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129: Education Revolution: Media Literacy For Political Awareness w/ Sam Shain
7 Plays2 years ago
“I learned so much about viewing the world, especially mass media, through a critical eye this year. I learned about what traps we fall into while viewing media and how we can prevent that. I also learned about good vs. questionable journalism tactics and how this can affect how accurate a news source is.”
My guest today, Sam Shain, is a musician, artist, writer, former journalist and current English teacher in Maine. That opening quote was just one student review of Sam’s journalism class from his book Education Revolution: Media Literacy for Political Awareness, available from Zer0 Books. Teaching in the United States has never been more fraught, as teachers across the country are implicitly or explicitly forced to avoid certain topics, texts, and questions that have been labeled divisive, controversial, or - worse yet - political. Of course, these topics also tend to be the most immediate & important, and are accompanied by intense mis- & disinformation - the reality of climate change, systemic racism, COVID-19, and the outcomes of our electoral system, to take some examples from just the last couple of years - all of this seems particularly heightened with the new ability of AI to generate audio, video, and images to spread politically motivated narratives easier than ever before via social media, and a receptive population willing not only to accept them but to participate in spreading mis- & disinformation. As the student testimonial I read earlier testifies to, the gap has never been wider between our vital need to teach critical media literacy and our ability. To do. Just that.
Guests
Sam Shain is a former journalist and English teacher. He believes education is the way out of our country's current predicament and teachers and students can lead the revolution in turning this country around. Sam wrote for the Capital Weekly for several years and occasionally contributes to the Kennebec Journal.
In addition to teaching and writing, Sam sings and plays guitar in the band the Scolded Dogs, who play frequently throughout Maine and have released several original albums. Sam lives in Hallowell, Maine.
Resources
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Transcript
Essential Knowledge for High School Students
00:00:00
Speaker
Some would say, well, you know, leave that to college, leave those discussions to college.
00:00:05
Speaker
And it's like, I can't get into that because it's like it's for some of these kids, increasingly, this is the last time they're in a school.
00:00:13
Speaker
So why are we shielding this type of knowledge, whether it's
00:00:17
Speaker
a real knowledge of U.S. history or media literacy.
00:00:21
Speaker
Like, why are we withholding that from kids who decide that they maybe don't want to go to college or enter a trade or something?
00:00:29
Speaker
That is just so absurd to me.
00:00:32
Speaker
Kids are old enough in high school to learn this stuff, and we should be offering it to them.
Introduction to Episode 129
00:00:39
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 129 of our podcast at the Human Restoration Project.
00:00:44
Speaker
My name is Nick Covington.
00:00:46
Speaker
As with all of our content, this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Rivka Ocho, Antonio Beeler, and Dylan Wintz.
00:00:54
Speaker
Thank you so much for your ongoing support.
00:00:56
Speaker
You can learn more about us and our work at humanrestorationproject.org.
Media Literacy and Journalism Education
00:01:04
Speaker
I learned so much about viewing the world, especially mass media, through a critical eye this year.
00:01:10
Speaker
I learned about what traps we fall into while viewing media and how we can prevent that.
00:01:15
Speaker
I also learned about good versus questionable journalism tactics and how this can affect how accurate a news source is.
00:01:23
Speaker
My guest today, Sam Shane, is a musician, artist, writer, former journalist, and current English teacher in Maine.
00:01:30
Speaker
That opening quote was just one student review of Sam's journalism class from his book, Education Revolution, Media Literacy for Political Awareness, available from Zero Books.
Teaching Divisive Topics in U.S. Schools
00:01:41
Speaker
Teaching in the United States has never been more fraught, as teachers across the country are implicitly or explicitly forced to avoid certain topics, texts, and questions that have been labeled divisive, controversial, or, worse yet, political.
00:01:56
Speaker
Of course, these topics also tend to be the most immediate and important, and are accompanied by intense mis- and disinformation.
00:02:04
Speaker
the reality of climate change, systemic racism, COVID-19, and the outcomes of our electoral system, to take some examples from just the last couple of years.
00:02:15
Speaker
All of this seems particularly heightened with the new ability of AI to generate audio, video, and images to spread politically motivated narratives easier than ever before via social media, and a receptive population willing not only to accept them, but to participate in spreading myths and disinformation.
Book Controversy and Teacher Challenges
00:02:33
Speaker
As the student testimonial I read earlier testifies to, the gap has never been wider between our vital need to teach critical media literacy and our ability to do just that.
00:02:44
Speaker
I hope to bridge that gap at least in part today with my guest, Sam Shane.
00:02:49
Speaker
Thanks so much for joining me today.
00:02:50
Speaker
Thank you very much.
00:02:51
Speaker
Happy to be here.
00:02:53
Speaker
Well, your book, Education Revolution, which we will certainly dive into here, has very personal connection to your own experiences as a high school teacher caught up in teaching politics in 2021.
00:03:05
Speaker
And you recounted that experience for us in a piece that listeners can find on our website, one that is eerily similar to my own here in Iowa.
00:03:13
Speaker
So let's begin there.
00:03:14
Speaker
If you could summarize your story for us, because I think it sets an important context for the need of this book, and frankly,
00:03:22
Speaker
It's something that teachers are increasingly up against.
00:03:25
Speaker
It was one of the worst experiences of my life in the summer of 2021.
00:03:30
Speaker
I mean, I encourage everyone to read the piece.
00:03:32
Speaker
But just in short, a few things happened in the semester.
00:03:37
Speaker
But the trouble started when I taught, you know, an admin approved book, Rising Out of Hatred.
00:03:43
Speaker
And while I wasn't even there, I was on paternity leave.
00:03:47
Speaker
Well, you know, I took a few days off after having a baby as one does in America.
00:03:56
Speaker
And I wasn't even there and someone complained and the snap, you know, reactionary decision was to just get rid of the book and like,
00:04:04
Speaker
We were halfway done reading it.
00:04:05
Speaker
The kids were enjoying it.
00:04:06
Speaker
And they just went to get like, just ban the book entirely.
00:04:10
Speaker
And, you know, I took time.
00:04:11
Speaker
My son was like a few days old when this happened.
00:04:13
Speaker
And I was like, well, you know, hold on a second.
00:04:16
Speaker
Like I tried to, you know, fight against it.
00:04:18
Speaker
I got back.
00:04:19
Speaker
The kids wanted to know what happened.
Controversial Curriculum Inclusion
00:04:21
Speaker
And I told them I said what happened and they wanted to know what they could do.
00:04:26
Speaker
And I told them, you know, you could try to talk administration into keeping this book around.
00:04:31
Speaker
Fight for your education.
00:04:33
Speaker
They referred to that in these made-up things later that they called informal work evaluations as me, I quote, inciting a student protest, which is just a completely dishonest way of characterizing that.
00:04:50
Speaker
There's so many insane details to that year, but that's kind of the gist of where it started for me.
00:04:58
Speaker
What's fascinating about that book, I'm not sure you mentioned it, but the book Rising Out of Hatred is about a white nationalist, the would-be heir to the Klan, Derek Black, and his journey out of white nationalism as a result of the pluralistic, multicultural experience that he has at a small liberal arts college in Florida.
00:05:20
Speaker
So what were people complaining about in the book?
00:05:24
Speaker
The story, it is.
00:05:25
Speaker
It's dripping with irony, the whole thing.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, had to tell.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah, so the complaint was by one single parent who, incidentally, their kid loved both my classes, but the one parent actually hauled the kid out of both classes against their will.
00:05:42
Speaker
The complaint, I guess, essentially was they weren't happy that Eli Saslow, the writer of the book, simply mentioned that Don Black, Derek's dad, was pretty excited about Trump.
00:05:53
Speaker
They didn't like that.
00:05:55
Speaker
You know, and it's like, that's just what happened.
00:05:57
Speaker
I'm sorry that that is the fact of the matter.
00:06:01
Speaker
In a meeting with them, with both the parents, one set of which did not even complain.
00:06:06
Speaker
They didn't care about any of this.
00:06:08
Speaker
I assured them, I said, you know, look, I am quick to point out stuff about the Democratic Party, too.
00:06:15
Speaker
Like when we talk about the themes to this, like systemic racism and a history of race in America,
00:06:23
Speaker
I am happy to point out, I mean, I'm sad to point out, I should say, but I'm willing to point out that Joe Biden is an architect of the crime bill.
00:06:34
Speaker
Like, I have no problem saying that.
00:06:36
Speaker
The crime bill that incarcerated a disproportionate number of black folks.
00:06:42
Speaker
And, like, I'm going to say that.
00:06:43
Speaker
I don't care about Republicans and Democrats
Political Influence on Education
00:06:47
Speaker
per se.
00:06:47
Speaker
I just want to get the truth out to kids and give them stuff to think about.
00:06:52
Speaker
And it's not like you had put those words into Don Black's mouth.
00:06:56
Speaker
That was what Don Black had said in the book.
00:06:59
Speaker
They're mad at something that a different person said in the book that you were reading.
00:07:04
Speaker
That's the part that I think is, it's not bewildering because of course I had the same circumstance.
00:07:09
Speaker
People were upset when I taught about the Charlottesville march, the right-wing march in 2017 that happened down there.
00:07:17
Speaker
When I was teaching about that in my AP European history class in the context of
00:07:22
Speaker
nationalism and white nationalism, the parents who complained about me teaching about it were mad about what the white nationalists said about Donald Trump.
00:07:32
Speaker
The parent complaint was that the content seemed to portray President Trump in a negative light.
00:07:39
Speaker
It's like, that's nothing that I said.
00:07:41
Speaker
You're complaining about stuff the Nazis said.
00:07:43
Speaker
The guys on the video who said they were Nazis said that they happened to like President Trump.
00:07:48
Speaker
I didn't say anything.
00:07:50
Speaker
So it's like the exact same scenario, which is absolutely wild to me.
00:07:54
Speaker
It's insane.
00:07:55
Speaker
And rather than these people ask themselves, right, like, why is it that I...
00:08:02
Speaker
like the same guy that Don Black and Richard Spencer and all these people do.
00:08:07
Speaker
It's let's go cancel, if I may.
00:08:10
Speaker
This is a real cancellation that happened to me.
00:08:15
Speaker
Unlike these comedians that whine about canceling, I actually lost my job with an eight-month-old son.
00:08:21
Speaker
And this woman caused me to lose my job rather than look at herself and say, why is it that I am mad about this?
00:08:28
Speaker
Why is it that I support the same person?
00:08:32
Speaker
that these
Political Awareness vs. Partisan Teaching
00:08:33
Speaker
white supremacists are excited about.
00:08:36
Speaker
And the administration I had, and it sounds like the one that you had as well, would sooner side... We have the same admin as that.
00:08:43
Speaker
What was going on there?
00:08:44
Speaker
I know.
00:08:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:46
Speaker
I said the same thing to my principal too.
00:08:48
Speaker
I said, how can you not see that this is politically motivated?
00:08:51
Speaker
And they were...
00:08:52
Speaker
My admin at the time was, no, these are just concerned parents.
00:08:55
Speaker
They just want to do what's best for their kids.
00:08:57
Speaker
And I said, baloney.
00:08:58
Speaker
Like, right away, red flags were going up there.
00:09:01
Speaker
And they were upset about the things that the Nazis in the video said, as though they were attributing it to myself.
00:09:09
Speaker
It's just like, can you not see the distinction?
00:09:11
Speaker
It's not like I was advocating for those things.
00:09:14
Speaker
We're trying to understand what it is that these guys are saying in their own words.
00:09:18
Speaker
And we're using primary sources in the history class to learn about this topic, just like you were using Eli Saslow's book as a piece of journalism in your book.
00:09:28
Speaker
freshman English class.
00:09:30
Speaker
Absolutely wild to me.
00:09:31
Speaker
In the introduction to the book, in the first few pages there, you say that teaching political awareness is powerful in that it allows teachers to say, this class is political, just in the same kind of political realities you had mentioned earlier.
00:09:45
Speaker
you know, impacting the Democratic Party as well, as nearly everything is, you say, but most certainly not partisan.
00:09:52
Speaker
None of my classes are partisan, you write in the book, because I would never preach to kids to specifically vote for a certain party or candidate, but it is political in that we discuss
00:10:01
Speaker
politics, current events, and current issues, because I am trying to make my class relevant and meaningful.
00:10:07
Speaker
As somebody, myself, who was told that current events do not belong in history class, I wish that this distinction between being political and being partisan was more widely embraced and communicated.
00:10:19
Speaker
So I wonder, why do you think it isn't, and how do you think we, or maybe how, can we do a better job of just that?
00:10:26
Speaker
I'd say a lot of the book is setting out to make that argument.
00:10:30
Speaker
I am personally just so tired of this notion that there is this, all these unbiased forces in our country.
00:10:40
Speaker
Journalism is unbiased.
00:10:42
Speaker
Our court system is unbiased.
00:10:44
Speaker
Our economic system is unbiased.
00:10:46
Speaker
There's just all these myths that we tell ourselves, that we have these great systems in place that just yield justified, righteous outcomes.
00:10:57
Speaker
And it's like, if you look into it at all, it lays waste to these ideas.
00:11:03
Speaker
And knowing about them is going to help us, I would think, fix these things.
00:11:08
Speaker
overturn some of the nonsense that we see, becoming more aware that like, no, I'm sorry, but like a lot of journalism, if not all journalism is indeed biased.
00:11:19
Speaker
The court system is biased.
00:11:20
Speaker
The economic system is biased in favor of people who have a bunch of money.
00:11:24
Speaker
Like, why can't we just admit this?
00:11:27
Speaker
Yes, it's political.
00:11:28
Speaker
So is almost anything.
00:11:29
Speaker
You could make that charge to almost anything, I would say, anything meaningful anyway.
00:11:35
Speaker
What I get really concerned about, and especially back when Iowa was doing this in, gosh, I think probably this was 2021 now, they had signed a bill that would ban so-called divisive concepts from being taught in school.
00:11:50
Speaker
And immediately, again, the red flags for me go up because it really implies a lot of power about who gets to decide what is decisive or what is divisive, what is controversial, what is political, what
00:12:03
Speaker
To mention a current event, I just saw today that some charter school in Florida had fired a teacher or a principal.
00:12:11
Speaker
Somebody had been fired over showing the Statue of David to middle school children because parents thought that that was pornographic.
00:12:19
Speaker
And it just seems like we apply these reflexive labels to, I don't know, anything that we feel is uncomfortable, anything that we...
00:12:28
Speaker
How can we deal with the realities of, again, say climate change or who won what election?
00:12:36
Speaker
Or, you know, God forbid then to your point about actually addressing systemic issues where we see them in the criminal justice system, where we see them in legislation, housing, the economy, without actually just like recognizing that those realities are the bare truths at the core of the
00:12:55
Speaker
the world.
00:12:56
Speaker
Just to debunk the myth of white supremacy, you know, it's something that I think any administrator without being pressed, are you, do you believe in white supremacy?
00:13:06
Speaker
No, I don't.
00:13:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:07
Speaker
Well, in order to really demolish that idea,
00:13:12
Speaker
The best way to do that is take the things that like a Derek Black would say, look, look at this.
00:13:17
Speaker
Look how many black people are in jail.
00:13:18
Speaker
Look how many are in poverty.
00:13:20
Speaker
See, they really are just not as smart.
00:13:22
Speaker
They really are just not as they're prone to violence or whatever.
00:13:26
Speaker
Like you take those things and say, well, what?
00:13:29
Speaker
This isn't true.
00:13:30
Speaker
Like we certainly don't believe that.
00:13:31
Speaker
So what is the reason?
00:13:33
Speaker
And then you go back through time and look at the disadvantage of this group of people from the start of the country.
00:13:40
Speaker
Like you said, doing that, actually, instead of just saying, don't be racist, don't say the N-word, don't say slurs, you're actually teaching them
00:13:48
Speaker
The substance of it, you know?
00:13:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:51
Speaker
And it's true in doing so, doing it the right way, teaching this stuff the right way so people don't just become hysterical and preachy and not really know what they're talking about.
00:14:02
Speaker
If you do it the right way, then yes, you could be charged with, oh, you're being political.
00:14:07
Speaker
The thing that you just said about the statue or the – what was it?
00:14:13
Speaker
What was it again?
00:14:13
Speaker
The statue of David was taught to middle school kids at a Florida charter school, and somebody got fired for that.
00:14:19
Speaker
And it's like that is just like – you could take anything.
00:14:22
Speaker
You could get anyone with anything with this whole – with these loose –
00:14:26
Speaker
ideas of like, oh, you can't be controversial.
00:14:29
Speaker
You could just, you could use that as a weapon against anyone.
00:14:32
Speaker
I mean, what, like, what about just, I'm just thinking here, like, what about the Bible itself?
00:14:36
Speaker
Like you, that, that has all kinds of sex and killing and all kinds of crazy things in there.
00:14:41
Speaker
Uh,
00:14:43
Speaker
Are you going to ban that too?
00:14:45
Speaker
I mean, it's just, it's wild.
00:14:47
Speaker
It's wild to me that we're allowing these sort of loose laws and regulations to be just there to be used as a weapon to just get rid of teachers like you and I. It does seem like it falls into that legal trap of like, I'll know it when I see it.
00:15:05
Speaker
Like, how do we know what's controversial?
00:15:06
Speaker
How do we know what is
00:15:08
Speaker
You know, I would venture to say that the vast majority of people would not say the Statue of David is pornography.
00:15:14
Speaker
I mean, it's not any different from an anatomical, you know, drawing that you would find on Wikipedia or an encyclopedia, I should say.
00:15:22
Speaker
But it really just kind of becomes in this eye of the beholder or this mob rule mentality that actually has
00:15:29
Speaker
huge legal implications about what we can teach, how we can teach it, the kinds of questions we can ask, you know, of students in there.
00:15:37
Speaker
And I think, you know, one of the concerns that I have about your context, in particular with teaching the story of Derek Black and the rising out of hatred is,
00:15:46
Speaker
one of the things that caused him to begin to question his white nationalist upbringing, because he was homeschooled as a child, um, was going into that diverse pluralistic community meeting students who had immigrant, who were first generation immigrants, um, spending time with Jewish students, gay students, and both feeling the heat, but then also, um, being embraced by some of them, um,
00:16:12
Speaker
and kind of having that relationship with him and actually teaching him that his beliefs were wrong.
00:16:17
Speaker
And I worry that these laws preclude a lot of the things that would go, would have turned Derek away.
00:16:24
Speaker
And it's kind of hard to avoid the conclusion that these laws aren't almost designed just to protect, you know, people with the attitudes like Derek had to prevent him from challenging those beliefs that had been instilled with him by his father, who you said was the, like the founder of Stormfront.
00:16:42
Speaker
For God's sake.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:16:44
Speaker
It does protect those viewpoints.
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:48
Speaker
You know, it's fine to have them like like when I teach the book, I try to, you know, any kids that say, well, they should have kicked Derek out of the school, which very few do.
00:17:00
Speaker
I try to kind of and this is again, we deal with moral questions all the time.
00:17:04
Speaker
I would try to steer that student into saying, well, you know, if they kick him out, he's never going to change.
Bias Transformation Through Education
00:17:11
Speaker
And it's like, he's welcome to have that viewpoint, but the whole school does not need to capitulate to him and not teach.
00:17:22
Speaker
The girl, Allison, his girlfriend, took a class to arm herself with the reasons for
00:17:29
Speaker
that he was so wrong, like the factual reasons.
00:17:33
Speaker
And that was a big part.
00:17:35
Speaker
Yes, he was greeted with love from people.
00:17:37
Speaker
He was greeted with animosity.
00:17:40
Speaker
But he was also, Derek Black dared to logically look at himself and look at the facts and say, I am wrong about this.
00:17:52
Speaker
Even though his parents, he thought they might disown him.
00:17:55
Speaker
I mean, what a brave person to do that.
00:17:59
Speaker
You mentioned Allison taking that class.
00:18:01
Speaker
I think the class was called something about prejudice.
00:18:03
Speaker
So it's like addressing directly the causes and sources of, you know, our bias and our prejudice.
00:18:09
Speaker
Again, part of me wonders under the new college kind of regime that they have now of all of these lackeys that DeSantis put into office there, whether or not that class would be allowed to be offered because it addresses specifically those systemic causes of bias, prejudice, you know, prejudice.
00:18:29
Speaker
inequity and all those.
00:18:31
Speaker
Just to also say this, like some would say, and I ran into this when I was trying to get endorsements for my book.
Teaching Critical Topics in High School
00:18:39
Speaker
Some would say, well, you know, leave that to college.
00:18:43
Speaker
Leave those discussions to college.
00:18:44
Speaker
And it's like, I can't get into that because it's like, for some of these kids, increasingly, this is the last time they're in a school.
00:18:52
Speaker
So why are we shielding this type of knowledge, whether it's
00:18:57
Speaker
A real knowledge of U.S. history or media literacy, like why are we withholding that from kids who decide that they maybe don't want to go to college or enter a trade or something?
00:19:09
Speaker
That is just so absurd to me.
00:19:11
Speaker
Kids are old enough in high school to learn this stuff, and we should be offering it to them for the good of them and the entire country.
00:19:21
Speaker
as though they don't deserve to be forewarned and forearmed with those things before they get to campus and have conversations with people from different backgrounds and experiences and different viewpoints on those issues.
00:19:33
Speaker
I mean, imagine coming into...
00:19:35
Speaker
you know, that college campus entirely ignorant of the Black Lives Matter, you know, the civil rights movement of 2020 or the Derek Chauvin trial or any of those things that are actually going to inform the relationships in your ability to, you know, be successful interpersonally on a college campus, you know, let alone academics, but just be able to identify with and interact with and engage with different groups and communities.
00:19:58
Speaker
You kind of become
00:19:59
Speaker
isolated and, you know, you're kind of isolated by your own ignorance, if that's the case, because you're not prepared and equipped to have those conversations in the same way that students who might come from a place where they have had those conversations before setting out into the world after high school, you know?
00:20:17
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:20:18
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:20:20
Speaker
Well, let's get into the book.
Sam Shane's Media Literacy Approach
00:20:22
Speaker
I think it's not typical in the sense that it's intended for a mainstream audience, but published on an imprint on Xero Books that generally doesn't release pedagogical content.
00:20:34
Speaker
I think this might be the only one that they have that's like, here's a how to teach guide.
00:20:40
Speaker
And that's what this is.
00:20:41
Speaker
It's a guidebook.
00:20:42
Speaker
It's a curriculum map for how to teach critical media literacy in the scope of a traditional school year.
00:20:48
Speaker
You go month by month and semester by semester with the goals and activities and all those things.
00:20:52
Speaker
So I just want to pick your brain a bit.
00:20:54
Speaker
What were your goals in writing this kind of book, I guess, or even for zero books, if that was your original goal?
00:21:02
Speaker
Could you walk us through the ideas, the practices that guide your work as a journalism teacher in such a fraught information environment?
00:21:10
Speaker
And we can get to this in a little bit.
00:21:12
Speaker
I don't want to throw too much at you.
00:21:13
Speaker
But what in your mind then are those key pieces of media literacy for political awareness as the book's subtitle suggests?
00:21:20
Speaker
OK, yeah, there's a lot there.
00:21:21
Speaker
OK, so a lot.
00:21:23
Speaker
Take it in order.
00:21:24
Speaker
OK, so first, you know, I wrote this book.
00:21:27
Speaker
This is only my fifth year teaching.
00:21:29
Speaker
I wrote this book after only, I think my second year teaching, you know?
00:21:35
Speaker
So I, I was tasked with a journalism class just because I was a journalist at a small paper for a while.
00:21:44
Speaker
And I was going to do a thing where it was like, okay, I'll start a newspaper.
00:21:48
Speaker
And I got the, you know, I got into class and I was just like, you know, there's a real opportunity here.
00:21:53
Speaker
There's all kinds of crazy things going on where like,
00:21:55
Speaker
You know, people just don't know what the hell to believe.
00:21:58
Speaker
You know, a big inspiration for me, not necessarily him as a person, but just the book Sapiens, just there's this one quote where he says, teachers should be teaching kids how to interpret, decipher information.
00:22:16
Speaker
opposed to teaching them just more facts and more, you know, just loading more and more things onto them.
00:22:26
Speaker
Try to teach them how to sift through, teach them how to think, basically, instead of just more and more different things to put on their plate.
00:22:36
Speaker
And I realized that that is what I should be trying to do.
00:22:39
Speaker
You know, I was already a fan of Noam Chomsky and, you know, Manufacturing Consent.
00:22:43
Speaker
I realized...
00:22:44
Speaker
Some of the problems with media, some of the problems with social media.
00:22:49
Speaker
And I thought, you know, that's what I'm going to do with this class.
00:22:52
Speaker
I'm going to call it journalism and it will be more of like a media literacy and critical thinking class.
00:22:58
Speaker
And my hope, and I haven't admittedly done a very good job of this, but I would love to see more people implement this, more teachers implement this.
00:23:10
Speaker
I think you could do it pretty easily as an English teacher.
Journalism Class Curriculum Overview
00:23:15
Speaker
I mean, I do some of the activities that I talk about in the book just in my regular English classes, you know, with critical thinking stuff.
00:23:22
Speaker
Like, I put those right in my writing classes, you know.
00:23:27
Speaker
You can do that.
00:23:28
Speaker
You can do that easily.
00:23:30
Speaker
You can tie them into the standards.
00:23:31
Speaker
The standards are very open-ended.
00:23:33
Speaker
Not that I really care for them, but you can do it.
00:23:37
Speaker
You can absolutely...
00:23:40
Speaker
Tie this stuff in with the standards, have them write, give them something.
00:23:43
Speaker
All you need to do in English is kind of give them some type of framework and then they can respond to it or think about it or, you know, use the skills you give them.
00:23:53
Speaker
That was that second question is what are those like ideas and practices?
00:23:56
Speaker
You're saying English teachers can go implement these things, even though, you know, the book is kind of written through that from your experience as a journalism teacher.
00:24:04
Speaker
But what are like those central key ideas that you're saying?
00:24:07
Speaker
Go teach, you know, media literacy, go teach critical thinking.
00:24:10
Speaker
What what are those key themes and ideas?
00:24:13
Speaker
So I'll start the year with getting them to buy into the whole notion of journalism.
00:24:20
Speaker
We need that sort of.
00:24:23
Speaker
pillar, that sort of fourth branch almost, to hold people accountable to, you know, the powerful accountable, theoretically, we need that to inform people what's going on.
00:24:38
Speaker
If this democracy thing is going to work, we want people to know what, to me, what is actually going on.
00:24:45
Speaker
We need that in a democracy.
00:24:47
Speaker
So then we kind of move in to like looking at what journalism should look like and like what I was taught by the journalists that taught that kind of prepped me for my work as a journalist talking about like
00:24:59
Speaker
The inverted pyramid where you're supposed to like talk about the main things that happen and then the details and the nitty gritty gets further down in the article.
00:25:09
Speaker
And there should be theoretically a bunch of people making sure that it's objective, making sure that it's factual, making sure that there's not too much opinion going on.
00:25:21
Speaker
But then we kind of start to talk about how the whole bias thing is tricky.
00:25:27
Speaker
You know, like I get, I show them an episode of The Office, you know, kind of a crazy episode.
00:25:33
Speaker
It's a great activity.
00:25:34
Speaker
I love reading about this.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:36
Speaker
Walk us through that.
00:25:37
Speaker
I just get, give the listeners a sense of that.
00:25:40
Speaker
Cause I think that's really cool.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:41
Speaker
It's I, so I show the episode.
00:25:45
Speaker
It's the one where Dwight starts a fire intentionally in The Office.
00:25:49
Speaker
And,
00:25:50
Speaker
I let them see that.
00:25:55
Speaker
And the other thing is my curriculum keeps getting better.
00:25:59
Speaker
So it might be a little different as I explain it than the book.
00:26:02
Speaker
But I have the kids then put in their top detail and have them fill in the inverted pyramid for like in what order of importance do they think this crazy event, what are the events that happen?
00:26:18
Speaker
Like what order of importance would you rank them in?
00:26:20
Speaker
And we realize that people kind of all do something a little bit different.
00:26:24
Speaker
And it's a great way to kind of say like someone in the Scranton, Pennsylvania newspaper, we've got to also consider, you know, if I'm your editor here telling you to go cover this story, what if there is a huge homeless problem?
00:26:38
Speaker
What if there is some type of issue with the drinking water?
00:26:41
Speaker
Why are we covering this story instead of some of these other things going on?
00:26:47
Speaker
And it's like you quickly start to realize, OK, even when we set out to have this objective thing, there are other things going on.
00:26:55
Speaker
It's not it's there's maybe more that meets the eye than like, yes, the news is just giving you everything that you need to know.
00:27:01
Speaker
Like, no, there might be other stuff out there that you need to know.
00:27:04
Speaker
And we kind of get into the nature of bias and how you've really got to dig into things.
Recognizing Media Bias and Critical Thinking
00:27:11
Speaker
It's then kind of fun to see what their own biases are and give them a bunch of different quizzes and things like that.
00:27:19
Speaker
We look at biases like the media bias chart, but then we talk about how the media bias chart and the quizzes themselves are also biased.
00:27:28
Speaker
They're written by regular people.
00:27:30
Speaker
You can't escape it.
00:27:31
Speaker
You can't escape it, right?
00:27:33
Speaker
To me, that alone is you're getting them thinking.
00:27:36
Speaker
You're getting them thinking deeper than to just swallow everything that they ever hear.
00:27:42
Speaker
You know, and I tell them, you know, if you're in an English or history class, even in my own class, like, by all means, check what I'm saying, like, look into other stuff, like, do the thinking.
00:27:51
Speaker
Don't just believe or like, think that what you're getting in history class is the only way of framing of looking at history, like look into other all kinds of other things.
00:28:04
Speaker
So once we get kind of that foundation, I then have like three units, straight up fake news, you know, which which is just like nonce like stuff that is just a flat out lie.
00:28:15
Speaker
Corporate media, which, you know, is a much trickier thing to go through.
00:28:20
Speaker
Like I spend a long time on that.
00:28:23
Speaker
And, you know, I try to explain to them.
00:28:26
Speaker
Like, you know, these other countries that have a state media, I would imagine, and I, from a little bit that I've read, it's like people kind of know, right?
00:28:36
Speaker
Like, this is, it's state media.
00:28:39
Speaker
Like, I know that this is biased.
00:28:41
Speaker
Where we have this, like, veneer here, like I was talking about earlier, where it's like, oh, we're getting this great independent stuff here.
00:28:48
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, well, let's look at who owns, like, 90% of people.
00:28:53
Speaker
the media outlets in this country.
00:28:55
Speaker
And it's like, no, we're really not getting that unless we kind of dare to look into some independent media and look into some journalists who are actually on the ground instead of just getting sort of the corporate narrative.
Evaluating Conspiracy Theories
00:29:08
Speaker
Now, the thing is, is I don't want, the last thing I want is to have kids conflating fake news with the corporate media problem.
00:29:20
Speaker
You know, I don't want kids to say,
00:29:23
Speaker
You know what I'm saying?
00:29:24
Speaker
Like, I don't want them to say, oh, look, the corporate media is saying there's a virus.
00:29:30
Speaker
They lie about everything.
00:29:32
Speaker
You know, that's not what we're going for.
00:29:35
Speaker
Right.
00:29:35
Speaker
Fall into some kind of nihilism that like, oh, nobody is going to have the truth here.
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:40
Speaker
How do you overcome that then?
00:29:41
Speaker
Because...
00:29:42
Speaker
I bet that's a pretty, that's a convenient way to start thinking, right?
00:29:46
Speaker
Because you're like, oh, if nothing is true or if nobody's going to be truthful or if nobody is unbiased, then it must all be the same, right?
00:29:52
Speaker
They must all just be liars all the time about everything.
00:29:54
Speaker
So I end the year on...
00:29:57
Speaker
a conspiracy theory unit where, and, you know, a big part of that is like the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory.
00:30:07
Speaker
We look at like actual conspiracies that like the government has pulled off.
00:30:13
Speaker
And, you know, with this comes, I always say Ben Burgess has a great line where he says, you know, the government can do things to you or, or, or for you.
00:30:21
Speaker
And the last thing I want to do there is say, you can't trust the government to do anything because they did COINTELPRO
00:30:28
Speaker
you know, back in the sixties.
00:30:29
Speaker
Like, I don't want that either.
00:30:31
Speaker
So I make sure to, to have these nuances in there, but like that last unit, we also like that, that is accompanied by like looking at fallacies, looking at cognitive biases.
Final Projects and Media Analysis
00:30:43
Speaker
I make sure that they are using that themselves.
00:30:46
Speaker
Like a great, a great thing to use for that is I show them a video of people explaining crop circles by assuming that it's aliens and
00:30:56
Speaker
And then showing them the fact that people can do it too.
00:31:02
Speaker
People can pull this off.
00:31:04
Speaker
And asking them to think, what's more likely most of the time?
00:31:07
Speaker
Are we getting visited?
00:31:09
Speaker
Which I guess is possible, but where's the evidence?
00:31:12
Speaker
Or is it people doing it?
00:31:15
Speaker
Ben, the fallacy king Shapiro, is another great tool to use.
00:31:20
Speaker
literally a tool to use for this as well.
00:31:25
Speaker
The Andrew Neil clip is a great one.
00:31:27
Speaker
And I have them actually identify these fallacies.
00:31:30
Speaker
So the hope is between a robust mental mode of like having these critical thinking tools and putting them into practice and
00:31:40
Speaker
with a value for looking at all kinds of different sides and actual evidence, you know, looking at documents and studies and hard evidence.
00:31:51
Speaker
Hopefully, they are able to look at any content through a skeptical eye after we've done all of this that I've just described in a thorough manner.
00:32:03
Speaker
that says a lot too, just about the extent to which you just, at the end of the day, you also have to trust kids to, you know, put their critical faculties into play.
00:32:12
Speaker
You can only teach them so much about those toolkits, but if you don't actually let them use them by bringing in, you know, diverse ranges of sources and some at the extremities, some that are nonsense, some of those things too, and just let them flex those muscles and expect them to go out on their own and do that either.
00:32:28
Speaker
So I think that just exhibits a huge amount of trust in the kids that you're teaching.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yeah, and that is the final in the class at this point.
00:32:36
Speaker
It used to be having them debunk a conspiracy theory.
00:32:40
Speaker
Now I kind of give them a broad range, like you just said, of all kinds of different things.
00:32:45
Speaker
Fake news, a meme that isn't true, a corporate media article that like
00:32:51
Speaker
reports on what CIA sources say, like, completely uncritically.
00:32:56
Speaker
And, you know, it's fun to see them say, okay, hold on, like, this Havana syndrome is only quoting a CIA, an unnamed CIA official.
00:33:07
Speaker
Maybe there's something going on here, you know?
00:33:10
Speaker
And, like, what really is, what's the evidence that this is some kind of gamma ray harming these agents?
00:33:18
Speaker
And it's like, right, exactly.
00:33:19
Speaker
Like, look at what
00:33:20
Speaker
What is the article say?
00:33:22
Speaker
Like, what are they really reporting on here?
00:33:24
Speaker
Is there anything?
00:33:25
Speaker
Is there any teeth to this thing?
00:33:26
Speaker
Or is it just speculation?
00:33:28
Speaker
And, you know, it went very well this year.
00:33:31
Speaker
My last semester, I had a great group of kids in that and they did so well with that.
00:33:36
Speaker
It was kind of a new way of approaching that final for me this year.
00:33:39
Speaker
And they just did an awesome job.
00:33:41
Speaker
That's a good transition into kind of the next question, which was, I've got a quote that I want to read over here that you quote from the book, and it's actually from the author of Sapiens.
00:33:51
Speaker
Is it Yuval Noah Harari?
00:33:53
Speaker
Is that the person's name?
00:33:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:33:56
Speaker
So you actually quote from a Wired piece that Yuval wrote.
00:33:59
Speaker
I'll quote from that, too, just for listeners here, too, where they say people all over the world are but a click away from the latest accounts of the bombardment of Aleppo or of melting ice caps in the Arctic.
00:34:10
Speaker
But there are so many contradictory accounts that it's hard to know what to believe.
00:34:13
Speaker
Besides, countless other things are just a click away, making it difficult
Information Overload and Gen Z Challenges
00:34:17
Speaker
to focus.
00:34:17
Speaker
And when politics or science look too complicated, it's tempting to switch to funny cat videos, celebrity gossip or porn.
00:34:24
Speaker
In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information.
00:34:28
Speaker
They already have far too much of it.
00:34:30
Speaker
Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant and above all, to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.
00:34:42
Speaker
And what I think is interesting is that obviously the memes about boomers are like low-hanging fruit at this point.
00:34:48
Speaker
And I think there's a lot of concern about
00:34:50
Speaker
about Gen X in this regard too.
00:34:52
Speaker
Like I'm thinking about Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk and what's going on there.
00:34:57
Speaker
But us millennials, we're of course perfect and without fault.
00:35:00
Speaker
So let's put Gen Z in that unfair.
00:35:04
Speaker
Let's put the generational spotlight on them for a moment.
00:35:08
Speaker
I remember hearing them referred to as the digital natives in my former practice and
00:35:13
Speaker
And the media environment that they're growing up in, though, is as fractured as it's ever been.
00:35:19
Speaker
So what would you say are their generational strengths that young people have when it comes to media literacy, whether that's by virtue of it being a focus of their education or of being, you know, like Bain, they're born into it, they don't know any different?
00:35:36
Speaker
So maybe they are just more skeptical.
00:35:38
Speaker
So both the strengths and then maybe like, what are those generational obstacles that we have to seriously address?
00:35:44
Speaker
Because, you know, the students, for whatever reason, just have blinders to that kind of thing.
00:35:49
Speaker
They just can't see it because it's, you know, not part of their experience.
00:35:52
Speaker
I don't know.
00:35:53
Speaker
What's what's your take on that?
00:35:55
Speaker
Part of me wants to say that they're pretty good at not believing a meme or a TikTok video out of hand.
00:36:05
Speaker
Part of me wants to say that they're pretty good at that.
00:36:08
Speaker
They're not going to...
00:36:10
Speaker
just believe something.
00:36:11
Speaker
But then I do also think like, I got to tell you, I have a lot of kids who believe initially that like, there's a, there's all these schools that have litter boxes for furries to go to the bathroom.
00:36:24
Speaker
And it's like, you can't believe that just because Joe Rogan said it, you know?
00:36:31
Speaker
And it's like, he was the progenitor of that, you know, he was one of them.
00:36:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:36
Speaker
And it's okay.
00:36:37
Speaker
Well, I don't know.
00:36:38
Speaker
I don't, it might've been, maybe he was, maybe that was the origin, but I do play that clip for my regular English class.
00:36:45
Speaker
Like I, and when we're doing a research paper and I, I play that clip and even though like other times they can be very savvy, sometimes they're ready to still believe something like that.
00:36:59
Speaker
And again, the goal is just to say, like, look into this a little bit, like look into it a little bit.
00:37:04
Speaker
Don't,
00:37:05
Speaker
Just believe it just because it's we're predisposed to say, oh, look, this a train wreck, you know, like look into it before you believe it out of hand.
00:37:16
Speaker
So I think in some ways they're pretty good at like doing that most of the time and knowing that like the Internet's kind of a crazy place that's maybe not to be taken seriously all the time.
00:37:27
Speaker
But they still do fall victim to the same sort of things that anyone does, except us perfect millennials, of course.
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:37:34
Speaker
We don't fall for this.
00:37:38
Speaker
We've been through too much.
00:37:39
Speaker
Yeah, for real.
00:37:41
Speaker
It is so interesting that they might have some kind of reflective skepticism just from growing up inundated by crap, you know, just be like,
00:37:50
Speaker
fake video, fake this, this is fake, fake all this.
00:37:53
Speaker
Like, I kind of get that.
00:37:54
Speaker
And at the same time, it's kind of humanizing too to say like, look, you have the same biases and predispositions and, you know, we fall for the same stuff because we all have these human brains as, you know, legislators who should know better.
00:38:09
Speaker
They take the litter box myth and they bring it onto the floor of the state legislature and they, you know, enter it into the public record as evidence of
00:38:18
Speaker
whatever it is they want to do.
00:38:19
Speaker
Like we are predisposed to the same things.
00:38:22
Speaker
And that could be an interesting way perhaps to even tackle it in the classroom context is like, look, these adults, college educated people who should know and do better, they fell for the same thing that you, you know, a teenager doesn't even have a high school degree fell for.
00:38:36
Speaker
So I don't know, maybe there's something to be said about that too.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:38:39
Speaker
And I like what you said there about like, maybe they are
00:38:43
Speaker
a little bit better about it in some ways.
00:38:48
Speaker
But to get to the second part of this question, they're sort of built in skepticism.
00:38:55
Speaker
In the most heartbreaking moments I've had, and I talk a little bit about this at the end of the book, is like kids who do the same thing I do sometimes, just throw my hands up and say like, what is to be done about this?
00:39:09
Speaker
Or not even asking that question and just
00:39:13
Speaker
assuming nothing can be done about any of the number of problems that we have.
00:39:18
Speaker
I mean, these poor kids, think about what they have to see with this.
00:39:22
Speaker
There was yet another climate report that came out
00:39:24
Speaker
It just must be so weird to see something like that and then see no action done.
00:39:32
Speaker
You know?
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:34
Speaker
We have one party that will completely ignore it and the other will pay lip service to it and do nothing.
00:39:40
Speaker
And that must be so super frustrating.
00:39:43
Speaker
And that is, again, though, like...
00:39:46
Speaker
You get kids sometimes who just have no use.
00:39:49
Speaker
I hear so much at the school that I'm at now, kids just say, I hate politics.
00:39:54
Speaker
I don't want to think about it.
00:39:56
Speaker
And just getting them interested in any number of issues, healthcare, housing, going to college and the cost of that, like...
00:40:06
Speaker
getting them to understand like these decisions that we make, that people make, impact them already.
Youth Engagement in Politics
00:40:14
Speaker
It's important to start thinking about them.
00:40:16
Speaker
You know, you don't like your school lunch.
00:40:18
Speaker
Guess what?
00:40:19
Speaker
We could be giving you guys way better lunches.
00:40:22
Speaker
You don't like how school is run.
00:40:24
Speaker
Guess what?
00:40:24
Speaker
We could be running it a lot differently.
00:40:27
Speaker
You don't like coming to school five days or working five days a week.
00:40:31
Speaker
Guess what?
00:40:32
Speaker
Other countries are doing four day work weeks.
00:40:35
Speaker
You know, like there's other ways to do this.
00:40:37
Speaker
Get them to understand.
00:40:38
Speaker
Again, getting back to kind of the theme here, maybe America hasn't figured it all out.
00:40:44
Speaker
Maybe our institutions are not the most perfect things in the world.
00:40:48
Speaker
Giving them something, like helping them understand that maybe there is hope just in the fact that like there's other ways to do things.
00:40:57
Speaker
is something I think this generation really needs because they, I think sometimes can be a very cynical bunch that just does not, they don't really care.
00:41:08
Speaker
And who could blame them?
00:41:10
Speaker
When we see these leaders that clearly don't care or they don't care about the same things normal, regular, everyday people do, it must be a hell of a thing to go through as a team.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:26
Speaker
Adults have not been great models in all of that.
00:41:28
Speaker
And I don't envy a kid, a teenager who has that awareness of the wrongs and the injustices and even just the sense of the growing inconveniences, be it through just inflation or the cost of college and the way that they see their own lives tarnished by the choices that adults have made about how society has to be run, about how the economy should work, who benefits, who loses.
00:41:55
Speaker
And then just kind of feeling powerless as like a starting point to say, well, where do I even, you know, how do I even fit into this picture?
00:42:02
Speaker
What can I, 13, 14, whatever year old do about this other than either fall into the existing patterns that are the easiest to facilitate, you know, with
00:42:18
Speaker
get a car, move to the suburbs, you know, all the things that are just traditionally reinforced, or do I kind of set myself up for difficulty and all these things by going a non-traditional route?
00:42:29
Speaker
Would I be happier in one place or the other?
00:42:31
Speaker
Would I, they face, I think, a bigger lift than they ever have before.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely don't envy teenagers and the decisions that they have to make about their lives and their relationships to the world.
00:42:42
Speaker
I think we've really put them in an unfortunate position.
00:42:46
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
00:42:47
Speaker
Absolutely.
Podcast Conclusion and Credits
00:42:48
Speaker
Well, the book is Education, Revolution, Media Literacy for Political Awareness.
00:42:53
Speaker
The author, Sam Shane.
00:42:55
Speaker
Thanks so much for joining me tonight.
00:42:57
Speaker
Thank you.
00:42:57
Speaker
I had a great time talking to you.
00:43:00
Speaker
Human Restoration Project is a nonprofit dedicated to informing and spreading progressive education through free educational programs, resources, and online materials for teachers, families, and students.
00:43:12
Speaker
You can learn more and follow us at humanrestorationproject.org or on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and post at humerespro.