Currently, K-12 curriculum is not able to keep up with ever-changing technology. Children are now spending more time online than ever before, yet they are not getting better at comprehending the content of what they are seeing. Everyone, from middle school to college, was found to be “easily duped” by misinformation found online. They were not able to reason with information they find. Humanities courses are one way to add this to the curriculum, but teachers say that they do not have enough time to teach the critical skills students desperately need. This is what has led to the under-education of students on this issue. It has been found that even the brightest students struggle to distinguish between fake and biased news.
We have chosen to target high school aged students with our project for several reasons. First, they are old enough to comprehend what we are trying to teach. They are beginning to learn how to do research, and we hope to help them identify real news sources better. Additionally, we want to educate students before they are old enough to vote. We hope to show them how to consider all sides of the story before forming their own opinion. Better educated voters leads to a brighter future.
“Five years ago, it was difficult to get people to understand what we were doing and what we wanted to see happen in education and the skills students needed to learn,”
“Now there is no question about the vitalness of this in classrooms.” -Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, executive director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education