8 ms·

As Bad Information Spreads, Florida Schools Seek to Teach 'Digital Literacy'

aphextron 6y ago
Is this an education problem though? Surely those crowds at the capitol had plenty of well educated, highly functioning adults. But when you incentivize divisiveness to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in ad revenue, companies like Facebook, grifting media personalities, and corrupted politicians will always collude to outwit them. We have a problem with a runaway hyper-capitalist economic system and decaying democratic institutions that reward manipulative sociopathic behavior.
- lupire 6y ago
  Citation needed on that "educated, well functioning".
  - maxfurman 6y ago
    Were they morons? Perhaps. But most of them were what we'd otherwise call "functioning adults," i.e. people with families and jobs. Their only crime was trusting Donald Trump. Well, that and the rioting.
lupire 6y ago
30 years ago we called this "critical thinking", something schools have always had a lot trouble with, in part because critical thinking is a weapon against illegitimate authority, which schools also have a lot of trouble with.
- SteveNuts 6y ago
  It's also really hard to measure, and just like everything nowadays, there has to be KPIs and metrics everywhere. No one relies on gut feeling or what they think is best anymore, too afraid to stick their neck out without data to back it up, no matter how iffy the data is.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Also because teachers have trouble with it. I’d guess out of all the teachers I had at a decent public school, probably only 1 in 5 could be reasonably considered critical thinkers. I’d guess 2 in 5 were actively hostile to the concept and the rest were just ambivalent. Illegitimate (or at least arbitrary) authority is something schools seem to thrive on. Our school had a staircase you could only go up and one you could only go down and you got yelled at if you went the wrong direction. Naturally the building wasn’t made by insane people so the stairs were on opposite ends, this meant if you had to go downstairs but were near the “up only stairs” you had to traverse the entire building and would be late with 3min class change times (and you couldn’t run either). We also couldn’t talk during the second half of lunch because it was too loud for the lunch monitors. Underpaid, low status jobs with unions that prevent people from getting fired is a great way to end up with dumb, awful people in those positions. I was lucky there were a few great teachers at all given those incentives.
  - teucris 6y ago
    > Underpaid, low status jobs To me this is the critical problem. Education is an incredibly important part of a well-functioning society, but we treat teachers very poorly. We need to elevate teachers, both in the training & expertise needed as well as the pay and autonomy we provide them.
    - nullserver 6y ago
      Married to a teacher. Logic has no part in most elementary classrooms. I argue we need to go dumber. Have a basic certification that you can teach vowel sounds. Bring in plenty of cheap people to lower grades and have them work 1 on 1 with each student. Seen way to much of teachers teaching to what the kids are supposed to be capable of, vs what they actually are.
      - legerdemain 6y ago
        I've seen the inside of an elementary grade classroom before, and I agree with you 100%. So many American children and even adults mispronounce vowel sounds, it's scary. Something around 60% of American adults look at a simple word like "iron" and say something that resembles "I yearn." Did no one tell them how it sounds?
- sfblah 6y ago
  My kids are being taught a lot of critical race theory concepts in their middle school which, to put it charitably, don't have a whole lot of objective data behind them. That said, it's probably reasonable for schools to try to propagate some set of standard ideologies which parents can then modulate by offering their own opinions. The place this probably doesn't work so well is situations where parents are either absent or radicalized in some way. Unsurprisingly, those two situations do seem to be where a lot of social problems originate.
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    Have you spoken to the school about your concerns? Do your children know about your reservations with what they are being taught?
    - sfblah 6y ago
      I'm not overly concerned about it. It's my job as a parent to modulate the information they receive with school, and I'm fine with that. The most challenging part about it is they are asked to do assignments whose responses contain a strong political element, meaning there is a "right" opinion the teacher wants to hear. Again, that doesn't overly bother me. That's life, and my kids need to learn to operate in politically charged environments. Yes, my children know what I think, and we discuss everything openly.
      - BitwiseFool 6y ago
        You're more at peace with the situation than I would be. I have an angry reaction to the idea that my children are being politically indoctrinated in such an obvious way - especially with such a shaky and activist foundation.
    - nullserver 6y ago
      Children can be taught to believe basically anything, easily. Teaching them to question and then things through comes much later. Got a a decent dose of class warfare ideology growing up. Spent years after college reading various opinions before finally settling on my own beliefs. My oldest asks me who to vote for. She gets annoyed when I try and explain the various viewpoints of each candidate, and some pros and cons. I now firmly hold the belief that it’s immoral to vote if you can’t be bothered to study up on some basics. Like a what is a bond.
- bad_username 6y ago
  "Critical thinking, as we’re taught to do it, isn’t helping in the fight against misinformation", argues NYT [1]. I profoundly disagree, but this way of thinking seems to be the modern trend, influenced by postmodernism. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-attention.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-a...
isaacremuant 6y ago
The problem with this "bad information" monicker is that it's absolutely contaminated with politics just like "fact checkers" and someone who points out data or inconsistencies that go against an official stance might be labeled simply for countering the narrative. It's easy to believe this doesn't happen when you're always aligning with the official/tech-platform positions but you surely can remember an instance where this wasn't so in the past.
swiley 6y ago
I wonder if this will work out any better than the "computer" classes that teach people to use MS Word (do you really need a class on this?) instead of something they could actually use like an understanding of relational algebra.
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  What do people use more often to get work done. MS Word or relational algebra?
  - lordnacho 6y ago
    Purely because they don't know any relational algebra. If they knew both they wouldn't use Word.
    - InitialLastName 6y ago
      I can know as much relational algebra as I like, but I just had a fun interaction with a set of lawyers (in my day-to-day life business, not work) where the Word skills were still necessary.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    MS Word, but it pays much less well. But, por que no los dos? Sure, teach MS Word, and also teach relational algebra.
- Quenty 6y ago
  Those computer classes were actually really useful for me, let me explore power point and was a way to make a video game within PowerPoint, which was super cool.
legerdemain 6y ago
What you call "bad information" I call "a difference of opinion." And I call your attempts to institute mass re-education in "digital literacy" to "combat" this "bad information" suppression of free thought and oppression of contrarian and non-mainstream voices.
- CountDrewku 6y ago
  Yep the problem is the so called "bad information" is mostly just stuff the left dislikes due to Trump and not necessarily false. This is easy to see now that Biden is doing just as badly with immigration and even worse is some regards but now suddenly it's not an issue we need to be concerned with. It's incredibly obvious that even factual information is being regarded as false if it doesn't align with a certain agenda. This is where it gets pretty scary and basically you're telling people you want their children in a re-education camp to make sure they fall in line. It's the opposite of the critical thinking they're supposedly pushing.
  - Leparamour 6y ago
    I think your comment will be downvoted to invisibility for using the trigger words "Trump" and "the left" but you're not wrong. As a European we experience the political trickle-down of "critical race theory" from the US cultural war even if our history is completely different. And as an outsider, the double-standard in reporting and tone on Trump vs. Biden is disturbing to see.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      CRT specifically may be largely junk (I think it is), but the parent comment is not correct. Trump's "Zero Tolerance" immigration policy intentionally separated mothers and their children at the border with the intent being deterrence. Cruelty was the intended goal of that policy to dissuade people from coming to the border. Previously adults and children would only be separated if border patrol suspected abuse (child trafficking). Some children have yet to be reunited with their parents (and may never be) because the Trump administration failed to keep records (and frankly didn't care). The "remain in mexico" policy was intended to prevent those crossing the border to be able to exercise their legal right to claim asylum. Immigration policy is complex, dealing with desperate people fleeing their country to enter the US is not easy. That doesn't make the Trump administration policy equivalent to the difficulties Biden is experiencing on the border. Intent and policy decisions matter. This is one specific example, but there are many others.
temptemptemp111 6y ago
Welcome to the USSA!
pelasaco 6y ago
"The U.S. intelligence community found that in both the 2020 and 2016 elections, Russia employed a range of online methods in an attempt to help former President Donald Trump, and undermine his Democratic rivals, Hillary Clinton and President Biden." Is this a fact? If I remember right from the things that I read and listened about it, If Russia was involved, it wouldn't be the first time, and yes, US do the same[1], they didn't want to "help" Donald Trump but instead help themselves, i.e trying to have there the most appropriate candidate to be able to work with (from Russia point-of-view) or/and destabilize U.S. [1]: https://news.yale.edu/2020/08/20/rigged-details-long-history-russian-and-us-electoral-interference https://news.yale.edu/2020/08/20/rigged-details-long-history...
ruste 6y ago
I think a component of the issue is that we've spent at least the last decade teaching kids that they should think for themselves as long as what they're thinking is something that an "expert" told them was true. This could not be farther from teaching critical thinking. Primary sources can be wrong. Primary sources can lie. Primary sources can tell the truth, but only the part that supports their argument. There was a great article to this end posted yesterday.
teachtwolearn 6y ago
Surprised this isn't more common. I had assumed these classes were already part of most curriculums, because it was taught when kids were in their early-mid teens when I was in primary school ~15 years ago. They called it something like "library technology" at the time, but the topics focused on how to find and vet information online. This was also when Wikipedia was still new. One of my 8th grade teachers was so annoyed by the platform that they planted false information in the page of a historical figure that we were writing an essay about. On the one hand, I'm surprised at how creulous the average person seems to be today. But I also felt that way 15 years ago, and how long have people been saying "there's a sucker born every minute"?
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > This was also when Wikipedia was still new. One of my 8th grade teachers was so annoyed by the platform that they planted false information in the page of a historical figure that we were writing an essay about. Someone should have reported the edits and sent the logs to a tech publication. I'm sure they would have loved it. In all seriousness, I laughed when I saw a "life hack" that basically said: "How to Get Better Grades: Never Quote Wikipedia, Quote the Sources of Wikipedia".

Is this an education problem though? Surely those crowds at the capitol had plenty of well educated, highly functioning adults. But when you incentivize divisiveness to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in ad revenue, companies like Facebook, grifting media personalities, and corrupted politicians will always collude to outwit them. We have a problem with a runaway hyper-capitalist economic system and decaying democratic institutions that reward manipulative sociopathic behavior.

lupire 6y ago
Citation needed on that "educated, well functioning".
- maxfurman 6y ago
  Were they morons? Perhaps. But most of them were what we'd otherwise call "functioning adults," i.e. people with families and jobs. Their only crime was trusting Donald Trump. Well, that and the rioting.

lupire 6y ago

30 years ago we called this "critical thinking", something schools have always had a lot trouble with, in part because critical thinking is a weapon against illegitimate authority, which schools also have a lot of trouble with.

SteveNuts 6y ago
It's also really hard to measure, and just like everything nowadays, there has to be KPIs and metrics everywhere. No one relies on gut feeling or what they think is best anymore, too afraid to stick their neck out without data to back it up, no matter how iffy the data is.
fossuser 6y ago
Also because teachers have trouble with it. I’d guess out of all the teachers I had at a decent public school, probably only 1 in 5 could be reasonably considered critical thinkers. I’d guess 2 in 5 were actively hostile to the concept and the rest were just ambivalent. Illegitimate (or at least arbitrary) authority is something schools seem to thrive on. Our school had a staircase you could only go up and one you could only go down and you got yelled at if you went the wrong direction. Naturally the building wasn’t made by insane people so the stairs were on opposite ends, this meant if you had to go downstairs but were near the “up only stairs” you had to traverse the entire building and would be late with 3min class change times (and you couldn’t run either). We also couldn’t talk during the second half of lunch because it was too loud for the lunch monitors. Underpaid, low status jobs with unions that prevent people from getting fired is a great way to end up with dumb, awful people in those positions. I was lucky there were a few great teachers at all given those incentives.
- teucris 6y ago
  > Underpaid, low status jobs To me this is the critical problem. Education is an incredibly important part of a well-functioning society, but we treat teachers very poorly. We need to elevate teachers, both in the training & expertise needed as well as the pay and autonomy we provide them.
  - nullserver 6y ago
    Married to a teacher. Logic has no part in most elementary classrooms. I argue we need to go dumber. Have a basic certification that you can teach vowel sounds. Bring in plenty of cheap people to lower grades and have them work 1 on 1 with each student. Seen way to much of teachers teaching to what the kids are supposed to be capable of, vs what they actually are.
    - legerdemain 6y ago
      I've seen the inside of an elementary grade classroom before, and I agree with you 100%. So many American children and even adults mispronounce vowel sounds, it's scary. Something around 60% of American adults look at a simple word like "iron" and say something that resembles "I yearn." Did no one tell them how it sounds?
sfblah 6y ago
My kids are being taught a lot of critical race theory concepts in their middle school which, to put it charitably, don't have a whole lot of objective data behind them. That said, it's probably reasonable for schools to try to propagate some set of standard ideologies which parents can then modulate by offering their own opinions. The place this probably doesn't work so well is situations where parents are either absent or radicalized in some way. Unsurprisingly, those two situations do seem to be where a lot of social problems originate.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  Have you spoken to the school about your concerns? Do your children know about your reservations with what they are being taught?
  - sfblah 6y ago
    I'm not overly concerned about it. It's my job as a parent to modulate the information they receive with school, and I'm fine with that. The most challenging part about it is they are asked to do assignments whose responses contain a strong political element, meaning there is a "right" opinion the teacher wants to hear. Again, that doesn't overly bother me. That's life, and my kids need to learn to operate in politically charged environments. Yes, my children know what I think, and we discuss everything openly.
    - BitwiseFool 6y ago
      You're more at peace with the situation than I would be. I have an angry reaction to the idea that my children are being politically indoctrinated in such an obvious way - especially with such a shaky and activist foundation.
  - nullserver 6y ago
    Children can be taught to believe basically anything, easily. Teaching them to question and then things through comes much later. Got a a decent dose of class warfare ideology growing up. Spent years after college reading various opinions before finally settling on my own beliefs. My oldest asks me who to vote for. She gets annoyed when I try and explain the various viewpoints of each candidate, and some pros and cons. I now firmly hold the belief that it’s immoral to vote if you can’t be bothered to study up on some basics. Like a what is a bond.
bad_username 6y ago
"Critical thinking, as we’re taught to do it, isn’t helping in the fight against misinformation", argues NYT [1]. I profoundly disagree, but this way of thinking seems to be the modern trend, influenced by postmodernism. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-attention.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-a...

isaacremuant 6y ago

The problem with this "bad information" monicker is that it's absolutely contaminated with politics just like "fact checkers" and someone who points out data or inconsistencies that go against an official stance might be labeled simply for countering the narrative. It's easy to believe this doesn't happen when you're always aligning with the official/tech-platform positions but you surely can remember an instance where this wasn't so in the past.

swiley 6y ago

I wonder if this will work out any better than the "computer" classes that teach people to use MS Word (do you really need a class on this?) instead of something they could actually use like an understanding of relational algebra.

germinalphrase 6y ago
What do people use more often to get work done. MS Word or relational algebra?
- lordnacho 6y ago
  Purely because they don't know any relational algebra. If they knew both they wouldn't use Word.
  - InitialLastName 6y ago
    I can know as much relational algebra as I like, but I just had a fun interaction with a set of lawyers (in my day-to-day life business, not work) where the Word skills were still necessary.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  MS Word, but it pays much less well. But, por que no los dos? Sure, teach MS Word, and also teach relational algebra.
Quenty 6y ago
Those computer classes were actually really useful for me, let me explore power point and was a way to make a video game within PowerPoint, which was super cool.

legerdemain 6y ago

What you call "bad information" I call "a difference of opinion." And I call your attempts to institute mass re-education in "digital literacy" to "combat" this "bad information" suppression of free thought and oppression of contrarian and non-mainstream voices.

CountDrewku 6y ago
Yep the problem is the so called "bad information" is mostly just stuff the left dislikes due to Trump and not necessarily false. This is easy to see now that Biden is doing just as badly with immigration and even worse is some regards but now suddenly it's not an issue we need to be concerned with. It's incredibly obvious that even factual information is being regarded as false if it doesn't align with a certain agenda. This is where it gets pretty scary and basically you're telling people you want their children in a re-education camp to make sure they fall in line. It's the opposite of the critical thinking they're supposedly pushing.
- Leparamour 6y ago
  I think your comment will be downvoted to invisibility for using the trigger words "Trump" and "the left" but you're not wrong. As a European we experience the political trickle-down of "critical race theory" from the US cultural war even if our history is completely different. And as an outsider, the double-standard in reporting and tone on Trump vs. Biden is disturbing to see.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    CRT specifically may be largely junk (I think it is), but the parent comment is not correct. Trump's "Zero Tolerance" immigration policy intentionally separated mothers and their children at the border with the intent being deterrence. Cruelty was the intended goal of that policy to dissuade people from coming to the border. Previously adults and children would only be separated if border patrol suspected abuse (child trafficking). Some children have yet to be reunited with their parents (and may never be) because the Trump administration failed to keep records (and frankly didn't care). The "remain in mexico" policy was intended to prevent those crossing the border to be able to exercise their legal right to claim asylum. Immigration policy is complex, dealing with desperate people fleeing their country to enter the US is not easy. That doesn't make the Trump administration policy equivalent to the difficulties Biden is experiencing on the border. Intent and policy decisions matter. This is one specific example, but there are many others.

temptemptemp111 6y ago

Welcome to the USSA!

pelasaco 6y ago

"The U.S. intelligence community found that in both the 2020 and 2016 elections, Russia employed a range of online methods in an attempt to help former President Donald Trump, and undermine his Democratic rivals, Hillary Clinton and President Biden." Is this a fact? If I remember right from the things that I read and listened about it, If Russia was involved, it wouldn't be the first time, and yes, US do the same[1], they didn't want to "help" Donald Trump but instead help themselves, i.e trying to have there the most appropriate candidate to be able to work with (from Russia point-of-view) or/and destabilize U.S. [1]: https://news.yale.edu/2020/08/20/rigged-details-long-history-russian-and-us-electoral-interference https://news.yale.edu/2020/08/20/rigged-details-long-history...

ruste 6y ago

I think a component of the issue is that we've spent at least the last decade teaching kids that they should think for themselves as long as what they're thinking is something that an "expert" told them was true. This could not be farther from teaching critical thinking. Primary sources can be wrong. Primary sources can lie. Primary sources can tell the truth, but only the part that supports their argument. There was a great article to this end posted yesterday.

teachtwolearn 6y ago

Surprised this isn't more common. I had assumed these classes were already part of most curriculums, because it was taught when kids were in their early-mid teens when I was in primary school ~15 years ago. They called it something like "library technology" at the time, but the topics focused on how to find and vet information online. This was also when Wikipedia was still new. One of my 8th grade teachers was so annoyed by the platform that they planted false information in the page of a historical figure that we were writing an essay about. On the one hand, I'm surprised at how creulous the average person seems to be today. But I also felt that way 15 years ago, and how long have people been saying "there's a sucker born every minute"?

908B64B197 6y ago
> This was also when Wikipedia was still new. One of my 8th grade teachers was so annoyed by the platform that they planted false information in the page of a historical figure that we were writing an essay about. Someone should have reported the edits and sent the logs to a tech publication. I'm sure they would have loved it. In all seriousness, I laughed when I saw a "life hack" that basically said: "How to Get Better Grades: Never Quote Wikipedia, Quote the Sources of Wikipedia".