Can you tell the difference?

Literacy means very little if you cannot discern the difference between the lies that are thrown in your face on a daily basis and the truth. Being able to see this difference is being critically literate. So why is it important to be critically literate and how can we as teachers implement this in our classrooms? Students should be able to be critically literate because in today’s technologically advanced society it is crucial to see the fallacies in what advertised to them digitally whether it involves how they view their bodies or how it shapes their political views.

While, this character’s voice is quite disturbing this video makes it clear what critical literacy means. So why is it important for students to critically literate. In today’s society, critical literacy goes beyond traditional texts. Previously, it was important to be able to see the fallacies in a newspaper or magazine, now it is important to be able to see them in articles online that are constantly being advertised to you. David Buckingham states in an article that there are four main concepts to “media literacy” they are: representation, language, production, and audience. It is important to know whose viewpoints are being represented, how websites are structured around language, how things are being advertised and promoted, and why the audience is being targeted (Buckingham, 2007). All of these things are how students should be critically literate.

In David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech, This is Water, he talks about how it is not as important to only think about who is right and wrong but why and how they came to their own viewpoints. Have their viewpoints been skewed by experience or were their thoughts handed down to them by their parents? Asking yourself these questions help you to achieve critical literacy. We should encourage our students to ask themselves these types of questions.

In Gianfranco Polizzi’s blog he discusses why it students are so vulnerable in the digital age. It is crucial for students to be critically literate because they stand a chance of believing everything they see online. They can be bullied by looking at over-photoshopped pictures and wanting to look like the “models” in front of them. They can believe made-up news articles about their public representatives. Children can believe online predators when they lie about their age. All of these are important reasons why students should be critically literate on digital media.

Altogether, it is important to be critically literate for many reasons. It allows you to see beyond the text to read “between the lines”. Being critically literate not only allows you to see if something is true or false but why they are true or false. It important because it can have an effect on your body image, whether you fall into an online trap, or it can even affect how you vote in elections. Teaching are students at a young age to be critically literate is absolutely necessary in order to help them develop into responsible adults.

Required Reading Sources:

Buckingham, David. 2007. Digitial Media Literacies: rethinking media education in the age of the Internet

Wallace, David Foster. This is Water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=8CrOL-ydFMI

Outside Resources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2WyIkK9IOg

Polizzi, Gianfranco. Fake News and critical literacy in the digital age: sharing responsibility and addressing challenges. May 1, 2018.

Pictures: desisaysblog.wordpress.com