Saturday, May 17, 2025
It’s natural and desirable to favor information that aligns with our beliefs. We can also be misled by that same information. Developing the ability to distinguish between biased sources and trustworthy news is essential to becoming a well-informed person.
Asking questions such as, "What are your sources? How do you know? Where is your information coming from? How do I know this to be true?" are key to discerning information’s legitimacy. These are some of the questions we teach our students to ask in our News and Media Literacy curriculum. The skills they develop are the most important they will acquire as students in our exceptional Baldwin School District.
In 2018, the district received a grant from Stony Brook University to partner in the development of a curriculum that would ensure that our youngest citizens were prepared to decipher real from false information in their daily electronic bombardment. Since then, we have worked with our sixth- through 12th-grade students in their ELA and social studies classes on knowing what questions to ask, checking the authenticity and validity of their sources, understanding differing opinions and having a level of certainty in information they believe is true.
So what, exactly, is news literacy? It’s the ability to critically evaluate and understand news and other forms of information. It involves the skills needed to:
In short, news literacy helps people become informed, responsible consumers and sharers of information, especially in today’s digital world, where misinformation can spread rapidly.
Baldwin’s curriculum, developed in partnership with Stony Brook, tackles four key challenges that ultimately affect us all: information overload, blurring boundaries, authenticity, and speed of availability of information.
We are inundated with information, both accurate and misleading, and it has become increasingly difficult to identify trustworthy, credible sources. If we are to believe the information presented to us, we must be able to identify and evaluate its source. Asking questions such as, Is it advertising, propaganda, infotainment, publicity or unverified online information? Has it been manipulated to make it appear authentic? helps us establish information validity. It is imperative that we develop a critical eye, and it is essential for our children to learn to discern the difference between true and accurate information and manipulated or incorrect content.
Participation in Government and economics are required courses in New York state. Through this curriculum, students learn about civics and civic responsibility. Equally important, they demonstrate their civic-mindedness through their actions every day. They are on the right path to becoming informed, intelligent, caring and involved citizens. As adults, we serve as their role models, so as a family and community, we must practice these most important critical thinking skills as we engage with the news and with one another. Our children watch us every day, and learn from our actions.
So as adult members of a caring community, what can we do to promote news and media literacy and ensure that we’re all thinking critically about the information we receive and share? When we’re reading, looking at advertisements, watching the news, browsing the internet with our children, be sure to ask critical, thoughtful questions and point out how we know when information is reliable and truthful. Be sure to show how to validate information to build the trust and confidence we need to feel confident in that information. Ask your children to think critically and use questioning techniques to verify information. Feel comfortable learning together as families and a community.
The Baldwin district’s News and Media Literacy curriculum is just one step in the process of becoming good citizens, but it is a critical one. We are proud to be leaders in this field and partners with our community in its implementation. We are confident that we are preparing our students to become civic-minded, thoughtful, smart citizens of the world.
For more information, check out the Center for News Literacy (centerfornewsliteracy.org), the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), the Center for Media and Information Literacy (centermil.org) and the National Association for Media Literacy Education (https://namle.org).
Dr. Shari L. Camhi is superintendent of the Baldwin Union Free School District and a past president of AASA, the School Superintendents Association.
