When I recently was writing about the new national curriculum in History, I came across a rather interesting disagreement with regards to indigenous history in the media, where totally opposing views were equally portrayed. Historians like Keith Windschuttle were claiming a less cruel and intent behaviour towards the indigenous population in the past, backing up his arguments with various details and data and another acclaimed historian, Robert Manne who was opposing Windschuttle’s views with equally researched material to mention one such public disagreement. These diverse and opposing interpretations of Australian history mainstreamed through media and the web can be both confusing and uncomfortable, and it brings me to the discussion we had this week about the importance of critical literacy when dealing with information on the net and how difficult it sometimes can be to make a judgement on the facts without substantial background knowledge. Naturally, few primary school children will drag through any of these historians' research papers or articles, but it highlights an issue. Moving away from the obvious misleading hoax on the web, we can still get such diverse information presented as facts, from reputable authors, from reputable publications or web pages. You clearly have to monitor, prepare the students, and do the homework before asking students to do their research on the web.
Memes, Subcultures and Social Media
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Education and the Internet — Part 3 Contents Introduction Dawkins’ dodgy
dogma Digital deviation ‘Something Awful’, ‘4chan’ and ‘Encyclopedia
Dramatica’ Ri...
6 years ago
Very true - I think back to my primary (and even secondary) years and remember all the time wasted in the library where we had gone to do "research". We were taken to the library or the computer lab with no real framework to guide us, no knowledge of how to use the computers for research except for "look it up" and no prior knowledge on the topic before being given an assignment on it. Whilst things might not be this extreme anymore, I have still been in classes where students have been asked to do research and immediately sent to the nearest computer to find whatever piece of information they can on a topic. This relates back to the need for normalisation of technology in classrooms; the computer shouldn't be seen as the all-knowing researcher - the teacher and the students are the researchers and the computer (and subsequently the web) is just one tool in an arsenal of cataloguing tools to drawn on.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agree with you! It is the level of knowledge that is the issue, I think. Basic and more trivial things requires less teacher control, but to actually get some core new information, students have to be well familiar with various approaches to research and investigate what they find thoroughly and critically.
ReplyDeletePerhaps try to find things from different points of view to be sure you have covered all angles? After all, history is written by the victor, and had the Germans won the WWII war, a website on Hitler would have a different approach, and one on Churchill would be equally different...
Well, I think the entire world would be radically different had Hitler won the War...
ReplyDeleteThank you for making me think more on this,
ReplyDeleteOne of the challenges in covering different points of view is assessing the weight of each viepoint in making one's own opinion.
The commercial Current Affairs programs will be the most common example most children see, and they seem to run on the principle that equal weight is given to all opinions except the scientific, which get 30 seconds in a 5 minute segment.
I am not sure of the timing for going past demonstration of critical weighting, going on to asking the students to do it. A good one for thinking on, thanks again.
Julie
Perhaps the best starting point is to make students aware that there ARE different viewpoints. This could be achieved through structured activities which make it likely that they will uncover such varied points of view in a given research exercise. However, it would be really important to differentiate between:
ReplyDelete1) different claims which are both/all well-researched and well-founded;
2) different claims, where one or more are ill-founded.
It might be possible to get into such discussions at higher primary levels.
A related point, and I think one that Meridith eluded to at the last lecture, is the question of how much do we try to impart our own set of values onto our students. Maybe this is a sign of my own lack of information literacy, but one of the ways I make sense of all the information that is out there is ask: how does it sit with my own set of values and personal ideology? Regardless of the detail of his foot notes, I am resistant to the ideas of Keith Windshutle because I see him as ultra-conservative and an apologist for the injustices of white settlement. I don't feel the need to trawl through his books to make up my mind. I believe that in addition to developing critical literacies, as teachers we can't and shouldn't escape our role as shapers or guiders of values.
ReplyDeleteWhile students may not come across the level of information you are referring to, they will come across different views and will be forming their own views through different literature. For example, the story of refugees Val read to us early this year. I don't feel shy about challenging students to form views of different questions and being part of what they form.
ReplyDeleteWithin critical or political psychology one of the questions about the validity of research, amongst rigorous statistical measures, is does this research promote or disregard human rights, equality and so on. I think this could be simplified to question students about their own views.
On the other hand, I remember hearing or reading somewhere that students are also well versed and parrotting what teachers want to hear. For example, we should care about our environment, when perhaps they really don't feel connected to these messages.
I think injecting values into critical literacy is important, but you would not want a bunch of robotic students reproducing the views they think you want to hear. I guess the balance may come with students learning how to properly develop an argument about their views.
As Mark has pointed out, there is a certain congruence between this thread and my own Critical Literacy and Critical Pedagogy. At the risk of being blatantly self-promotional, I would add that Philosophy and Critical Literacy is also relevant!
ReplyDeleteTo my mind, a philosophical approach (whether or not it is acknowledged as such, and whether or not the teacher has any background in the subject) is the solution to the conundrums expressed above. We all have our values and belief systems, and it's important to be aware of them and acknowledge them, but that's not the same as imparting them to children in school. There is, of course, no abstract or neutral perspective, and children will imbibe values from many sources: family, peers, the media, etc. The teacher will unavoidably pass on certain values, by example if not explicitly, but the most important values I would want to impart are open-mindedness, an awareness of opposing interpretations, and a critical attitude.
To address Meredith's concluding point, I would say that argument is also learnt as part of this process, but it would be very helpful if teachers had some awareness of the tools of the trade. Students should be made aware of what an 'inference' is, and when it is 'valid' or 'invalid' (which are not the same as 'true' or 'false'). It is only through practice that any of us gets better at arguing. Philosophical discussions in the classroom should have knock-on effects for written literacy.
Simon, conservative critics often argue that the values you discuss ("open-mindedness, awareness of opposing interpretations, and a critical attitude") are themselves ideologically driven and have little or no place in schooling. Schools, we are told, should concern themselves with objective/accepted/[etc] 'facts' rather than questioning them. Similar arguments are regularly made about literacy (schools should focus on spelling and grammar, and perhaps on imitation of pre-established and/or canonical models, but not on analysing and critiquing). How would you respond to such arguments?
ReplyDeleteMark, I would reiterate what I said about there being no neutral perspective. There is ideology in every position, whether it is made explicit or not. There will be no final resolution of whether my pedagogical ideals are better, but all that matters to me is that I be given the freedom to try them. It may boil down to my having a sympathetic principal, or sympathetic parents.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the real test of worth for my ideals will be if my students are not stifled by schooling, but rather grow to be enthusiastic and creative individuals who will be successful in the world they will occupy as adults. If they can attribute any of this to me, then I will be satisfied.
As for 'facts', we could end up getting into epistemology. Personally, I think we have to steer a course between relativism and objectivism. Some 'facts' are better established than others. I'm not aware of anyone disputing the 'fact' that James Cook established a British colony on the south-east coast of Australia in 1788. Whether or not this colony represented an invasion is not a factual question in the same sense. It is really an interpretive question.
I strongly believe that students should learn 'facts' in the former sense, and just as strongly believe that they should be able to distinguish them from interpretive questions in the second sense. Only new historical evidence can change the first, whereas the second may change even without new evidence (although the change in interpretation may happen due to new information being available to any given individual). I think it would be quite an accomplishment for upper-primary students to grasp subtle distinctions such as these!