have empowering teachers like that teacher? And are
they empowered by critical thinking principals?
Medial Literacy Now is a
national non-profit organization whose website provides this description:
“Media Literacy Now is leading the grassroots movement to create a
public education system that ensures all students learn the 21st century
literacy skills they need for health, well-being, economic participation, and
citizenship.”
When browsing their website, I assumed they were based in Illinois. I was
wrong. Erin McNeill, their President and Founder is based here in Watertown. You
might want to go to their website and check out her bio as well as their Board
of Directors, HQ Team, National Advisory Council, and State Chapter Leaders.
Very impressive!
Maybe you’ll agree that, with so much at stake, a resource like
this one would be a terrible thing to waste.
Just my opinion, of course.
Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown
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