Technology literate...Critically Literate!
So I started looking forward to the April 21st Century meeting I am looking a great deal at technology literacy and critical literacy. Both should be essential learnings for students. It seems to me that the two are almost one in the same. As I read on these topics I found myself becoming more and more confused about what we can actually accept as truths. It started to seem to me that everything (yes even school text books) have a certain bais and slanted views. One of the articles I read emphasised:
"Texts are social constructs that reflect some of the ideas and beliefs held by some groups of people at the time of their creation." http://wwwfp.education.tas.gov.au/English/critlit.htm
In general I think that teachers often spoon feed students information from texts that are selected for the students which are considered to be "reliable". However, learning to question what they read for logical thruths and gaps, and analyzing opposing view points to what they are reading enables students to truly internalize and understand the information. Today, with the incredible amounts of information available to us, I think sifting through information and questioning its validity is essential!
I like the idea of teaching students to be skeptics and always ask for the evidence. Every sight I researched said that students should be required to get two articles from each view point of a topic and look in at least one more factual reference book to get a basic idea about a topic. By continually requiring this type of referencing, maybe questioning the logic/truth behind something will become second nature to students. I don't think we have option to ignor the importance of becoming information analyzers.
I think that adults also need to be critically literate. There are millions of adults (many of whom I know well) who believe something because the read it or saw it on the news. It is sad to me that even adults don't understand that everything is slanted with a specific view point. "Aren't all stories a selective version of the truth?"
posted by bkitch @ 12:39 PM
3 Comments:
For more on textbooks, check out The Muddle Machine.
Awesome reading. I think everyone should read it. Thanks!
So interesting that you brought this up, Barb. Have you ever read Brave New World? I'm reading that with my seniors right now and that's a lot of what we've been talking about. One question that got brought up related to history and religion--is there such thing as one version of the truth? Is it fair to teach your society history and to value religion when all they are are versions of that truth? This society has decided no, that traditional religion and history are not worth teaching both because they cause dissention and also because they don't fit in a world where everything must be concrete and scientifically provable. Instead of teaching history, they teach science, geography, and technology--topics that are concrete and can be proved as truths.
I think the ability to think critically is the most important skill to be gained from education. I wonder, though, if we are producing a society that will worship technology and abolish the study of history because dissention clearly seen via the media proves it merely a figment of a storyteller's imagination.
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