I thought
the activity in class where we were assigned different roles and perspectives for
an issue, was an extremely powerful tool. It is important to introduce our
students the complexity of social issues. There is rarely a clear-cut answer or
solution when it comes to complex issues like public heath and poverty. There
is no black and white/right or wrong answer to solving social issues, which is
why it is important for teachers to model for their students how to navigate
and critically think about articles and other information, especially regarding
social issues. By introducing the many sides and perspective for social issues,
students will get a clearer sense of what a “bias” is and how to uncover bias
opinions on TV, the internet, newspapers, and magazines. Our students must
understand that everything published, was written with a purpose and/or an
agenda. The author is trying to express their opinions or facts about a topic
for a specific purpose, whether it is informational, persuasive, or something
else. The students must learn to decipher the author’s intent, the target
audience, who is benefiting from the text, and importantly what
background/viewpoint does the author have? Critical literacy skills are not
easily acquired and are challenging to learn. However, modeling and creating
multiple activities to introduce viewpoints, biases, and agendas regarding
social issue will scaffold students and introduce them how to be critical
readers.
Social issues affect all students in one way or another, so it is
important for them to understand the importance of being educated on social
issues and furthermore how to educate themselves about current social issues by
reading articles with a critical mindset. Some students will believe anything
they read in or out of school must be true because it is in a book or a
newspaper, but as teachers we must show them that this is not always the case.
There is not always a right or wrong answer, so understanding that many
perspectives and viewpoints on an issue or topic will allow students make their
own educated opinions, rather than trusting others opinions.
I love the points that were made about showing students how to be aware of biases and agendas from authors and the entire media in general. More often than not people take what they hear on the news to be fact without any questions asked. The implicit undertones are not always acknowledged or analyzed critically. Students need to be aware of this and taught how to combat potential issues that come along with it. As educators it is also important to recognize that we also need to remain unbiased about social issues as much as possible. We can sway our students thoughts and have power over how they formulate ideas. I think the key takeaway is to give students the tools to assess literacy critically so that eventually they can make up their own minds about important social issues that they will encounter.
ReplyDeleteI agree that that was an excellent exercise. I also like the ideas you bring out about critically looking at texts, and I think this would be a good opportunity for students to put themselves in other people’s shoes. I think it’s important for students to practice taking on different perspectives to help adolescents see that other people view things different and that it’s okay to disagree on topics. Hopefully, we’ll be able to show students that there’s a great big world out there with a whole bunch of different ways of thinking about different topics.
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