Learning how to become a critical consumer of technology is more vital than ever, because anyone and everyone, however misinformed or unqualified, has access to spreading information to a worldwide audience. In fact, misinformation has existed from the beginning of recorded history – ever since messages have been communicated through the written word, speech, and the arts. The challenges this presents for teachers are 1) How to give students the tools to think critically; 2) More specifically, how to teach students to be critical users of media, whether computers in the 21st century or eyewitness accounts and art work from centuries ago; and 3) History/Social science, such an vital opportunity for critical thinking and multiple perspectives, is often the forgotten curriculum in elementary classrooms. By using resources and frameworks from gifted education, inquiry, history-social science and literacy, there are tools available to help students become responsible consumers of information. In this chapter, an Inquiry Lesson is presented which incorporates all these frameworks.
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With the proliferation of unverified digital resources, and the questionable veracity of social media in general, “Digital Literacy” and learning how to become a responsible and critical consumer of technology are more vital than ever because anyone and everyone, however misinformed or unqualified, has access to spreading information to a worldwide audience. Questions abound: How does one identify evidence-based journalism free from social-political purposes? If a post or an article is an opinion, is it balanced? Are some portions factual? What are the credentials of the author? Who is the publisher or sponsor of the research? Why does this content exist? Is it trying to push an agenda? If so, does the author make that clear? How do authors attempt to convince others of the truth as they know it? What is the truth anyway?
Is this just a 21st-century problem brought on by the advent of digital forms of communication? No. In fact, the problem has existed from the beginning of recorded history – ever since messages have been communicated through journals, art, and music. Deliberately misleading or biased information existed in paintings hundreds of years ago just as they do in the media of today.
The challenges this presents are at least three-fold. It is not only about teaching students to be critical users of media, whether computers in the 21st century, eyewitness accounts during the American Revolution, or art work from the 1800s depicting events from the 1400s. It is also about giving students the tools to think critically. This presents a challenge because History/Social Sciences, such an important and necessary opportunity for critical thinking, is often not taught at all in elementary schools. It may be introduced through stories in the reading anthology, but these tend to be snapshots in time, overlooking multiple causes, multiple effects, and multiple perspectives. If History/Social Science is included in the curriculum, it is often reduced to, “Read the chapter and answer the questions at the end of the chapter.”
Often one may look to the arts to uncover other interpretations of historic events. Yet artists and their benefactors have points of view as well. It is difficult to escape an underlying agenda in any piece of art or even in a first-hand account. There is definitely a value in using primary sources as evidence because they were accounts by eyewitnesses, people who were actually there. Witnesses, however, were just people with points of view, often people with agendas. Julius Caesar, for example, kept a diary of his exploits, a case of the victor writing the history that survives (58-49 BC).
We have to go to great lengths to find that there were other points of view. What about the views of those who were defeated? Textbooks can also have subtle biases, although typicallywritten by scholars in their fields, Textbooks can only give a selective surface analysis of a historical event. Much is left out.
One of the only pictures most children ever see in their textbooks about the American Revolution is Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, with the exception of some versions that included Crispus Attucks, an American whaler, sailor, and stevedore of African and Native American descent, in the engraving. Textbooks provide scant explanation. Here is an example from a textbook:
The anger between the colonists and the British soldiers grew, and fights broke out more often. One of the worst fights took place in Boston on March 5, 1770, when a large crowd of angry colonists gathered near several British soldiers. The colonists shouted insults at the soldiers and began throwing rocks and snowballs at them. As the crowd moved forward, the soldiers opened fire. Three colonists were killed on the spot, and two others died later. Paul Revere, a Boston silversmith who supported the colonists, made a picture of the shooting and titled it the Bloody Massacre. A massacre is the killing of many people who cannot defend themselves. The shooting in Boston soon became known as The Boston Massacre. (Porter, 2007)
It was not until many years later that this author was introduced to other points of view and found out that Captain Thomas Preston, the British commander that day, and most of the British soldiers were found NOT guilty, as documented in court proceedings, and that Revere’s etching was plagiarized (uncredited) from an etching by Henry Pelham. (Founder of the Day, 2022). Because of conflicting eyewitness reports of the provocation, only two soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter, not murder.”