WHEN SCHOOLS FAIL TO DELIVER ON POST-COVID PRIORITIES, EVERYONE LOSES

Todd Rose, co-founder and CEO of the Boston-based think tank Populace Insights says this about our nation’s current K-12 education system:

“The Covid era fundamentally altered the way most of us view education and what our kids should get out of it. The K-12 educational system is wildly unresponsive to what parents and children actually want.”

And, just as significantly (or more significantly, depending on your point of view), it is wildly unresponsive to what society as a whole (you know, the taxpayers) actually want.

This is the unmistakable conclusion to be drawn from Populace Insights: Purpose of Education Index – an opinion poll unlike any other. The poll, conducted with cooperation from YouGov and the data analytics firm Gradient, was first conducted in 2019, repeated in 2020 and 2021, and again in September 2022, spanning the Covid era.

But why should anyone trust this particular poll when so many national polls turn out to be wrong?  Todd Rose has an answer that probably won’t surprise you.

The main reason that so many polls get it wrong is that a critical percentage of respondents lie to the pollsters. The real question is: Why do they lie to pollsters? He has an answer for that too.

When it comes to hot-button issues, people tend to have a public opinion and a private opinion. When talking to pollsters, social pressure leads respondents to express the opinions that most align with their social or political “in-group,” while keeping their private opinions to themselves.

Pollsters have seen this phenomenon in every national election since 2016.

Populace Insights addressed the problem head-on. They devised a cleverly rigged (my word, not theirs) methodology to get respondents to reveal their private opinions, instead of their politically and socially-safe public opinions.

Starting with 57 attributes (aka priorities) that interviewees and focus groups determined that schools should deliver, respondents are presented with two attributes at a time and are required to select the one that is most important to them, and continue choosing one over the other until the 57 attributes are ranked in order of their importance.

The top rankings surprised me and they might surprise you. But before getting to them, it is important to note another feature that makes the Purpose of Education Index unique and eye-opening as to who we are as a society.  

When respondents are asked how they would rank each of the attributes, they are also asked how they thought most other respondents would rank those same attributes. Take for example this one:

In the K-12 system, Students are prepared to enroll in a college or university.

You might think that preparing students for college would rank very high on the priority list. In fact, you might think, as I did, that it would rank #1.

We might think this from the flood of news stories about parents’ behavior. Helicopter parents feverishly maneuvering to get their kids every advantage possible. Parents resorting to holding their children back a year before starting school to give them a maturity-edge over their classmates. Celebrities going to prison for falsifying their kids’ accomplishments and bribing their way into the college of their choice.

Before Covid, respondents ranked being prepared to enroll in a college or university as only their 10th highest priority for K-12 education. Not first, but still near the top. But in post-Covid America, this attribute has fallen all the way to #47 and yet the majority think that most Americans, including parents, would place it at #3.

Or, take this gap between what most of us privately believe and what we perceive most others believe:

Students are prepared to secure a high-paying job.  

In private, most Americans rank this attribute at #53 out of 57. That’s the reality. But they believe that most others would rank it near the top at #9. That’s their false perception of the majority’s view.

Privately, Americans are rejecting the “rat race” of intense competition for prestigious universities, leading to high-paying jobs, and hoping, instead, for kids to be prepared for finding a career that is personally meaningful and fulfilling.

How little we know the minds of our fellow human beings!

Todd Rose refers to these gaps between reality and perception as “collective illusions,” created by the bombardment of misinformation coming from the popular culture infosphere and from listening to the loudest voices in our in-groups.  

The current absence of honest community dialog, according to Todd Rose,  provides the oxygen for collective illusions to flourish and provides community leaders with the misinformation they will use to set bad public policies.

So, let’s take a look at the actual top six priorities for K-12 education that Americans, including parents, value most, even if they are unlikely to come right out and tell you.

#1: Students develop practical skills (e.g. manage personal finances, prepare a meal, make an appointment).

Overwhelmingly, we want schools to provide practical skills for navigating daily life.

#2: Students are able to think critically to problem solve and make decisions.

Teaching critical thinking has been near the very top of priorities for the past four years and has been the only priority placed in the top 10 by every demographic subgroup – race, gender, age, income level, and education level.

It’s abundantly clear that our society wants children to be taught HOW to think and not WHAT to think.

#3: Students demonstrate character (e.g. honesty, kindness, integrity, and ethics).

What a reassuring surprise to learn that character ranks near the top! Yet the mistaken perception is that most people would rank it further down the list at #26. The collective illusion is that the majority of Americans regard character to be far less important than we do.

#4: Students can demonstrate basic reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Well, of course.

#5: All students receive the unique support they need throughout their learning.

In 2019 and 2020, this attribute was ranked #19. In 2021, it moved up to #16. Rising to #5 in 2022 speaks volumes about the failures of the current Covid-stressed system.

#6: Students are prepared for a career.

Not just any career, but one that is personally meaningful and fulfilling.  

 

Collectively, these top six priorities tell a story of what Todd Rose calls an “exhausted post-Covid majority,” wanting schools to refocus their efforts on practical survival skills that will prepare students for an unknowable future.

(For the complete story, you will need to go to the source and see the ranking of all 57 attributes. Those at the bottom of the list are as revealing as those at the top.)

So what grade would most of us give the K-12 system when it comes to fostering these top six priorities?

 We need only to look at the poll’s achievement scores for the answer. Here are the percentages of respondents who believe that schools are succeeding with their top six priorities:

#1 – 26%

#2 – 33%

#3 – 33%

#4 - 52%

#5 – 30%

#6 – 30%

For those of us who have read the entire Purpose of Education Index, there is one statistic that stands out from all the others. 71% of the American public believe that more things about the K-12 system should change than stay the same. And that includes 21% who believe that nearly everything should change!

And now, I have an obvious question.

Where would a truly private opinion poll − directed specifically to Watertown parents − grade WPS on the achievement scale?

Would WPS score:

Higher than 26% on delivering practical skills?

Higher than 33% on teaching critical thinking?

Higher than 33% on demonstrating character?

Higher than 52% on demonstrating basic reading, writing, and arithmetic?

Higher than 30% on providing students with the unique support they need?

Higher than 30% for preparing students for a fulfilling career?

We have shining new energy-efficient elementary schools and a shining new energy-efficient high school in the works. No small accomplishment. But how would parents and taxpayers privately grade our K-12 system on fostering the practical values prioritized by the post-Covid majority?

Do our policymakers listen too intently to misinformation coming from the noisy infosphere and from the loudest voices in the room?

I don’t know. But I do know this. Unless you’ve already studied the report and are acutely aware of how Covid has radically changed societal expectations of our educational system, you should take the time to review this first-of-a-kind 103-page report, from which you can draw your own conclusions.

Come to think of it, also showing the report to students just might provide them with an excellent gateway to a lifelong road of critical thinking. We are all less likely to be fooled by collective illusions when we are grounded by facts.

 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown

          

THE SCREWY DRUG BUST, THE FATAL CAR CRASH, AND THE NEWEST DRUG FROM HELL

 There is the assumption by several of Watertown’s more vocal social media commenters that crime in our city is steadily rising. It’s their perception and I don’t know if they are right or wrong. My own perception is that the threat of crime in Watertown is rising and will continue to rise.

And how could it not? Drug traffickers compete for customers and territory and we are prime territory for violent street gangs operating out of their home bases to our north, south, west, and of course Boston.

Thankfully we don’t get to see them on our street corners. We would have to tour certain neighborhoods in Boston, Lawrence, Lowell, Springfield, or Providence to get the best sightings but they are here too. Just less visibly.

In a previous blog post, I likened the local crime picture to a jigsaw puzzle, where, for understandable reasons, most of the pieces are kept hidden from the public. The rights of suspects need to be protected. Delicate investigations require secrecy. Victims are entitled to their privacy. So, in the interests of justice, we end up seeing a trailer for the movie instead of the movie.

Citizens and policymakers who demand absolute transparency in policing are choosing utopian ideology over true public safety.

So, is it worth the time and effort of collecting the puzzle pieces, if our entire collection amounts to a mere one-tenth of Watertown’s crime picture?

Yes, if we want our perceptions of the threat of crime to be based on all the evidence available to us rather than on a gut feeling.

Let’s suppose that, in examining that evidence, you come to the conclusion that Watertown is under-policed and you feel compelled to share that view with your district councilor and your favorite at-large councilor, or even your least favorite at-large councilor.

Shouldn’t you bring your “A game?” After all, residents who hold the opposite opinion have a track record of bringing theirs.

With that in mind, allow me to present my first puzzle pieces of 2023. But first, let’s be clear that there’s a big difference between seeing the puzzle pieces and collecting them. If you are only seeing them, most will probably be soon forgotten. When you are collecting them, you will file them away for future reference.

Technically, this one took place in 2022, but I think it needs to be included here because it just might set the stage for what will be occurring more often in 2023.

The following details are taken from the Watertown police report given to Watertown News.

“Dec. 29, 9:53 p.m.: Watertown detectives who were in the parking lot of Target attending to another matter spotted a car with New Jersey license plates pull in. Then a second person walked over and got into the vehicle. The car pulled out of the lot and got onto Arsenal Street.

The officer observed the vehicle get stuck trying to make an illegal left turn into Arsenal Yards from westbound Arsenal Street. The car then headed west on the  wrong side of the road.

Police pulled over the vehicle on Bond Street in Arsenal Yards. The officers asked the men what they were doing in the Target lot and one said he was meeting someone to collect $15,000.

Based on the officer’s experience and knowledge he suspected a drug sale was taking place. He got permission to search the vehicle and in the rear of the car he located a kilogram of a substance suspected to be fentanyl. A field test of the substance confirmed it was fentanyl.

Aneudy Richardson-Jimenez, 34, of Jersey City, New Jersey, and Socorro Alcantra De La Cruz, 34 of Jersey City, New Jersey, were arrested. Both face a charge of trafficking fentanyl.”

The account reads like a comedy and would be laughable were it not for the fentanyl – the single most dangerous illicit drug that, over the past few years, has found its way into every product peddled by drug dealers.

You might be tired of hearing that fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. That message has been blasted by public health agencies through every bullhorn at their disposal.

But teenagers, happily unaware of their not yet developed brains and their overly expressive hormones, are able to tune out those bullhorns and pump up the volume on their inner voices that nudge them toward experimentation and risk-taking.  

Thanks to the high profitability of cutting all drugs with cheap, easy-to-transport fentanyl, one experiment can end in death or lead quickly to addiction.  

Stories of bright teenagers and young adults with brilliant futures, who bought a counterfeit Percocet or Xanax on the internet and either died instantly or went on to become fentanyl zombies are becoming all too common.

A few key questions about the screwy drug bust that will receive no immediate answer:

For drug traffickers, is Watertown a regular stopping point on their drug dealing route?

Is the Target parking lot viewed as a safe and convenient “place of business” for drug traffickers?

What about the Home Depot parking lot or other public Watertown locations?

Where would the fentanyl have ended up, if not for the arrest? Would it have been sold to Watertown residents?

Could the Watertown Police use more detectives who can spot drug deals when they see them?

Those are my questions. You might have questions of your own.

 

And now, puzzle piece number two for 2023.

The following information comes from the Rhode Island State Police and/or WPRI News.

According to Corporal Michael Doherty of the Rhode Island State Police, police in Lincoln, Rhode Island, responded at about 2:34 a.m. to a motor vehicle crash on Route 146 North, near Route 116.

The car was traveling north on Route 146 when the driver lost control, striking a highway barrier head-on as it entered the highway.

The front seat passenger, later identified as William Molloy of Ashland, Massachusetts, was killed. The unnamed backseat passenger was taken to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence to be treated for serious injuries. His name and condition have not been made public.

The driver, Christopher Vincent, 25, of Watertown, Massachusetts, was charged with:

driving under the influence of liquor or drugs, death resulting;

driving under the influence of liquor or drugs, resulting in serious bodily injury;

driving to endanger, death resulting;

and driving to endanger resulting in personal injury.

According to WPRI News, a witness on the scene told police that they saw Vincent throw a bottle into the woods, which troopers later found to be vodka. They also found a bottle of cognac on the passenger-side floorboard.

On scene, troopers said Vincent refused to answer questions. He was observed to have bloodshot and watery eyes and slurred speech. His breath smelled of alcohol and he refused to take a sobriety test.

Vincent later refused a chemical test at the hospital, but troopers obtained a search warrant for his blood. The results are still pending.

Vincent also faces a controlled substance possession charge. State police said they found suspected ephedrine and cocaine in the vehicle, along with several cell phones.

In court, police noted that Vincent was also charged with drug possession in Buffalo, New York, back in September.

Vincent was released on bond, pending his arraignment and the accident remains under investigation. He is due back in court at the end of March.

There is nothing unusual about a car crash involving alcohol and drugs. And there is certainly nothing unusual about a car crash taking place on New Year’s Eve. In fact, this was not the only such car crash taking place in Lincoln, Rhode Island on this past New Year’s Eve.

This story is relevant here only because the driver of the car is a Watertown resident. Let’s be clear. Not all the facts are in and Mr. Vincent is innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law.

Once all the facts are in, which will be months and maybe years away, it will be valuable for us to know:

Were additional drugs, such as fentanyl (or a drug to be named later in this post) found in the vehicle?

Were the drugs his?

If the drugs were his, did he buy any of all of them in Watertown?

If they were his, did he sell drugs in Watertown?

What drugs, if any, were detected in the toxicology reports?

And most important to me and to some of you:

What facts will emerge from this tragic incident that might contribute to our understanding of Watertown’s current crime threat?

 

My third puzzle piece for 2023.

It’s not an incident or an individual. It’s a substance.

Xylazine is a powerful tranquilizer used on horses and other large animals. “Tranq,” as it’s known on the street, is rapidly emerging as the newest secret ingredient added to illicit drugs.

Drug traffickers are always looking to develop the perfect cocktail to keep users coming back for more. And xylazine may have brought their cocktail recipe one step closer to perfection. Fentanyl delivers a quick and intense high while xylazine prolongs the high.

As with fentanyl, xylazine works with every drug delivery system. It can be inhaled, swallowed, smoked, or injected, which also means it can be hidden, along with fentanyl, in any illicit drug.

Xylazine is not an opioid so it doesn’t respond to naloxone, popularly known by the brand name, Narcan. Individuals suffering from an overdose of any opioid, including fentanyl, can usually be revived with a dose or two of naloxone. But if they also have xylazine in their system, they are unlikely to wake up.

Xylazine is a central nervous system depressant that can cause drowsiness and put users into a deep sleep, leaving them vulnerable to sexual assault.  When, and if, they wake up, they often suffer from amnesia.

Users who have fallen into a xylazine sleep may not appear to have overdosed, leaving others to assume that the person has passed out from too much alcohol − something college students might consider when attending their next dorm or frat party.

Testing for xylazine is not standard practice and routine toxicology screenings do not detect it. So, how prevalent is it in drug overdoses? We have no idea.

But we do know this.

The federal government should have been addressing the fentanyl epidemic years ago instead of continuing to target heroin as the number one threat coming across the southern border. Municipalities across the country saw the fentanyl epidemic at ground level, one overdose at a time.

Should we expect the feds to be ahead of the curve on xylazine? Of course not. Right now they do not even know where the supply is coming from. It may be coming over our borders or being pirated from the veterinary supply chain, or both.

Our first line of defense is right here in Watertown.

In 2023, every drug seizure in Watertown should be tested for fentanyl and xylazine. And every prospective user – especially teenagers − should be taught to assume that every harmless-looking pill or powder purchased from a friend or off the internet contains both fentanyl and xylazine.

If they can’t be convinced with facts and reason, maybe they can be convinced through facts and fear. Or maybe a combination of both. Solving the problem is still a puzzle.

 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown

MY POLICE-RELATED COMMENT FOR WATERTOWN NEWS WAS "TOO PERSONAL" SO I HAD TO RUN IT HERE INSTEAD

Here's an article recently published on Watertown News:

City Planning to Appeal Decision in Sexual Discrimination Case Involving the Police Department

Here's the comment from the commenter:

"And now we will be hiring a new chief from within the department. That person was either complicit and allowed the discrimination and harassment to continue, or participated in it. Or, that man (the only choices are men) was completely oblivious, in a job that requires being observant. And we wonder why people don’t trust the police."

 

Here's my response (which is kind of personal) to that commenter:

People don’t trust the police? Are you referring to the people, within your social circle, who share your belief, or are you speaking for the entire Watertown community? If it’s the latter, you have it wrong.

It's interesting how certain police critics demand transparency for everyone except themselves. As part of the leadership of Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice, and the Environment, you might have led with that disclosure.

Now that you’ve pronounced the next chief as having been “either complicit, or a participant” or “completely oblivious,” I guess we should all assume that this will be an open and shut case of his worthiness to lead the WPD.

Maybe he was highly observant of drug dealers, sex traffickers, and violent criminals who operate in cities and towns surrounding Watertown and maybe he paid too little attention to what he may have regarded, rightly or wrongly, as office gossip.

The city manager will surely be asking the candidates for the job: What did you know and when did you know it? He will also be asking: Are you the man who can best keep us safe?

In my opinion, the greater community understands that the freedom to walk down our streets at night, without fear, is not an accident, nor is it a reality in every city and town. 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown

CAN EXPLORING THE F WORD (NO, NOT THAT ONE) BE THE KEY TO TURBOCHARGING OUR KIDS’ BRAINS AND SAVING THEIR FUTURE?

 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