Teaching Fact From Fiction
An advocate for news literacy sees these foundational skills embedded in all corners of the curriculum, an essential piece of a civics education for preserving democracy

A student at P.D. Jackson-Olin High School in Birmingham, Ala., works on a media literacy assignment. PHOTO COURTESY OF BIRMINGHAM, ALA., CITY SCHOOLS

Anyone working in public education today recognizes we are living in extraordinarily polarized times. Groups of citizens now operate in entirely different information ecosystems, and we struggle to come to an agreement on basic facts.

This discord has moved beyond the schoolhouse steps, whether the focus is COVID-19 mitigation practices, school and community reckoning on race or charges over the use of critical race theory.

As we navigate the most complex information landscape in human history, where information can be manipulated with the greatest ease and falsehoods spread online at lightning speed, a reprioritized civic education program must teach students how to critically think about information and how to tell fact from fiction. Without these fundamental skills, young people can’t fully participate in our democratic process. And without a fact-based objective truth, self-government itself is at risk.

The idea that public education must play a central role in sustaining our democratic system is older than the republic itself. Consider what our founding fathers stated on that point.

John Adams, in a 1785 letter archived at the Massachusetts Historical Society, wrote: “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people … there should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it.” And even more to the point, Thomas Jefferson noted, in a letter published by the Princeton University Press, that the price of public education “is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

In other words, democracy cannot survive with a people uninformed — or worse, ill-informed.

Statewide Programs

Today, the work to renew civic education with news literacy as a fundamental skill is not about perpetuating our democratic system. It is about saving it.

We see a few signs of hope that our citizenry is becoming better-informed. In 2021, both Illinois and Texas passed bills requiring instruction in media literacy in K-12 education. Typically seen as political opposites, these two states saw fit to deal directly with the growing threat that a misinformed public poses to the democratic system.

While these legislative actions hopefully will spur other states to do the same, challenges remain. The first is timing. A state mandate takes years before it is fully defined, approved and ready to be successfully implemented with instruction and curriculum by local districts. Time really is of the essence here.

The second challenge lies in the field of media literacy itself. It is an all-encompassing term, often without universal learning standards or a unified pedagogical approach. Because of this, the term is used incorrectly by some and correctly by others expressing vastly different ideas and approaches to learning and instruction. In addition to media literacy being a moving academic target, the term’s ambiguity has allowed it to become yet another victim of politicization, even sometimes described as a “progressive plot.”

Defining the Concept

News literacy offers a singular solution to both challenges. It is a discipline within media literacy focused on specific, non-ideological principles and pedagogy, and therefore it has the greatest chance of widespread adoption in these polarized times. A foundation of any strong civics program, news literacy is defined as:

»A dedication to the First Amendment and the understanding that a free press is a cornerstone of democracy.

»An emphasis on developing healthy skepticism, but not cynicism, for news and information.

Teacher Juliet Reed leads 11th graders at the school in a news literacy lesson discussing the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. PHOTO COURTESY OF BIRMINGHAM, ALA., CITY SCHOOLS

»A pedagogy that seeks to teach learners how to think about news and information and not what to think about specific sources.

»Concrete, non-ideological learning standards that can be integrated into the instruction of a wide variety of subjects.

This final point is key, in that it allows news literacy to be taught immediately, often without lengthy state-led review processes. However, given the importance of these skills, it is imperative that news literacy be taught as an explicit, applicable skill set rather than disparate learning objectives spread over multiple years, courses and subjects.

Startup Initiatives

In some states without concrete action by the state education agency around media literacy, school districts are leading the way. Taking advantage of the curricular flexibility news literacy offers, these examples suggest that news literacy can be adopted anywhere, despite the political leanings of a community.

In Birmingham, Ala., the city’s schools became a News Literacy Project partner in 2020. The district decided to make news literacy teaching and learning a priority in its middle and high school English language arts classes. Educators now are encouraged to integrate a unit of news literacy instruction in their teaching with the district making professional development and curriculum available to support this integration. Subject matter curriculum coordinators will have much to say about the initiative’s effectiveness.

In California, after several months of discussions and planning, the Los Angeles Unified School District became an official News Literacy Project partner at the start of 2022. The district sees news literacy as an essential skill for all students, grades K-12, and a graduation requirement as part of its Critical Mass Media studies mandate passed by the board of education in 2021.

Charles Salter

As in Birmingham, Los Angeles is focusing initial news literacy instruction on English language arts courses on the secondary school level with the support of district-level curriculum coordinators.

Individual Efforts

Beyond the fledgling programs in some districts, there are thousands of educators across the country who haven’t waited for a mandate to incorporate news literacy instruction into their classrooms.

Patricia Hunt, social studies and government teacher at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., said in an interview that she integrates news literacy into her classes early in the semester to provide “foundational skills, a common language and a set of standards” her students can use when evaluating sources of news and information and when discussing issues best evaluated through a variety of perspectives. A 30-year classroom veteran, she knows a challenge in teaching news literacy is that it’s often seen as an add-on to current curriculum, but she would like to see it someday embedded in every subject because “misinformation transcends the subject matter that we lock students into when they go from class to class.”

In Redmond, Wash., Kelly Vikstrom-Hoyt, director of library services at The Overlake School, teaches news literacy to a wide variety of classes, including an 8th-grade civics class and a 10th-grade life skills class, demonstrating that news literacy has cross-curricular applications and integration potential.

Vikstrom-Hoyt believes news literacy is a “super skill” applicable throughout life and across the curriculum, whether in English language arts, the social sciences or even the physical sciences. In her words, it is “the work of librarians and teaching and learning directors and curriculum directors to try to take these skills that are overarching and integrate them throughout the curriculum.”

CHARLES SALTER, a former superintendent, is the president and chief operating officer of the News Literacy Project in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @saltercrs