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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

We Should Teach Media Literacy in Elementary School

We learned it when I was in elementary school. Through endless drills, the nuns taught us how to separate fact from opinion, and to read between the lines and spot what are now called "weasel words."

While it's a noble goal, I'd say that the two classes that should be brought back are civics and geography.

Geography so we can start having adults who understand their role in the world, and civics so they know how it works and how to change it.

I think if people knew how things (politics and government) worked, more ordinary people would run for office and the halls of power wouldn't be the exclusive domain of the rich and their lawyers.

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While it's a noble goal, I'd say that the two classes that should be brought back are civics and geography.

Did we really get rid of those two classes? I honestly don't know, and have no children to know what is being taught these days. I graduated high school in the early 2000's but to this day my favorite class was "Law and Government", so much of this had to do with my teacher's genuine enthusiasm for the subject matter. We did mock trials, a few of which I won as a fake public defender.

That class was wildly informative looking back, you really do have me wondering what the state of that sort of curriculum is like these days.

(random addendum but a few years back I ran into the gentleman who taught that class, at the voting booth-he was volunteering his time as a poll worker. Just as civic minded as I remembered him)

In New York you have civics, history, and geography all lumped in together under "social science".

I was at a pretty typical city public school ~>15 years ago. Even then we didn't really have "civics" as it were. There were "world history" courses and things in that vein, mostly focused on europe and asia, with a gloss over the other countries. (laughably so, looking back). There was a large course in american history, but it was almost all rote, and had nothing to do with how I would phrase "civics" in terms of pragmatic participation and impact. Similar statements could be made re: learning about "the economy" in history and "home finances" (writing a check) in home-ec but nothing about pragmatic long term planning, college loans, any of that stuff.

I shouldn't sell it entirely short, if you took some more esoteric extracurriculars/AP courses you could get some exposure but it was still very academic and VERY niche.

To stop beating around the bush, speaking at least for my school (even around when you graduated) had very little to prepare someone to actually be an informed participant in society. This likely varies heavily by school however, but polling my wife as well, she echos an even more bleak story. (private Jewish school)

I was at a pretty typical city public school ~>15 years ago. Even then we didn't really have "civics" as it were.

Interesting contrasts we have here, eh? I went to a public HS in a hyper-rural area in the deep south. Law and Government I & II were classes required by juniors and then seniors respectively.

My expectation was that city schools would definitely have these courses, it's interesting to learn in your case they didn't.

It's state-by-state, usually. The curriculum in GA and NV (both states I went to High School in) in the 90s required a US history course and a civics course. In NV it was "US Government", a senior course (typically). In GA it was, in my district, just "Civics" and was one semester, sharing the year with a baby Economics course (which was really more personal finance than economics).

School districts have some leeway to add additional courses, or to alter the typical order of them. For instance, that civics course in GA could've been a one year senior level course in a neighboring district. But the civics course was required across the state at the time.

It's hard to teach history if you're going to test people on it. There's too much history for anyone to really know even a tiny bit of it, so it's probably better to teach it through literature.

>That class was wildly informative looking back, you really do have me wondering what the state of that sort of curriculum is like these days.

I had a similar class in the early 2000's, complete with the mock trial and enthusiastic teacher, but looking back see it more as blatant propaganda. For example, our trial was an incredibly idealistic view of what is a terribly broken court system. Most of the class was similar, teaching the ideals of being an American without any connection to reality.

> our trial was an incredibly idealistic view of what is a terribly broken court system

What were they supposed to do, have your defendant spend years in jail waiting for a trial because they can't make bail? Automatically dismiss all the jurors with the same skin color?

Skip the mock trial and fairly assess the criminal justice system. The trial doesn't teach useful things, and instead leaves students trusting a system that could arbitrarily decide to ruin their life.

I think this will be an essential skill for all "future adults" and I agree with the premise of the article. The real challenge is the elderly. My 79 year old Mom has found her way to Facebook but has zero skills to deal with the chumbucket that Facebook has become. Teaching her to check something like snopes is like trying to stop a hurricane by closing your shutters. She fundamentally believes whatever her "friends" share.

My late uncle flew airships during WW2, and was always looking for new things to learn (look up elderhostel; he averaged 1 per year for his last 30 years). He remembered peoples' names, spent time getting to know people who he had no reason to be nice to, and was generally considerate and generous. He also regularly emailed the most blatant propaganda to family and friends. I replied to one and said that I appreciated that he was trying to educate people so they could be better-informed citizens, but that the stuff he was sending was definitely not having that effect. I told him about Snopes and other ways to check on things before passing them on.

He replied, saying "let me know if you want me to take you off my list". And then he put "fact-checked at snopes" on every email. Yes, all the same crap.

Not all elderly people are lacking the skills to detect BS. Some pass it along with full knowledge that it's garbage. And they're not all sociopaths.

I learned geography in school. It was horribly done.

In elementary school, pick a country from a region and memorize trivia about it, then watch interminable presentations from classmates about their chosen country within the region.

In highschool, it was primarily "how to read a municipal topographical map" as if that provides any meaningful context. And lots of stuff about how the region was shaped geologically.

Very little real context about how the larger world works. Also nothing about municipal civics and planning.

Could we really teach about how things work?

There is the polite fiction, and there is the reality. The reality involves miraculously good investments and other things that totally aren't bribes, especially because they are often done by spouses and children of elected officials. The reality involves trading scandal information to blackmail each other into supporting the uniparty. The reality includes legislation written by lobbiests. The reality includes winning at any cost, such as via election fraud.

The point of teaching how things should work, are "meant" to work in the ideal situation is so that when they get to practice civics they recognize those other behaviors as aberrant and bad.

A history and civics course could actually go into how none of those things were new, even from the founding of the Republic.

I feel like a huge number of people have completely forgotten about what they learned in high school history like the corrupt bargain, the guilded age, westward expansion or really any number of other absurd things that have happened in this country, or similar events that have happened in other countries. Those weren't just stories and they weren't just things that you needed to know for the test and then forget about, we teach them in high school for a reason.

> I'd say that the two classes that should be brought back are civics and geography.

Wait, US schools don't teach geography?

I agree with you about Civics as well.

Throw Ethics and Personal Financial Education in there too. So much of the economy is predicated on people not knowing enough about the complicated financial arrangements that are offered to them.

If your parents don't teach you and your school doesn't teach you, you're left to figure out the scams for yourself.

> two classes that should be brought back are civics and geography

Geography? What happened to geography classes? When were they cancelled?

Graduated high school (public) in 2012 and college in 2016, never had a single dedicated geography course despite being interested in it. I remember going over continents in elementary school, but I still feel dumb when I look at a globe and see how far north Japan really is, or how the countries are arranged in western Asia.

Is that only an American thing? Because over here in the UK geography and history are mandatory parts of the school curriculum for those aged 5-13, and are usually taught to 14-16 year olds as well.

If they've removed it from the US version, that's pretty depressing.

There is no single "US version" of primary or secondary education. Curriculum is mostly set at the local or state level, so you will see lots of variation in stuff like this.

I found both history and geography pretty lacking at school (partly why I dropped them both before GCSE-level).

My only real memory of Geography classes is how oxbow lakes are formed.

My memory of history in primary and secondary school involved Celts & Romans (one in primary, once in secondary), Tudors & Stuarts (likewise), some unit about the agricultural revolution(? secondary school) and a short time learning about the Second World War (secondary school).

I think it probably gets better during GCSEs and A-Levels, but I only started learning about history again after Civilization V inspired me to check out some history podcasts (mainly because I felt embarrassed about not knowing anything about these civilizations and their leaders).

> I found both history and geography pretty lacking at school (partly why I dropped them both before GCSE-level).

I thought you were required to do one or the other at GCSE? What did you do instead?

I thought so too, but my school didn't make us at the time (I started Y10 in 2004). I was able to pick four options at GCSE, so I took French, Spanish, Drama and Music. My other subjects were 2x English, 3x Science, 2x Maths, German (I took the exam at the end of Y9 because I was dropping it anyway), 0.5x IT and 0.5x Religion.

Would explain that video that went viral years ago though of US citizens interviewed in the street and asked where the US was on a map of the world.

Some of the responses were comical. Some were just depressing.

I graduated from a public high school in CA in 2000, and we had no geography class required, or even offered (I think). But we didn't have CS either, and if I'd been given the choice I would have chosen the latter I'm sure.

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