Law and Civic Education
Summer Institute
July 13, 2017
Session I: News Literacy Workshop
Janice
Schachter
Center for News Literacy
What is News Literacy? – the ability to use
critical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news
reports, whether they come via print, television, the internet or SOCIAL MEDIA
(usually Social Media)
In the Information Age, YOU
are in charge of determining what is reliable… & what is not.
Resources:
· Wikipedia - has nots
of sourcing
· Snopes.com – great fact
checking resource, not google
· Associated Press
· Reddit
· Chrome Extension – “Read Across The Aisle”
– color codes push “news”
· Google “incognito” – search not based on
previous searches
How do you create a safe
space? Where everyone carries around biases, prejudices…
-
Project
Implicate – Harvard Bias Study – to find out what your biases are (fun game to
show students)
-
Use Ave Q
Song – “Everyone’s a little Bit Racist”
Challenges for empowered
consumers in the Digital Age:
·
Information overload
·
Speed vs accuracy
·
Blurring of the lines
·
Challenging our own bias
To be Journalism the information has to be:
·
Accountable – can you contact email
address
·
Independent from the story – bias,
transparency, not written by the source, parent company disclaimer
·
Verifiable – ex. Vice checks sources
3 times and say that on program
What
is “truthiness”? (Stephen Colbert)
- we usually go to sources
that align with our own biases
How do we begin to
evaluate websites? - Search Tips
-
don’t go by
rank, Clickbait – SEO
-
what’s
“trending” doesn’t mean truth
-
look at
domain names (its super easy to get a .com, .org, .net)
-
look at date
-
Reverse Image
Search
-
Google with
word “hoax”
-
How many
followers on twitter
-
Use common
sense
Deconstruction
is Deconstruction:
1. Summarize the main points,
comparing headline of the story
2. Summarize the reporter
open the freezer? Is the evidence direct or indirect?
3. Does the reporter place
the facts, the story
4. Who, what, where, when,
& why???
5. Is the story fair to the evidence? Is balance
called for? What about fair play and language? “Fairness vs Balance" Ex. Use the
word – “said” while writing news stories. Better than using “claims” or “alleged”
or “advocated”as a verb for a quote.
Nmeumonic Device for evaluate sources: I-M-V-A-I-N
I
- Independent vs. self-interested sources
M
- Multiple sources are better than single ones
V
- Verifies vs. Asserts
A
- Authoritative vs. Uniformed
I
- Informed vs. Uniformed
N
- Named vs. Unnamed
Phrases
“Freezer” – did the reporter go
as far as they do reasonably what they should have down?
-
Phrase
related to the reporter that went to the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina
b/c he heard people were murdering each other and they said the bodies were
in the freezer, but he didn’t check the freezer and it wound up being
incorrect
|
“Third
Degree”
– was a tactic used by NYPD to get confessions, lashing, torture
-
Phrase is
used in a milder manner today
|
Special Guest Star:
VP of New York Bar
Foundation
Mr. Ellis Mursky
Session II: Student Voice
in the Digital Age
“Lessons from the
Constitution & the Courts”
(Teaching history through case studies)
David Scott, Coordinator
Project P.A.T.C.H.
Video
Presentation: (15 min)
A Tribute to Dr. Isadore
Starr: “The Founding Father of Law-Related Education”
- “The law is here, there, and everywhere.” – Isadore Starr
-
All students
should graduate high school with an idea of what is:
-
Liberty,
Justice, Property, & Equality – revolving around Power
-
Joseph
McCarthy – created an atmosphere of fear & teachers were afraid to teach
“controversy”
-
Articles re:
teaching controversial Issues though studying supreme court decisions in public
education: Social Education
-
Pioneer of
Civics Education
-
Mock Court is
great in the classroom taking on arguments
First Amendment – freedom of speech,
it’s a limitation on governmental
power to censor you from expressing yourself, not a license to say whatever you
want.
The 14th
Amendment
– as a teacher, we are upholding the rights and responsibilities as written the
constitution
Another
law to look up - 42UC1983
Landmark Student Freedom
of Speech Supreme Court Cases
1. Tinker
vs. Des Moines Independent School
District
(1968-1969 decision)
- Free Speech precedent- First Amendment Rights were infringed upon
-
Decision: Student speech cannot be censored as long as it
does not “materially disrupt class
work or involve substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.”
-
Students have inalienable individual rights
-
Mary Beth (7th
grade) & John Tinker (10th grade)
-
Parents were
civil rights activists and dad was local pastor
-
Plan was to
wear black arm
bands to school protest the
Vietnam War
-
Also
supported Senator R. Kennedy’s call for a Christmas moratorium of fighting
-
Has been
cited in over 1000 court cases
-
Majority
Opinion says: “It can hardly be argued to
that either teachers or students shed their constitutional rights to freedom or
speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
-
U.S. Supreme court
only takes 100 cased
per term and took the case
-
The “Tinker Test” (check this)
o material disruption of
class work
o substantial disorder
o invading the rights of
others
There
is a direct line of Civil Right Movement to laws regarding Students with
Disabilities
2. The Fraser Standard
Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser
(1986)
-
Fraser gets
suspended for giving a sexualized campaign speech for VP of HS as a senior
-
ACLU lawyer -
Now a Speech and Debate Coach
-
Applied
Tinker Test – but added that free speech in school is protested but couldn’t be
“vulgar,
obscene sexual innuendo”
3. Morse v. Frederick
- “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”
-
Argued
3/19/07 - Decided 6/25/07 – Juneau, Alaska
-
Students were
permitted to leave class to go to a “school-sanctioned & supervised event”
to watch the Olympic Torch pass through town
-
18-year-old
student Joseph Frederick was late for school that day. He joined his friends on
the sidewalk at the event. He saw it on snowboard
and thought it would be funny.
-
He
basically made the first amendment for the punchline for joke
-
Different
Viewpoints:
o Advocacy of illegal drug
use not protected
o Political speech remains
protected
o Justice Thomas wanted to
reverse Tinker
4. Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier
-
She tried to
write an
articles on (1) teen pregnancy and (2) divorce
-
Principal
pulled the articles
-
ACLU lawyer
sucked and evidence was left out, so she lost
*CONCLUSION: Internet Free
Speech cases have never heard by Supreme Court: The courts have decided
that the internet can build a nexus which is accountable to the Tinker Test
- Layshock v. Hermitage School District (PA) - Internet Based Free Speech,
didn’t make it to
- Doninger v. Niehoff
- Student made
a slanderous posting on community blog which leads to suit b/c principal
wouldn’t endorse/sign off on a candidate running for student body president to
serve on student government
DASA statute does not grant additional power to schools to oversee bullying – DASA says the school must:
DASA statute does not grant additional power to schools to oversee bullying – DASA says the school must:
-
report
bullying and take steps to
-
fight it
-
have a
component in school to combat bullying
“With great power, comes
great responsibility.” - Uncle Ben Parker to Spiderman
Dave Scott’s Closing Thought:
“If we empower our students to use their voices responsibly,
they can do great things!”
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