Living in a post-truth world

Living in a post-truth world

When the business model for news corporations depends on blurring the lines between fact and opinion, how can we move from partisanship to problem solving? Photo illustration by News Decoder. In 2017, the political landscape collectively scoffed at Donald...

With news media inundating our feeds with content, youth guest author Skyler Kelley Duval dissects the blurred lines between fact and fiction. Central to being able to responsibly consume media is investment in critical thinking and media literacy education in schools. Are your students media literate? 

Exercise: Read the article with your class, then introduce the CRAAP test to your students as a tool to evaluate media sources. The CRAAP test assesses sources for Currency, Relevancy, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose — with a goal of determining trustworthiness. You can find an example of the CRAAP test here. Consider analyzing a media source together as a class using the test.

Cape Town, Lima offer examples for water-deprived San Diego

Cape Town, Lima offer examples for water-deprived San Diego

As arid San Diego struggles to ensure adequate water supplies, the city can look to Cape Town and Lima for examples of how to dodge disaster. Water drops from a spout at a water purification facility in San Diego, California, 8 May 2015. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) San...

News Decoder encourages students to look beyond their immediate surroundings and to connect the dots around the globe. Varun Singh, a resident of San Diego in California and a student at La Jolla Country Day School, turned to Cape Town, South Africa and Lima, Peru for examples of how his city could manage its water crisis. The next generation of leaders will need to be adept at finding global solutions to problems besetting our societies, and Singh sets an example.

Exercise: Ask your students to identify a problem in their local community and to find examples of how a community in another country tackled the same challenge.

Why don’t more U.S. schools teach about climate change?

Why don’t more U.S. schools teach about climate change?

Most Americans want schools to teach about global warming. But skeptics and lack of teacher training make it hard to implement climate change education. Students learn about water filtration as part of their climate literacy curriculum in Portland, Oregon, 30 January...

Climate deniers have lost the political high ground in the United States, but the struggle to combat global warming has only just begun. Lucy Jaffee of La Jolla Country Day School explores why teaching about climate change can help reduce carbon emissions, but also why U.S. schools are having such a hard time fostering climate literacy. She interviewed a local expert and two teachers in her examination of the challenges schools face in meeting the expectations of parents who want climate change in the curriculum. Ask your students to explore how climate change is being taught in their school, and if not, why not?

Can a school punish a student for online speech off campus?

Can a school punish a student for online speech off campus?

A U.S. school district wants the Supreme Court to overturn a landmark free speech case and let it punish a student for criticizing her school online. Students protest for the right to free speech outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, 19 March 2007. (AP...

Lucy Jaffee of La Jolla Country Day School tackled a complicated topic — a court case involving a student’s freedom of speech and social media — by interviewing two experts, including the foremost authority on the U.S. First Amendment, Floyd Abrams. The lesson: If you put effort into understanding an issue, experts will be glad to speak to you. Students should contact experts because they will offer unique insights and help answer the question, “What next?”

The case Jaffee’s article focuses on lends itself to classroom discussion because it engages a matter of great interest to students. While students may instinctively side with the young woman whose Snapchat post triggered the controversy, there may be other off-campus outbursts on social media — Holocaust denial, racist language — that they might like to see sanctioned. Like so much in life, First Amendment issues often lie in the gray zone.

School PartnersLa Jolla Country Day School