“Fake News” is frightening…but not the way you think it is

Posted on January 16, 2021 by Erik Palmer

Millions of Americans do not believe Joe Biden was elected president. Every election until now reported results and every citizen accepted that those results were accurate. How did we get to a point where millions of us do not believe what has been proven over and over?

Because while you were teaching students to not believe fake stories, Donald Trump was teaching Americans to not believe true stories.

Beginning five years ago, Donald Trump criticized the media, targeting specific people, networks, and papers. Initially, he picked on the New York Times and CNN. Now, even Fox News is on his hit list (see an article here). Originally, almost all news sources were called “fake news” by the former President. Then they became enemies of the American people. Attacking the press was a key part of his presidency from the early days.

All reporting is wrong. Don’t believe anything. Those were the messages received non-stop.

But is it dangerous to destroy belief in the media?

MISUSING THE WORD “FAKE”

Fake means false. Didn’t happen. Reporting that a poll that says 32% of the people trust the media is not fake if in fact such a poll existed. That some other poll might have different percentages does not mean that the first story was fake. CNN, ABC, NBC accurately reported the polls in the election. That the election turned out differently does not mean the stories were made up.

Not covering a story or only covering part of a story does not equal fake news. If there were big crowds on one side of the street supporting Black Lives Matter and counter protestors on the other side of the street, showing only one side of the street is misleading. Ignoring the other side of the street may be evidence of bias, but bias does not mean fake. The people shown were actually there. There is a huge difference between choosing one view over another (bias) and reporting something that never happened (fake). Pointing out bias is fair. Denying the truth is sinister.

THE PROBLEM IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS

Our first response to “fake news” as educators was to teach students how to sniff out fake news. We pointed out that some stories were totally false. Made up. Never happened. No truth. We wanted to give kids tools for figuring out which stories were fabricated. But teaching students how to find lies has turned out to be a much smaller problem than the frightening issue with “fake news”:

I am a little worried that students will believe something that is false.

I am terrified that students will not believe something that is true.

While we emphasized the small amount of stuff that is nonsense, we missed the incredibly serious risk of creating cynics who feel comfortable disregarding truths. One of the most important pieces of civil society was undermined while we were watching. Millions of us do not believe that which is true.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PRESS

A little history. Within minutes of creating a new country, our Founding Fathers decided to make ten changes to the Constitution. The very first change they proposed?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment 1 protects freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. The Founders were worried that these freedoms, not specifically mentioned in the articles setting up the government, could be attacked. Before anything else, they wanted to guarantee these freedoms.

…the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable. James Madison

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. Thomas Jefferson

The Founding Fathers realized that a free and respected press would help hold government leaders accountable, publicize important issues, and educate citizens so they can make informed decisions. Attacking the press, then, is a very dicey proposition. If the press is demeaned, those three things don’t happen. Who will perform those functions? This is not a liberal or a conservative issue. Both ideologies agree that a free press is critical to a well-functioning democracy.

Yet if our right to a free and independent press is infringed, all other rights fall. Our ability to be informed and the free flow of information, regardless of how damaging it is to elected officials, is one of the most essential safeguards to our liberty. The fight for a free press is one that we absolutely cannot afford to lose. http://www.freedomworks.org/content/flashback-founders-necessity-free-press

The press, which is essential to the preservation of liberty, has also come under attack from the government. One of the principles that ensures a free press is that journalists are not required to reveal their sources. This is one way government whistleblowers can feel free to come forward and reveal information that is of public importance, such as governmental corruption and abuse, without fearing exposure. If journalists were required to reveal their sources, scandals involving government corruption and wrongdoing such as Watergate might never be brought to the attention of the media and, thus, the American people. https://www.rutherford.org/constitutional_corner/amendment_i_freedom_of_religion_speech_press_and_assembly

DESTROYING FAITH IN A CRITICAL INSTITUTION

The non-stop barrage of “fake news” had an effect. Distrust in the media is increasing. From Gallup analyst Art Swift:

Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media ‘to report the news fully, accurately and fairly’ has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32 percent saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/296003-poll-trust-in-media-at-all-time-low

The numbers are radically different based on party affiliation: 14% of Republicans, 30% of independents, and 51% of Democrats trust the media. According to an Emerson College poll, 91% of Republicans think the news media is untruthful (47% of independents, 31% of Democrats). http://thehill.com/homenews/media/318514-trump-admin-seen-as-more-truthful-than-news-media-poll At the extreme, Trump supporters shouted “luegenpresse” at a rally (see the article here).

In other words, Trump’s strategy worked. That many Americans do not believe that the 2020 election results are real and that COVID is a hoax proves it. It’s all fake news and there are no longer accepted facts.

EDUCATORS MUST RESPOND

It is not enough, then, to teach students how to ferret out falsehoods. It is critical, yes, but more is needed. We must set the context. We must explain the importance of a free press. We must explain the core principles of our Founding Fathers. We must point out how rulers around the world and throughout history have attacked the press in order to subjugate the citizenry. We must make clear that a free press is never the enemy of the people. And yes, we have to risk upsetting some people by making clear that Trump was frighteningly wrong.

Posted in Media Literacy | 1 Comment

Speaking Well Does Not Mean Speaking White

Posted on December 20, 2020 by Erik Palmer

I didn’t think I would have to clarify that. But I had an interesting experience over a tweet I wrote.

My tweet:

An irate response to that tweet: “How dare you tell students that you must speak a certain way! Who are you to insist that only white, middle-class speech is appropriate?”

This provides some important lessons for all of us. First lesson, read before you react. Don’t fly off the handle and make ridiculous (stupid?) assumptions. Had the person read the article or anything else I have ever written, she would have known that I never come close to suggesting that there is only one approved way of speaking. I have made that clear many times in my work, including here. https://www.td.org/insights/code-switching-its-not-always-proper-to-speak-properly A small exploration of what I have written would reveal that the skills I suggest teaching apply to all styles. The comment is as absurd as protesting teaching comma usage. “How dare you tell students that commas are used to separate items in a series! That’s racist.”

Second lesson, we have no idea what it means to teach good speaking. What good speakers do can be done in any language, dialect, or social group. In other words, the skills of effective speaking are neutral: gender neutral, ethnically neutral, politically neutral, religiously neutral, and whatever other kind of bias you are worried about. I’ll give you a couple of examples. All speaking involves what you do before you speak and what you do as you speak. I refer to these as building a talk and performing a talk.

One thing to address before you open your mouth is to analyze the audience. You should plan a different talk about magnetism for third graders than you do for twelfth graders. You should plan a different talk about math manipulatives for teachers at the math department meeting than for parents at Back to School night. You should use a different style for the interview committee at IBM than for the teammates in the dugout. I use a different style for my stand-up routine at the comedy club than for my keynotes at district PD days. Analyzing the audience is a tip for all speakers who want to be successful. It is not class or race specific.

One skill to think about as you are speaking is speed. Great speakers know how to use speed well. They can speed up to create excitement. They can slow down for emphasis. They can stop for dramatic effect. Watch any truly impressive speaker anywhere on the planet. Watch speakers speaking a language you do not understand. That way the message won’t distract you, and you can pay attention to the delivery. You’ll discover that great speakers adjust their pace. Yes, the pace can and should be influenced by the audience analysis. Slam poets tend to speak more quickly than TED talkers. But all effective speakers know how to adjust speed for impact. Learning how to play with pace is tip for all speakers. It is not gender or ethnic specific.

If you are curious about the five skills needed to create powerful talks and the six needed to deliver impressively, visit pvlegs.com. Then use that framework to teach students how to speak well in whatever manner they choose to speak.

As a side-note, notice that the skills are teachable. It is not the case that some kids are good speakers from birth while most are not. All students can improve as writers, as readers, as science-ers, as math-ers, as thinkers, and as speakers. Want to teach about how to use speed well? Have a little lesson about speed. Put up this mini-speech:

Just a nice relaxing day in the park. We were sitting on our blanket, looking at clouds, looking at flowers, sipping lemonade. Ahhh, peace and quiet. But suddenly it all changed. We heard screaming and yelling and people were running toward us. Picnic tables were being knocked over. Stuff was flying. Someone shouted, “Look! Over there! An alien spaceship!!” Panic took over! Up in the sky was a large…a large…oh, for heaven’s sake…a large blimp shaped like a flying saucer. A stunt by some company advertising something. No big deal.

Have different students deliver the words focusing on speed. Where should we be slow and deliberate? Where should we speed up? Where should we pause? Why? How does changing the pace add to the words? Who did you think did the best at changing speed? Want to try again to see if you can do even better? Will all students master pace? Of course not, just as all don’t master our word choice lessons. Will all students improve at a skill that great speakers use? Yep.

Bottom line: settle down. Don’t be so quick to take offense. And don’t be so quick to assume that speaking is somehow different than other language arts. It can and should be taught. All students deserve to have an effective voice. https://erikpalmerconsulting.com/

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Evaluating Speaking

Posted on July 2, 2020 by Erik Palmer

Look around your building. You will see students speaking, sometimes informally, sometimes formally. Sometimes teachers grade those speaking assignments. Now look closely at the rubrics and score sheets that are being used. Each one is unique. No two teachers have the same idea of what it takes to be an effective speaker. This means that our students will get inconsistent, sometimes contradictory, and often very wrong comments making it very difficult to piece together how to become competent communicators. We don’t really know how to evaluate speaking.

I wrote previously about the two very distinct components of all oral communication: building the speech (all the things you do before you open your mouth) and performing the speech (all the things you do as you are speaking). Understanding that distinction is the beginning point for creating effective rubrics. Too often, teachers hand out rubrics that jump from ‘building” to “performing” elements: Content, 10 points; Volume, 10 pts.; Organization, 10 pts.; Eye contact, 10 pts.; and so on. Worse, many teachers combine disparate elements on their rubrics: Content, volume, and pacing, 20 points. A student develops content before the day of the talk, but volume and pacing are considerations as he is talking.

Multiple items on one scoring line create another problem, as well. If the score sheet says “Speak loudly, clearly, and slowly—10 points,” did I get a 6 because I was loud enough and clear enough but spoke way too fast? Was I a little off on each of the three things? Was I pretty far off on two of the three? A student will have no idea what to work on before the next presentation.

In this case, we could solve the ‘multiple item on one line’ problem by breaking those three apart: Speak loudly 5 pts.; speak clearly 5 pts.; speak slowly 5 pts., for example. But this reveals another problem. Two of those three descriptors are wrong. It is not necessary to always speak loudly. Sometimes a quiet voice is very powerful. When my father said softly, “Erik, come here,” I knew something big was about to happen. Yes, every word needs to be heard but speaking loudly is often inappropriate. Speaking slowly is equally wrong. Recounting the exciting play when the winning goal was scored demands a quick pace. Don’t read this slowly:

The defender slipped slightly. I quickly pushed the ball past him and raced to the goal. Two other defenders came rushing at me. The keeper’s eyes lit up. I fired off a shot just as the defenders converged on where the ball had been. Too late!

It is wrong to suggest to students that they need to speak slowly. They should pay attention to speed, for sure, and they should be taught how to adjust it for effect.

In my work with teachers around the country, I have seen many different words used to evaluate just the performing part of speaking:

Intonation, elocution, articulation, inflection, expression, enthusiasm, loudly, pitch, rhythm, clearly, slowly, volume, hold head up, body language, posture, tone, eye contact, poise, look at audience, stand up straight, gestures, projection, body movement, enunciation, presence, fluid expression, confidence, interesting voice…

You may find more at your school. Some of these are misguided and some are confusing words for students. In any case, imagine the difficulty we give our students when we bury them with different descriptors and bad advice. Let me offer some solutions.

Develop a consistent, school-wide language. When a student moves from grade to grade or from class to class, she should be able to expect the same grading system. Don’t have one teacher score “articulation and posture,” another “elocution and loudness,” another “hold head up and enunciation,” and so on.
Make sure teachers separate “building a speech” elements from “performing a speech” elements on your rubric. On the top half of the score sheet, score content, organization, and visual aids; on the bottom half, score poise, voice, life, eye contact, gestures, and speed. Give both parts equal weight. Don’t make the performance unimportant; don’t make the performance outweigh lack of content.
Use simple language. “Elocution,” “presence,” “fluid body language,” are not student friendly words. “Speak each word clearly,” “be poised,” and “use hand, face, and body gestures” are more accessible terms.
Don’t use misleading words. Think hard about each word as I demonstrated with “loudly” and “slowly.” “Enthusiasm” is inappropriate in the speech about your grandmother’s death.
A speech is for an audience. The audience opinion must be part of the grade. Every listener must have some form to score as he or she listens to the speech. No, it doesn’t become a popularity contest. Students are very good evaluators and they know poise when they see it, they know if the speech covered the required content. Additionally, involving the students makes them attentive and critical listeners—something necessary to address the listening part of your state’s standards.

I created a framework for building a talk and performing a talk which you can see at pvlegs.com. Look at the Rubrics and Organizers tab for lots of help. A sample of what you’ll find:

Posted in Speaking | 1 Comment

Spotting a Fake Post

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Erik Palmer

Spotting a Fake Post: Teaching About Media Literacy on Social Platforms

October 09, 2019

Erik Palmer Program Consultant, Into Reading and Into Literature

This blog post is part of a series focusing on media literacy.

If you have been on social media, you may have seen this or something similar posted:

This version was posted on Facebook by a friend of mine—a bright person with advanced degrees, a wonderful teacher, and, sadly, a duped person. We have all heard about fake content on social media, but even the best of us seem to fall for some of it. How does this happen? Why do we suspend disbelief? Why aren’t we more thoughtful and careful?

As teachers, we have a responsibility to help students become media literate. If we study the anatomy of this Facebook post, we can gather ideas about how to teach students to avoid being duped by similar posts. Let’s look at all the features of this post that made it popular—and what students can learn from it.

The post is about a hot topic: Privacy? Personal photos? Let’s put aside for a moment that Facebook pictures have already been shared and are therefore not private or personal. Good fake posts find an irresistible, hot-button issue to hook us. Teach students to get their guard up immediately upon seeing posts designed to rile us up.

The post is poorly written: Punctuation errors, capitalization errors, run-ons and fragments, missing parentheses, and disorganized thoughts are obvious. Poor writing should be a clue to help students realize that we aren’t dealing with a top-notch source.

The post lacks specificity: There are two parts to this, with the first issue being that the post has no definite timestamp. The use of tomorrow is very clever in a couple of ways. It creates an “OMG, I have to do something now” type of urgency that overrides our better thinking. The fear response overpowers the calm thinking response. Additionally, no definite timestamp creates something that can live forever. Like the sign I saw in a bar recently—Free Beer Tomorrow!—this post never expires. Indeed, versions of this post go back to 2012. Let students know that all true legal announcements have specific dates. “Effective November 1, 2019, Facebook will change its privacy rules” would at least be somewhat more likely, but suspicion is still warranted.

The second issue is that it has no definite source. It talks about a nonspecific Channel 13. Do you have a Channel 13 in your town? Do you think it is the same as the Channel 13 in my town? No matter. Most of us have a Channel 13, so it is probably talking about my Channel 13! But what’s missing? Specificity. “According to WNYT on Channel 13 in Albany, New York, Facebook is changing its privacy policy” would at least be more likely. Notice also that there is no air date given. When was this story aired? May 2 on the 5 p.m. news? June 4 at 10 p.m.? Let students know that vagueness is always a cautionary sign.

The post has bogus legalese: You want specifics? Here’s the exact statute number! I guess that looks like a number a law might have, right? And the Rome Statute? I mean, it came from Rome, so it must be real! But why not check it out? Encourage students to do a web search. In this case, a search reveals that the Rome Statute established the International Criminal Court, which handles crimes such as genocide. Tell students that they always need to double check and verify.

The post offers a simplistic and silly solution: Anytime a post says to copy, paste, or forward, STOP. Don’t do it. Ever. Ask students if it is likely that pasting something on your timeline will override privacy policies in social media agreements. Facebook has staff searching through billions of posts to see who has pasted this and these staff will then change the settings of those accounts? Think about that for a minute. Point out that sites have settings. We can go into the settings and change who sees our posts, what ads we want to see, what notifications we get, and so on. Perhaps something such as “Go to Settings. Click on Privacy. Uncheck ‘Allow All’” would be reasonable, but “Copy, Paste, and Breathe”? Help students understand that privacy issues are real in the world of social media, but let them know there is no simple way to solve those issues.

As my friend made clear, intelligent people can be sucked into internet lies. But all fakes have clues that tip us off. Teach students what to look for. If the elements above are in a post, red lights should flash in their brains. If they think critically, they won’t fall for this or similar fakes. After all, according to News@4, sharing bogus posts will cause Von Willebrand Disease, so care full is needed. https://erikpalmerconsulting.com/

***

Blog contributor Erik Palmer is an author on the HMH Into Reading and HMH Into Literature programs. Palmer was a guest on HMH’s new podcast series, Shaping the Future, in November 2019

Posted in Media Literacy | Leave a comment

Remember How Important You Are

Posted on August 11, 2019 by Erik Palmer

When teachers at Mission Viejo Elementary School came back from summer break, I was there. They wanted me to present on the morning of the first day. I have worked with hundreds of schools and districts across North America, and my presentation went along well until one slide came up. I got all choked up. Yes, I am prone to that, and at my children’s big events, they will tell you that I often have to stop to collect myself. But this is the first time I got choked up during this presentation. You see, my grandson will be attending Mission Viejo kindergarten this year.

Here’s what happened: I put up a picture of my grandson and was suddenly hit by the enormity of the teacher’s task. These children aren’t data points. They aren’t 104’s or IEPs. They aren’t ADHDs or special eds or GTs or minorities or any other labels. They aren’t vessels to be filled, and they aren’t future test-takers to be groomed for the Big Test. They are someone’s child, someone’s grandchild.

Grandson Brayden is raw, innocent, vulnerable, and wonderful. I don’t know if he’ll be a great reader or writer or artist or mathematician or athlete or anything. All I know is that he is walking into school expecting great things. His mother is one of the sweetest people on the planet, and my son-in-law is a great father. They are watching their child walk into Mission Viejo fully expecting that he will be well cared for and well educated. Their level of trust is amazing: Here. You can have our child every day. He is precious. He is unique. We love him. We believe in you and want you to help him become even more amazing.

As teachers, we easily lose sight of the enormity of the task we have chosen. We get caught up with the minutiae of education, the forms, the meetings, the day-to-day problems, the new directives, and the new initiatives. In my case, I was telling the teachers that we were going to undertake some important work this year, transforming the way all students speak. We tend to overlook the fact that students don’t speak well as we go on about our other businesses. I said that I want all students to become better at life’s most important language art, oral communication. I want Brayden and all of his classmates to leave Mission Viejo able to speak well in every situation. I want them to be comfortable and confident communicators. That is important work. I think speaking well will be worth more to them than many other things we teach in school. But I don’t want any teacher to think, “I have to teach speaking.” I want all of us to remember that we have to improve the lives of the children entrusted to us. That is an incredible undertaking.

I had a principal who was good at spouting, “All of my decisions are based on the best interests of the children.” She used the phrase as a way of taking out other opinions: My decision is in the best interest of students whereas your opinion is selfish. She wasn’t concerned about kids as much as she was about being right, getting us to fall in line, and/or selling the new district mandate. I remember when the district decided that my 8^th graders had to take a test that predicted how well they would do when the took the test in 10^th grade that predicted how well they would do when they took the test in 11^th grade that some colleges required for admissions. It was in the best interest of students, we were told. The test was dropped after a few years. Were we lied to? Why drop something that was so good for students, right? That is the topic for another blog. But even so, my principal was paying lip service to the wrong idea. I don’t want what’s in the best interests of students. I want what’s in the best interest of young human beings.

There is a subtle difference there. Brayden is not just a student. He is so much more, and he is someone’s very special child. It is an awesome responsibility to realize that every being in your class has been sent to you by loving, hopeful, sometimes inept, concerned parents who believe you are worthy of crucial years of their child’s life. Every once in a while, step back and remember how important you are to children. Think about how noble and wonderful your job is. I bet you’ll get choked up, too.

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Four Ways to Prepare Students for the Future

Posted on July 23, 2019 by Erik Palmer

Screen Shot 2019-07-23 at 4.35.22 PM

To make students’ futures better, we need to consider what skills they will need—and teach them.

If we really want to prepare students for life beyond school, we could begin by asking ourselves what pieces of our own education we are using now as adults. That is an edgy question, and many teachers will take offense if anyone suggests that, in spite of their personal, deep love of haiku/Shakespeare/geodes/the Articles of Confederation/cosine, most adults have never needed deep knowledge of any of those to succeed. The truth is, many highly successful people gain success without remembering large amounts of material that they learned in school.

When the Colorado Student Assessment Program was introduced, Bill Owens, the governor at the time, refused to take the test, despite being a proponent of standards and testing. The legislators who did take a version of the test did not do well. This can be read as criticism of the politicians behind big tests, but it is possibly more of a criticism of our curricula. All of us would fail most of the tests we took in school. The information we were tested on has not been relevant to our lives and has been forgotten.

Does that mean we’ve been teaching the wrong things? Is it possible that TheScarlet Letter and the dates of the Hundred Years War are not crucial to life after school? Heresy, right?

What parts of your education have been critical to your adult success? What do you wish you had been taught? Many adults say they wish they were better at public speaking, so let’s teach more oral communication. What else? These are tough questions that, answered truthfully, could radically change what we teach.

The relevant, long-lasting lessons from our own education will likely be relevant and long-lasting for our current students. But the world our students graduate into will not look exactly like the world of 2019. We want to prepare students for their futures, which leads us to make predictions. This is a tricky business and not one with which educators have had a lot of success. I remember learning to make computer punch cards because it was the skill of the future. I was also taught BASIC programming because that would be the key to getting jobs. There was a “Golly, kids, look at the new-fangled gadgets!” mentality behind these efforts, which, unfortunately, still exists.

When we are asked to think of the future, our minds go to hovering cars, 4D printers, teleportation, and knowledge chips implanted into the brain. I don’t want to make guesses about the likelihood of these technologies coming to fruition. I can’t tell you what the classroom of the future will look like or whether there will even be classrooms. I’m not going to bet one way or the other on the maker movement or flipped instruction or coding or anything else. But I will make four bold predictions.

Prediction 1. There will still be an Internet.

It will still be possible to pick up a device, ask a question, and get several million results in less than one second. Although I may not be going out on a limb here, the implications of this prediction are profound. Students will need to be able to make sense of the massive amounts of information they will find. These are just a few of the skills an Internet-literate student needs:

An understanding of what the Internet is. “I found it on the Internet” is not an accurate statement. You found it on a computer connected to the World Wide Web.
Ways to formulate queries. Typing “childhood obesity” into a search engine is not the best way to discover what health problems are associated with being overweight. Students need to know about Boolean searches, adding prefixes such as SITE and FILETYPE, and more. For example, “site:.edu childhood obesity” will yield search results from educational sites only and eliminate the massive amount of results from .com sites and others.
An awareness of various types of search engines. Google is not the only option. Specialized search engines can be much more fruitful. Kidrexis excellent for young students; Google Scholar only retrieves information from research articles, professional journals, university websites, and other scholarly resources.
An awareness of how search engine results are ranked. Teach students that being at the top of the list does not mean a result is the best source and that results are rigged to be most pleasing to your tastes.
An understanding of domain types. Teach the meanings of .com, .gov, .guru, .hr, and .org.
Tools to evaluate the people behind the website. Teach students how to find the credentials of content creators and evaluate their expertise.
An ability to analyze a website’s purpose. Teach students ways to discover whether the site is designed to inform, amuse, persuade, or sell.
An awareness of bias. How is foxnews.comdifferent from www.huffingtonpost.com? Teach students to look for slanted information.

These skills will continue to be important for evaluating the information the Internet provides, yet many teachers still send students online to research without direct instruction in these skills. The problems of information overload will get worse, and many students are leaving school without the critical-thinking skills needed to make sense of this information tsunami.

Prediction 2. Salespeople will still exist.

Whether selling standardized tests to the board of education (yes, there will still be Big Tests), holodecks to homeowners, new-generation “geniusphones,” candidates for the Interplanetary Council, or virtual reality glasses, the sales profession will remain. Commercials will bombard us from everywhere. The arts of argument, persuasion, and rhetoric will be in high demand.

To evaluate these sales pitches, students will need an understanding of logic, reasoning, argument, and persuasive techniques. We have to teach students the definition of argument (statements leading to a conclusion); how to evaluate arguments (Do the statements force us to accept the conclusion? Are the statements true?); and how to support statements (the five types of evidence: facts, numbers, quotes, examples, and analogies). We have to teach them how to recognize and avoid reasoning errors, such as confusing causality and correlation, generalizing, making ad hominem attacks, derailing the train of thought, and stereotyping. We have to make students aware of persuasive tricks such as transference, bandwagon appeals, and loaded words, as well as rhetorical tricks such as hyperbole, allusion, and euphemism.

We ask students to do argumentative writing, but do we teach the skills involved? Teachers I’ve surveyed say they’ve never been trained to teach argument, reasoning, persuasion, and rhetoric, but students will need to understand these techniques as adults.

Prediction 3. Listening will still be important.

That’s not an exciting, sci-fi, high-tech prediction. But listening in the future will be high-tech. When we think of listening, we tend to think of verbal messages. If you pay attention to what I’m saying, that completes the listening task, right? Actually, listening is more complex than that, and it’s getting even more complex. Messages are not merely oral communications but rather an elaborate mix of words, sounds, music, and images. This means that all students will need to be media literate so they can listen well to different kinds of media.

I guarantee that a team of students with a camera can make your school look terrible today. They will find garbage that missed the trash can, a student upset about something that happened at recess, a torn poster on the wall. Another team can make your school look great today. They will photograph a teacher and student engaged in conversation, a well-organized classroom, and a trophy case. Both teams told the “truth,” but they made a point by selecting one image over another. Teach students about the power of images.

Good videos are carefully constructed. Have you seen “A Pep Talk from Kid President to You?” In the video, YouTube personality Kid President offers some words of inspiration and encouragement. Why is Kid President in a locker room? On a football field? In front of a board covered with Xs and Os? Each scene is chosen for a reason. Are students aware of this? And why are there so many scene changes? How does that affect viewers? Teach students about the construction of videos.

Sound and music are selected for a reason. Teach students how to alter a message with sound. You can find several fun examples on YouTube of movie scenes that have been given alternate soundtracks. Find the video that makes the movie Frozen seem like a horror film or the silly video of a snail, in which different types of music make the same scene scary, funny, and even somber. All of us are susceptible to manipulation by music, and every day we experience it. Teach students specific lessons about sound and its powers.

Prediction 4. People will still be speaking.

The last several years have seen an explosion of ways to display verbal messages: Facetime, Skype, Periscope for Twitter, and cell phone apps, plus tools for video conferences, webinars, podcasts, narrated slideshows, and many more. Unfortunately, schools have often ignored speaking skills. My son works for a company that connects people who have ideas for high-tech financial innovations with potential investors and users. He reports that there is no shortage of brilliant people with brilliant ideas but a serious shortage of people who can verbally communicate those ideas. Turning ideas into reality involves collaboration and communication. Prerequisites for collaboration and communication? Listening and speaking skills.

For students to thrive in a world of oral communication, we have to teach students how to build and present a message. Teaching students to create a valuable message means teaching them

How to analyze an audience and craft a message for that audience.
How to include interesting and important information that connects with the audience.
How to organize the talk with a grabber opening, clear transitions, and a powerful closing.
How to create effective visual aids.
How to adjust their personal appearance for the audience and occasion.
Teaching students how to present the message means teaching them
How to appear poised and avoid distracting behaviors.
How to make sure every word is clearly heard.
How to add life to the voice so listeners can hear passion and emotion.
How to make eye contact.
How to use hand, face, and body gestures effectively.
How to adjust speed for effect.

Just as we teach lessons about capitalization before asking students to write an essay, we need lessons about use of pacing when speaking. Just as we have lessons about finding common denominators before asking students to add fractions, we need lessons about designing slides for visual aids. In a future with oral communication on display to an even greater extent than it is today, students’ shortcomings in these areas will hurt them. Teach students to be well spoken.

Classic Skills for a New Age

Not very sci-fi. No new devices offered. No massive restructuring of schools. No wildly new areas of instruction. Indeed, two of my predictions lead to an increased emphasis on classic arts: Argument, rhetoric, and oral communication have been important since ancient Greece. Still, I feel confident that if you ask students 40 years after graduation what they needed to know and be able to do, many would verify my choices. Internet literacy, media literacy, good thinking, and good speaking will be valued every day of their lives. Let’s do more teaching about them.

Posted in Media Literacy, Speaking | Leave a comment

Creating an argument worth delivering

Posted on October 30, 2018 by Erik Palmer

A fairly typical classroom current events discussion:

Kids shouldn’t be allowed to play football.

Yes, they should! Football is fun!!

Remember when Denver won the Super Bowl?

Yes! That was a great game.

But kids get hurt playing football.

I play football and I didn’t get hurt. That’s ridiculous.

My cousin broke his knee playing soccer.

And so it goes. Fairly random statements. Kids spouting opinions. How can we improve upon this type of discussion? By specifically teaching some good thinking skills.

You are probably being asked to give more attention to argumentative and persuasive writing and speaking. Has your school or district provided resources and/or training to help you with this? When I ask that question at workshops I lead, by far the most common answer is “No.” It is grossly unfair to ask teachers to teach something without giving them resources and training to do so, but unfortunately, it is quite common. How can we help students with argumentative assignments? By specifically teaching some good thinking skills.

Let’s start with the most fundamental piece of good thinking, the argument. What is an argument?

That seems like a pretty easy question, but do an experiment. Ask the teachers at your school to write down an answer without using a dictionary or searching online. You won’t get the same answer twice. We all sort of know what an argument is and it seems like a common term, but we don’t have an exact, agreed upon definition. You will see claim, warrant, reason, plausible argument, stance, strong reasons, position, conclusion, facts, details, quotes, evidence, backing, premise, correct logic, logical progression of ideas, statement, thesis, and various other related terms. No agreement. Competing ways to say the same thing. Confusing to students and adults. Because all of our students have heard the word before, too, we think they understand when we say, “Analyze the argument…” or “Write an argument supporting…” but they really don’t. Ask students to define argument. You’ll see what I mean.

Don’t think that because words are recognizable, they are understood. Argument, persuasion, evidence, and reasoning are common words (rhetoric less so), but that doesn’t mean students (or teachers) can master them without direct instruction. I wrote Good Thinking: Teaching Argument, Persuasion, and Reasoning to give teachers an understandable, practical way to teach students these important skills. There are some core principles in the book.

A common language is important. Shifting vocabulary from class to class, grade to grade is not OK. “Position with reasons and quotes” in English and “Conclusion with warrants and backing” in social studies and “Opinion with evidence” in health is not optimal for students.
Take nothing for granted. Define and teach “argument.” Explicitly explain the steps needed to build an argument. Teach five types of evidence and give students practice finding them. Teach persuasive techniques and give students practice with them. Teach grade appropriate rhetorical techniques and give students practice.
Every discussion, every book, every news story, every math problem, every “Can we go outside?” is an opportunity to teach good thinking. You have activities that can be tweaked to make all of the needed teaching possible, workable, and even fun.
Teaching students about argument, persuasion, and reasoning will benefit them for their entire lives. Knowing how to evaluate and create these will be important every day in their professional and social lives.

Let’s start building that common language. In Good Thinking, I offer this definition of argument:

An argument is a series of statements leading to a conclusion.

This is an important definition that will ultimately make life much easier. If we get in the habit of using this definition, thinking improves. Some examples:

Example #1: