Thread by @samwineburg

1/13 Last week I attended a convening by @icivics that deliberated on how to strengthen democracy. I was given 2 minutes to address the audience & tried my best to be brief. Several people have asked for my remarks. Here they are. (Beware: a long thread).

2/13 Months before the 2016 election @SHEG_Stanford assessed nearly 8000 middle, high, & college students’ ability to judge material from the Internet. Findings were released right after the election. We were swept up into the media maelstrom. wsj.com/articles/most-…

3/13 The most reported finding was that 82% of students couldn’t tell the difference between an ad and a news story. Of all the places that reported this finding, none noted an industry study showed that 59% of ADULTS couldn’t tell the difference either. iab.com/wp-content/upl…

4/13 In a follow-up, we compared Stanford undergraduates to professional fact-checkers. The majority of college students (60%) rated a website of an anti-LGBT group of pediatricians as more trustworthy than the 65,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

5/13 We are all in the same boat. The boat is rapidly taking on water.

6/13 Of course, in our Civics classes we need new approaches. But if we think this issue is only about Civics, we’re deluding ourselves. This is about how we teach EVERY subject.

7/13 My latest book is called Why Learn History When It’s Already on Your Phone. We’re still teaching history using print texts when kids are being historicized online by Holocaust deniers & Lost-Causers.

8/13 We’re teaching science when online anti-vaxxers use the language of science deceive & intimidate. We're teaching math when citizens are bamboozled by cunning infographics that mask rising temperatures by playing fast and loose with the X & Y axes. washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/w…

9/13 The challenge cannot be met by creating a mini-course or even by reforming the part of the school day that Civics occupies. Sure, we need new assessments, but we need massive curriculum development and experimentation to help kids succeed on these assessments

10/13 We need professional development for teachers, who sometimes are as confused as their students. We need to overhaul teacher education, so that new teachers feel prepared when they tell kids to open their Chromebooks. sbsun.com/2014/07/11/exc…

11/13 And we need public education – the education of the public – in libraries, in neighborhood centers, in our places of worship -- to teach parents and grandparents how to help their kids become informed citizens.

12/13 In October 1957, a whirling orbital ball known as Sputnik raised us from our slumber & set into motion a rethinking of what our educational system should look like. I don’t see any equivalent of the National Educational Defense Act (NDEA) coming out of DC anytime soon.

13/13 But the threat to democracy--and I wish I were speaking in hyperbole--is nothing less than an issue of national defense.

Treating it as anything but will guarantee a further erosion of democratic society.

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