The Importance of Teaching Discernment in the Modern Age
The Importance of Teaching Discernment in the Modern Age
Last month, I was fortunate enough to speak with a group of parents from the Lower School about the ongoing challenge of social media use among their children. I began the conversation with a short video clip that can be found here. In the video, Tom Cruise plays a well-known song by a popular band. The video went viral, accumulating millions of “likes” and comments from viewers who were “totally unaware” that Mr. Cruise possessed this talent. Some of the comments and likes came from close friends of the actor. The startling part of this story was, of course, that he didn’t have this talent. The video was a “deep fake” created to entertain, confuse, and demonstrate how simple it has become to make the unreal seem real. A deepfake is defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “a video that has been edited using an algorithm to replace the person in the original video with someone else (especially a public figure) in a way that makes the video look authentic.”
While this particular video is harmless, it demonstrates that one could replace any figure like was done to Tom Cruise, including politicians or thought leaders. Just as this video went viral, it is entirely plausible that a deep fake could falsely portray a leader inciting violence, making false claims, or generally misdirecting its unsuspecting viewers. In fact, the Ukrainian president recently experienced this type of cyberattack. This is just one example of the very technological and ethical dilemmas that our children will grow up with. The prospects are daunting. The sooner that we begin instructing our children on the skills needed to separate the real from the engineered, the better off our world will be.
When I first broached this topic with a group of educators, a faction of experienced teachers responded that this, along with the other challenges posed by persuasive technologies, was the domain of the family and that addressing this issue would overburden teachers. I see this challenge a bit differently.
Although it is difficult to argue that the plates of our nation’s educators are not already full, teaching students to discern is a critical component of all curricula. Helping students learn the process of discernment is vital to countering the threatening mirage that persuasive technologies combined with social media will create.
Recently, we saw the start of an international conflict. For many of our younger students, this is the first time that a traditional “war” has been front and center in the places where they seek information. At the same time, the sources for much of our information have been clearly compromised by organized disinformation campaigns by both foreign and domestic powers. Unfortunately, when our children seek to inform themselves on the matters of the world, they will be flooded with misinformation at every turn.
A recent study found that over half of America’s teenagers get their news a few times a week from social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The first step to teaching genuine discernment is to educate our children about the various disadvantages of treating platforms like Twitter as if they are the equivalent of well-sourced new articles. Although social media avenues report more quickly than traditional news outlets, they lack accountability for verifiability and professional composition. Talking to our children about how one can validate reporting is an excellent first step. Encouraging them to seek out varied new sources, and to not rely on social media, is an important first step.
Once we get our children accustomed to using proper sources for current events, there are a number of simple techniques to ensure that those sources are both accurate and balanced. The first is to educate them on the proper use of a search engine. Instead of allowing a curating application to tell them what is happening in their world, a quick search from a browser will bring up a host of sources on any number of topics. They can then begin to apply some filters to which of these sources is and is not reliable. For example, reputable news sources have ethical standards that they attempt to live up to. If a news story is making an accusation, does it provide the subject an opportunity to comment? Are allegations supported by multiple sources? Educators and parents can better understand the ethical expectations of a news source by reviewing the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
We do not expect our children to live a mistake-free life. Instead, we expect them to own their mistakes and learn from them. We must teach our children to expect the same from their news sources. Take time to determine how a publication has handled reporting errors in the past. Help your children discern the difference between those errors, and genuinely “fake news.” If there is no record of a retraction or correction, it is unlikely that a source has applied a truly high standard to its reporting.
Although each of these tips will help to guide our children toward a more informed approach to the news surrounding them, it is worth noting that the skills that our children truly need to discern are also at the crux of what an education at The Meadows School stands for. Our decades-long commitment toward excellence in programming like Quiz Bowl, Robotics, and Debate have helped produce generations of students capable of superb research, quality analysis, discernment, and free-thinking. Because the challenge of steering them in the right direction has increased with the pervasiveness of social media and other persuasive technologies, a partnership with willing parents and committed educators is sure to prepare each generation even better than the last.
Joseph Carver
Chief Innovation Officer
While this particular video is harmless, it demonstrates that one could replace any figure like was done to Tom Cruise, including politicians or thought leaders. Just as this video went viral, it is entirely plausible that a deep fake could falsely portray a leader inciting violence, making false claims, or generally misdirecting its unsuspecting viewers. In fact, the Ukrainian president recently experienced this type of cyberattack. This is just one example of the very technological and ethical dilemmas that our children will grow up with. The prospects are daunting. The sooner that we begin instructing our children on the skills needed to separate the real from the engineered, the better off our world will be.
When I first broached this topic with a group of educators, a faction of experienced teachers responded that this, along with the other challenges posed by persuasive technologies, was the domain of the family and that addressing this issue would overburden teachers. I see this challenge a bit differently.
Although it is difficult to argue that the plates of our nation’s educators are not already full, teaching students to discern is a critical component of all curricula. Helping students learn the process of discernment is vital to countering the threatening mirage that persuasive technologies combined with social media will create.
Recently, we saw the start of an international conflict. For many of our younger students, this is the first time that a traditional “war” has been front and center in the places where they seek information. At the same time, the sources for much of our information have been clearly compromised by organized disinformation campaigns by both foreign and domestic powers. Unfortunately, when our children seek to inform themselves on the matters of the world, they will be flooded with misinformation at every turn.
A recent study found that over half of America’s teenagers get their news a few times a week from social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The first step to teaching genuine discernment is to educate our children about the various disadvantages of treating platforms like Twitter as if they are the equivalent of well-sourced new articles. Although social media avenues report more quickly than traditional news outlets, they lack accountability for verifiability and professional composition. Talking to our children about how one can validate reporting is an excellent first step. Encouraging them to seek out varied new sources, and to not rely on social media, is an important first step.
Once we get our children accustomed to using proper sources for current events, there are a number of simple techniques to ensure that those sources are both accurate and balanced. The first is to educate them on the proper use of a search engine. Instead of allowing a curating application to tell them what is happening in their world, a quick search from a browser will bring up a host of sources on any number of topics. They can then begin to apply some filters to which of these sources is and is not reliable. For example, reputable news sources have ethical standards that they attempt to live up to. If a news story is making an accusation, does it provide the subject an opportunity to comment? Are allegations supported by multiple sources? Educators and parents can better understand the ethical expectations of a news source by reviewing the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
We do not expect our children to live a mistake-free life. Instead, we expect them to own their mistakes and learn from them. We must teach our children to expect the same from their news sources. Take time to determine how a publication has handled reporting errors in the past. Help your children discern the difference between those errors, and genuinely “fake news.” If there is no record of a retraction or correction, it is unlikely that a source has applied a truly high standard to its reporting.
Although each of these tips will help to guide our children toward a more informed approach to the news surrounding them, it is worth noting that the skills that our children truly need to discern are also at the crux of what an education at The Meadows School stands for. Our decades-long commitment toward excellence in programming like Quiz Bowl, Robotics, and Debate have helped produce generations of students capable of superb research, quality analysis, discernment, and free-thinking. Because the challenge of steering them in the right direction has increased with the pervasiveness of social media and other persuasive technologies, a partnership with willing parents and committed educators is sure to prepare each generation even better than the last.
Joseph Carver
Chief Innovation Officer
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