@lerlo

I have reread all postings, and it still seems a little confusing. You seem to describe a class in social media fact-checking. To call it a curriculum is a misnomer. Adding a single class into the public school curriculum is somewhat easier than adding a new course of study.

EBSCO is a database with on-line access to newspapers, books, articles, dissertations, and other material that has been printed. There are numerous such sites available of which some have been peer-reviewed and been deemed credible sources by academics. The problem with these sites are that they only cover subjects that have been through the processes. The social media examples you give lead me to suspect you are looking for almost instantaneous fact-checking abilities. Traditional credible sources lack this ability.

IF you are looking to add a class in social media fact-checking, am I to understand that you still need credible sources for on-line fact-checking of social media material?

FYI teaching such classes require specific degrees for teaching in public schools with additional classes required for teaching in middle school. College instructors need a master's degree or Ph. D. It is not possible to just cross-over and teach.

Also, under which discipline would this class be taught; English? Information Technology?

@lerlo

At some point, we might look into forming a group so that what we discuss while hammering this out isn't constantly sent out to everyone who follows each of us.

Each state decides its own set of learning standards. Arizona calls theirs Academic Standards; Michigan calls theirs Common Core Curriculum.

I spoke to a friend of mine who is the principal of the school for grades 4-5-6. He says in Grade 4, students do general research projects. This school is currently writing about civil rights leaders. I am assuming here, but I would think it is because they would use reference books. Reference books do not need to be peer-reviewed since much of the information has become "common knowledge." For instance, the date that Kennedy was shot is common knowledge. If it were used in a school paper, it would not need a citation because no matter what book in which you look, the given date for his assassination is always the same. Shakespeare's date of death, however, is not so commonly known and would need a source. Steve (the principal) also said students in 4-5-6 would be too young to learn about social media sources. It would be over their heads. Again, I'm assuming the reason is that verifying the source is not something they do yet.

I can meet with the principal of the junior high (grades 7-8 ) since they also do research projects, but first I think we need to firm up the idea of what our (the group's) aim is and maybe a set of questions to ask local principals. Now is the time to do it, before the summer break.

We also need to be cognizant of the fact that we must be bipartisan. While we understand that Trump lies about things like the size of his inaugural audience, it could be a touchy subject in a family that is led by someone who believes everything he says.

Sorry I post so much. I retired early and miss using my brain and I can be a bit tenacious when I'm excited.

I chaired the curriculum committee at my college the year I retired. To be honest, curriculum is driven by what universities say is required for degrees, not, sadly, what businesses require or want. Research writing classes teach about credible sources, but not all degrees require research writing. IT is not really the ideal department to handle this problem because this particular class would need to center on what you DO with your electronic device, not how to USE your electronic device.

Also keep in mind that financial aid (FA) instituted stringent rules in 2015. FA only pays for classes which work toward a chosen degree. Electives are sometimes allowed, but students are then sometimes forced to take x number of natural science, political science, or math classes with few free electives, depending on how the submitting department wishes the degree to be set up.

Community colleges and 4-year colleges are confined to fulfill what universities require for even higher education. Businesses have complained for years that recent college graduates do not have the ability to work in groups or speak up in meetings, yet communication classes are routinely cut as a requirement for a degree.

Higher education is already (still) complaining that students come to us without the ability for cognitive complexity, ethics, or personal high standards. I hate to say it, but a grade 4-6 student usually lacks the maturity to care about truth, justice, and infringement of separation of state and religion. Junior and High school would be the best place to teach this, but again, the problem is convincing the Board of Education that this class is integral to a degree rather than to fact-check social media.

At the public school level, we would need, I believe, Betsy DeVos's approval to insert it into the junior or high school curriculum, and it'll be a cold day in proverbial hell before that happens. After all, if the, let's say, President of the United States utters an untruth, presenting it as a truth, that is not a social media problem, that is an ethical problem. Media can repeat that information without proving it true or false, just as "the President said....". Likewise, another Media outlet can fact-check that statement and counter with a source which states the comment was untrue. The decision to believe one over the other takes cognitive complexity, and most students this age haven't developed that ability yet.

A more likely scenario is to find a grant or other funding opportunity and offer it as a free class in social responsibility. As for the religious insertion, that is a trickier problem best left to adults. For instance, Florida's proposal to put "In God We Trust" into every public school classroom is more an ACLU concern. For smaller insertions, we might be unfairly asking our students to act as watchdogs.

I salute your idea. I agree that we need to prepare our citizens to make decisions themselves based on verifiable information. However, I think you will meet opposition because an ignorant citizenship is a docile citizenship.

This is a great idea! Some years back (2001-2003) I spent two years teaching computer science at a small liberal arts college. One of the classes I had to teach was a "computer applications" class that taught basic computer literacy and app usage - think Word, spreadsheets, etc. I starting folding in a class on "trustworthiness" of information. I'd take the class down the rabbit hole of Apollo moon landing deniers. I'd start out by being fascinated by "well, maybe... " and "wow maybe it is fake" before popping the balloon and pointing out all the flaws in the moon landing denier websites. I generally could get a good proportion of the class to believe that the Apollo landings were a hoax.

We always ended up having a good discussion about discerning what was truth and not (this well before the "FAKENEWS" era), and me giving the class pointers on discovering what is true vs not.

Things are a thousand times worse now, and there is no attempt to educate our youth on this.

Also that anything they put online is online forever.

Great idea... and before it’s too late.

Good idea!