7th graders taught how to combat ‘misinformation,’ speak ‘truth’ to adult relatives at the Thanksgiving table

"One of the most important things to know about media literacy education is that it is not partisan," Cynthia Sandler, North Salem’s media literacy teacher, told CBS News. "It is about asking questions. It is about critical thinking. It is about teaching students and people how to think and not what to think."

According to a 2023 report from Media Literacy Now, 19 states in the past decade and a half have added classes on the topic to educational requirements. At least seven more states could be adding similar classes.

Sandler wanted her students well-prepared for those Thanksgiving conversations that inevitably wind their way in the direction of politics. So, students did role-play exercises “to have a productive discussion with someone who doesn't believe the truth and how to tell the difference between fact and opinion,” the outlet claimed.

"Facts can be proven, like pumpkin pie has less sugar and apple pie has more nutritional value," one student told reporters, after going through the role-playing game.

Another role-playing exercise focused on the danger of satire. The students looked at a website that claimed the New York City’s annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade would be taking place in Florida this year and determined it to be satire. "Satire can be a form of saying a joke," one student said. "But satire can be dangerous, because some people may fall for it. Like you might have gone to buy plane tickets for Florida."

Earlier this year, 1,110 teenagers between 13 and 18 around the country were surveyed by the News Literacy Project about their media consumption. 80 percent claimed they routinely see “conspiracy theories” online and sometimes accept them as truth. The survey authors considered believing that the COVID-19 vaccine was dangerous, that climate change is not a threat, that government controls us/information, and that aliens exist to all be conspiracy theories.

Source: News Literacy in America 2024 survey

"We've been talking about media in relation to books forever. English teachers will talk about, 'Here's a book, and this is the context in which it was written,'" Sandler said. "We don't have the skills for what's happening on social media. We don't have the skills for the flurry of activity of different websites…different channels."

According to the teacher, people everywhere are just really confused. "We are working with a citizenry who does not know what to believe," Sandler said.

"Misinformation gets confused with information. And ultimately, you can get to the point where nobody knows what to trust, and nobody trusts anything, and that's a terrible place. That's a terrible place to be in a democracy, that's a terrible place to be as a person."