Letter: Fake teaching?

keyboard

The Northwest Herald’s front page article “Fake News?” states “Illinois high schools teach students how to determine what to believe in media.” The lesson plan is how to research, analyze, evaluate, hypothesize and draw conclusions; not what to believe. The most beneficial learning skill, “lateral reading,” received a brief mention buried amid the two-page article.

The article emphasized that the science of evaluating information will not be taught as a standalone subject. Instead, media literacy will be imbedded in other content such as English, government, human geography, etc. Trying to teach critical thinking and deductive reasoning life skills by contrasting a few opinions in a geography class will naturally become biased by the examples used by the instructor. Biased teaching practices already have parents questioning school administrators across the nation. Messaging is not teaching, it is indoctrination.

Teaching is the direct, unadulterated presentation of facts. Teachers are entrusted to use unbiased facts in their instruction to students to enhance the skills of reading, writing and mathematics. The big three stand alone and are taught independently to preserve the simplicity and integrity of the factual subject matter. Science, history and, once upon a time, art and music were also exclusive subjects. If literacy, a proficiency in fact gathering, is taught as an independent life skill class it can apply anywhere including the media.

Media Literacy, directly or subliminally woven into other subjects, will be positioned to present ideological preferences.

Let’s not have fake news transition into fake teaching. Students should be taught critical thinking skills with a precise and singular classroom focus free from ideological influence.

Rick Dime

Richmond