Starting this year, California is making it a priority for public school students from kindergarten through high school to take media literacy courses, so they can spot factual news from fiction.
San Luis Obispo High School teacher Ryan Mammarella has been teaching media literacy in his classes for years, but he agrees, there’s always room for improvement.
“It’s been part of our curriculum and part of our standards for a very long time. Examining source credibility has always been important,” Mammarella said.
Assembly Bill 873was signed into law last October and took effect at the beginning of this year. A new media literacy curriculum will be required in California public schools for kindergarten through high school students. This new content will be integrated into English language arts, mathematics, science, history, and social science classes, as more students turn to social media to consume news and information.
"I do think it will have a larger impact on elementary schools," Mammarella said. "Students are interacting with the internet or interacting with YouTube at a younger and younger age, and so helping those students evaluate source credibility will be very helpful. "
Lucia Mar Unified School District Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Hillery Dixon is also looking forward to implementing the new curriculum.
“We are excited about the new bill. We teach critical thinking and problem-solving skills already, so media literacy is just another aspect of that,” Dixon said.
Dixon agrees that there needs to be a greater focus on media literacy, as the vast majority of students rely more heavily on social media for information.
“Social media is certainly a challenge for students," Dixon said. "When it comes to the classroom, our teachers have to do a lot more work in helping students with research skills.”
It’s a complex issue to address with students, according to Mammarella.
”We talk about different ways to check for credibility of a source. We talk about looking at the domain name. We talk about looking at the author," Mammarella said. “If a source causes somebody to feel intense amounts of anger or intense feelings in any way, that might be an indication of bias.”
These local educators agree that the supplemental curriculum will only benefit kids, but the rollout will take some time.
“Things in education happen slowly. We won’t see immediate changes next year," Mammarella said.
“We are currently in the stage of analyzing supplemental resources for our teachers so we don't have a formal curriculum decision because we take decisions like that very seriously and we want to vet different types of products," Dixon said.
