Rowan prof helps drive N.J. initiative for media literacy law
A Rowan University educator changed into instrumental in getting a brand new law handed this month that makes New Jersey the primary kingdom withinside the kingdom to require media literacy lessons for K-12 college students.
Olga Polites, who considering that 1999 has taught composition and rhetoric at Rowan, stated as New Jersey bankruptcy chief for the national enterprise Media Literacy Now, she petitioned legislators to require instructions arming college students with facts to assist separate information from fiction.
Gov. Phil Murphy signed the bi-partisan law Jan. 4.
“Literacy in colleges continually supposed reading, writing, composing essays, however the concept of literacy has accelerated and deepened due to technological advances,” stated Polites, who retired final summer time season from Cherokee High School in Marlton however nevertheless teaches composition and rhetoric at Rowan’s Ric Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts.
Polites stated she has lengthy pushed her college students to are trying to find facts from plenty of respectable reassets throughout the ideological spectrum however determined many nevertheless depended on brief Google searches, weblog posts and social media for important news. Such cursory searches necessarily cause biased and/or unsourced cloth that scholars regularly everyday as reality, she stated.
Once implemented, the brand new law directs the kingdom Department of Education to expand a hard and fast of requirements to assist college students turn out to be essential thinkers and researchers who can higher perceive vetted, dependable reassets of facts.
“Unless we educate the distinction among number one and secondary reassets, the distinction among reality and opinion, college students won’t know,” Polites stated.
The new law, S588, calls for public college educators to educate the studies manner and the way facts is created and produced; essential wondering and the usage of facts resources; studies methods, along with the distinction among number one and secondary reassets; the distinction among information, factors of view and opinions; gaining access to peer-reviewed print and virtual library resources; the economic, felony and social troubles surrounding the usage of facts; and the moral manufacturing of facts.
Though conspiracy theories spreading fake facts have continually existed, Polites stated the methods wherein incorrect information spreads on line amplifies incorrect information, along with untruths approximately the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and the protection of Covid-19 vaccinations.
Polites stated New Jersey has been an established country wide chief in coaching such topics as intercourse education, driving force education, economic literacy and holocaust studies, curricula that a few dad and mom objected to however have been later followed statewide throughout the U.S.
With the signing of S588, she predicted, New Jersey turns into a frontrunner in coaching media literacy, too.
“The undertaking for public educators is there’s extraordinary issue speaking approximately political troubles,” she stated. “Giving college students capabilities to seriously assume thru those troubles couldn’t have befell at a higher time.”
