Freedom of speech is a right that must not be infringed. In order to protect and reinforce this important right, the functioning of our democracy requires that Coloradans possess the ability to understand context, think critically about the information they are presented, and be free from indoctrination…
— from the Colorado Department of Education, ‘Media Literacy Resources’.
First, a warning… as the Daily Post attempts to address the growing problem of ‘media literacy’. Children should be allowed to read this particular humor column only with adult supervision, due to possibly mature content.
I came across an article about ‘media literacy’ the other day, informing me that two states — Delaware and New Jersey — recently passed laws about media literacy. Which naturally has me worried. I don’t know exactly what ‘media literacy’ is, but it sounds like maybe it could discourage people from reading humor columns in online news magazines.
For some of us, creating highly questionable ‘media content’ is our bread and butter.
(Funny thing. Speaking of bread and butter… just as I wrote that last sentence, my toast popped up, and I discovered that my butter dish was empty… and there was no butter in the fridge. Dry toast without butter is not the most appetizing snack. I suppose that could be an excellent metaphor for something, but I’m not sure exactly what.)
But getting back to the topic at hand. New Jersey just became the first state in the country to require public schools to teach media literacy to K-12 students as a way to combat misinformation, under a bill signed this month by Governor Phil Murphy. So, like, they are teaching this in kindergarten.
In kindergarten, folks.
This makes a certain kind of sense, because some kindergartners are spending more time on the internet than I do, which is a frightening thought. When I was in kindergarten, I remember spending most of my time playing with blocks, which were considered relatively harmless.
According to Olga Polites, a retired English teacher who has advocated for media literacy legislation in New Jersey for several years, “What students don’t understand is how content is created. They don’t understand aggregator sites; they don’t understand algorithms and how they work.”
Heck — I am myself a content creator, and even I don’t understand aggregator sites. Or algorithms. New Jersey wants to teach kindergartners about this stuff?
What happened to blocks?
The whole problem dates back to 1789, when a group of guys wearing wigs, who thought they were pretty smart, proposed that everyone should have the right to say anything they want to say. (Actually, by ‘everyone’, they meant white males. Females and people of color were still expected to be seen and not heard.)
The authors of the Bill of Rights could have written it a bit differently. They could have written, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press… except that no one is allowed to say or publish anything that someone else thinks is misinformation, especially on Facebook.”
But they didn’t write it that way, of course. Which incites politicians like New Jersey Governor Murphy into making claims like this:
Our democracy remains under sustained attack through the proliferation of disinformation that is eroding the role of truth in our political and civic discourse. It is our responsibility to ensure our nation’s future leaders are equipped with the tools necessary to identify fact from fiction.
I’m not sure what “tools” the Governor is suggesting we equip our nation’s future leaders with? Healthy skepticism, maybe? Like, maybe — for starters — we want our nation’s future leaders to question Governor Murphy’s claims about our democracy?
In my limited experience, you should never take anything a politician says as ‘truth’. Even if he’s talking about ‘truth’. Maybe especially if he’s talking about ‘truth’. (Same goes for whatever a journalist writes, but you already knew that.)
Earlier this year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy — who presumably knows something about health — offered a statement that many people (in particular, CNN) assumed to be ‘truth’.
“The skewed, and often distorted, environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children [age 13 and younger]… ”
He criticized social media apps for being designed “to make sure people are maximizing the amount of time they spend on these platforms… If we tell a child, use the force of your willpower to control how much time you’re spending, you’re pitting a child against the world’s greatest product designers, and that’s just not a fair fight…”
In other words, we’re wasting our time, trying to teach ‘media literacy’ to children. We just need to make it illegal for Facebook and Instagram to allow children on their websites. We don’t allow children to buy alcohol, or marijuana… or buy guns, or drive cars. I don’t see a real difference.
Do the Surgeon General and the New Jersey governor think we should be teaching “alcohol literacy”? Of course not.
I have a simple solution. Start putting tech company CEOs in jail, for getting our children addicted. The problem will fix itself in no time.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.