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For 7-12 Grade Advisors: Handle the Pressure...Engaging in respectful discussion and debate during the election season (available to approved advisors with a #WinAtSocial account)

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Preparing for the Election Webinar Series

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Preparing for the Election Webinar Series

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Hosted by the Center for Spiritual and Ethical Education (Slides prepared by Ronda Zents)

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For 7-12 Grade Advisors: Find Your Influencers...Evaluating the credibility of information during the election and pandemic (available to approved advisors with a #WinAtSocial account)

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WA Senior, Mia Carson, and Art Club members will lead our student "Chalk the Vote" initiative

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#ChalkTheVote is ParentsTogether's fun and kid-friendly way for the whole family (and the whole neighborhood!) to get involved with the election. Plus, kids who get excited about voting are more likely to grow up to be adults who vote!

Kicking off on Sunday, October 18th, parents and kids across the country will fill their community's streets with chalk art designed to inspire folks to get out and vote.

Want to participate? Here's how to get involved:

Between October 18th and Election Day on November 3rd, create chalk art in your community that encourages your neighbors to vote.

Take photos of your artwork and use the hashtags #ChalkTheVote and #FamilyVote when you post your pics on social media.

Tag @parentstogether on Instagram or @parentstogetherorg on Facebook for a chance to be featured on our page!

Where should you #ChalkTheVote?

We encourage you to consider chalking in high-traffic areas, such as:

In front of your home (on the sidewalk or driveway)

Playgrounds

Bus stops

Commercial areas

Around (not on) mailboxes

Near voting sites (note that most laws require you be 100 feet away)

DO NOT chalk on private property without permission

Looking for inspiration for your chalk art?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

"Vote Early" Mosaic

ParentsTogether "Vote Early" chalk art

Step 1: Write "Vote Early" in big block letters, but don't color it in.

Step 2: Use tape (painters tape is great, but other tape works too) to create lines and shapes inside of each letter.

Step 3: Color in the shapes inside of the letters with different colors of chalk. Make sure to stay inside the outlines of the letters!

Step 4: Remove all of the tape, and admire your work of art!

Voting Plan Hopscotch

ParentsTogether Voting Plan Hopscotch

Follow our example above to help your neighbors hop their way to a voting plan! To play the game, start on "How will you vote?" and hop to the box in each row that makes the most sense for you. Some ideas to include in your hopscotch game are:

How will you vote? [By mail] [in person early] [on Nov 3]

Childcare? [Getting sitter] [Taking kids] [No need]

Transportation? [Car/Bus] [Walking] [Using the mail]

How will you celebrate? [Dancing!] [Long nap] [Grateful sobbing]

Note that not every state allows early voting in person or has widespread options to vote by mail, so check Vote.org for what's available in your state if you aren't sure.

Voting Calendar

ParentsTogether Voting Calendar chalk art

Draw a big calendar that highlights important deadlines or key dates throughout election season, such as the last day to register, the last day to mail in your ballot, or the date that early voting starts. Check out Vote.org to get the local info you need.

This Family Votes!

ParentsTogether voting plan chalk art

Share your family's voting plan by drawing and filling in the following sentence: "My family is voting [by mail/in person/by ballot drop-off] on [date] at [location]." Or, simply shout out a reminder by writing, "This family already voted. Have you?" Have your child add stars, doodles, and even a stick-figure drawing of your family!

Pick a slogan!

ParentsTogether voting slogan chalk art

Choose from the following inspirational voting messages and put your own creative spin on it!

"Kids win when parents vote."

#FamilyVote

#ChalkTheVote

"Voting is our superpower!"

"Raising future voters"

I need my grown-ups to vote because...

ParentsTogether fill-in-the-blank chalk art

Raise up kids' voices! Have your child respond to the prompt "I need grown-ups to vote because..." Help them think about all the great things the grown-ups in their lives can help make happen by voting, like getting more money for their schools, protecting the environment, keeping their neighborhood safe, or making sure everyone has equal rights. Then have them write out or illustrate their answer-or have them stand or sit by the prompt and answer in a short video!

We can't wait to see the awesome, inspiring art you and your kids create, so be sure to tag us and use #ChalkTheVote and #FamilyVote on social. Check back here or follow us on Instagram @parentstogether and on Facebook @ParentsTogetherOrg to see if your post is featured!

Mckenna Saady is a freelance writer and digital engagement consultant from Richmond, VA. Before working for nonprofits such as the Human Rights Campaign and United Way, Mckenna spent nearly a decade as a child care provider and Pre-K teacher. She now lives in Philadelphia and volunteers as a foster parent for orphaned kittens with the PSPCA.

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#ChalkTheVote with your kids and inspire voters in your community - ParentsTogether

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ChalkTheVote is ParentsTogether's fun and kid-friendly way for the whole family (and the whole neighborhood!) to get involved with the election. Plus, kids who get excited about voting are more likely to grow up to be adults who vote!

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Book: The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education

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Book: The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education

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By Diana E. Hess and Paula McAvoy

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The Political Classroom
"How can schools prepare students to become knowledgeable and engaged citizens of our democracy? Hess and McAvoy provide a deeply researched and philosophically sophisticated answer to that challenge. In our increasingly polarized time, Hess and McAvoy show how the need for education in deliberation about controversial public issues has never been more urgent. This brilliant book could not be more timely."
- Lawrence Blum
Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston

"This astute, rigorously researched, original, and timely book describes how teachers can effectively teach civic knowledge and skills in today's highly polarized times. The vivid and engaging portraits of teachers and schools and the seamless ways in which it blends theory, research, and practice make this book a unique and compelling contribution to the literature on the civic engagement of youth. It is an indispensable reference for educators who want to strengthen democracy and increase the civic literacy and participation of youth."
- James A. Banks, Kerry and Linda Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies and Founding Director, Center for Multicultural Education, University of Washington, Seattle

"The political classroom uses powerful research to reveal the complexities of engaging students in 'best practice' discussions of the controversial political issues they will confront throughout their lives. In doing so, Hess and McAvoy show how important teachers are to fulfilling the promise of democracy in our time."
- Michelle M. Herczog, President, National Council for the Social Studies

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The Political Classroom "How can schools prepare students to become knowledgeable and engaged citizens of our democracy? Hess and McAvoy provide a deeply researched and philosophically sophisticated answer to that challenge. In our increasingly polarized time, Hess and McAvoy show how the need for education in deliberation about controversial public issues has never been more urgent.

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Original Artwork for Chalk the Vote by Gabby Larmond '21

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Original Artwork for Chalk the Vote by Gabby Larmond '21

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Online course for teachers to learn how to teach students civic online reasoning skills

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Soon after the 2016 presidential election, as debates raged over "fake news" and its influence on the outcome, a landmark report from researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) provided sobering evidence of just how easily young people are duped by information online. The study, by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), found that middle and high school students overwhelmingly failed to demonstrate the skills necessary to distinguish credible sources from unreliable ones.

Since the release of that report, policymakers and educators have introduced a wave of initiatives aimed at equipping students with stronger digital literacy skills. But as the 2020 election approaches and many of those students become first-time voters, SHEG researchers have found few signs of progress - and the consequences are dire, said Sam Wineburg, the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education, who co-founded SHEG in 2002.

"Our democracy depends on access to reliable information," he said. "And the internet is increasingly where we go to look for it."

Last year SHEG released Civic Online Reasoning, a free curriculum for educators to instill strategies for evaluating the trustworthiness of online information. More recently, Wineburg and SHEG director Joel Breakstone, PhD '13, joined with colleagues at SHEG and faculty at MIT to develop a free course on how to teach these skills, which launched this fall. Wineburg will also share research and tools from SHEG during a virtual talk open to the public on Oct. 22.

Here, Wineburg and Breakstone talk about the state of digital literacy among future voters, two simple practices they've identified to detect questionable information and how to help young people learn to be more discerning as the 2020 election draws near.
With so much attention to the problem of "fake news" since the 2016 election, have you seen a change in how young people approach information online?
Wineburg: We're still very much seeing students struggle to make sense of the information they encounter. In 2019 we released the most extensive study to date on how young people go about trying to verify a claim on social media or the internet, based on research with more than 3,000 high school students matching the demographic profile of students across the United States.

More than half of the students believed that a grainy video on Facebook of ballot stuffing provided "strong evidence" of voter fraud during the 2016 U.S. primaries, even though the clips were actually shot in Russia. More than 96 percent failed to recognize that a climate change denial group was connected to the fossil fuel industry.

These are claims that are easily discernable in two or three steps on the internet. So sadly, no - young people's ability to separate fact from fiction hasn't improved in the last four years.
What kind of efforts have you seen in recent years to address this issue?
Breakstone: There's been intense interest and a number of legislative and educational initiatives over the past few years. California introduced a bill to require a model curriculum in online reasoning, which ended up getting watered down to essentially providing resource lists for teachers. Other states have pushed farther and called for mandated instruction.

But the real barrier is making this happen in the course of a regular school day. Often media literacy is a one-off lesson from a librarian, which isn't enough. We haven't seen many efforts to integrate it into the curriculum - across subjects, with students being asked to evaluate whether sources are trustworthy - which we increasingly believe is the way to make a difference.
You studied professional fact-checkers to identify the steps they follow to vet sources and confirm accuracy. What were they doing that average readers usually don't?
Wineburg: One skill they practice is what we call "lateral reading" - leaving an unfamiliar website after a quick scan and opening up new browser tabs to find other sites that can help assess the credibility of the original one. Another is click restraint or resisting the impulse to click the first site that comes up in a search result before considering the other options.

This isn't rocket science, but it requires a fundamental shift in the way we think about and consume information. We've been taught that the way to understand a text is to carefully examine it in detail, but that's the opposite of what we should be doing on the internet. When you come across a website that you're not familiar with, the worst thing you can do is spend a great deal of time on that page. It's very different from traditional notions of close reading and critical thinking. Paradoxically, the best way to learn about an unfamiliar site is to leave it, only coming back to the original site after gaining context from the broader web.
What implications could this time of remote learning have on digital literacy skills?
Breakstone: Students are online all the time now, and they're being confronted with even more content from questionable sources. So, the need to prepare students to navigate this setting is more important than ever. But it also presents opportunities for innovation. Teachers are trying out different possibilities with students online.

We're currently doing an analysis of a fully online intervention in a college setting, where students watched videos we've developed and completed activities from the curriculum we created. Our initial analysis is that students' skills improved. But there needs to be a much more comprehensive effort if we're going to make a dent in this problem.

Wineburg: We've found that just a modest investment of time can bear fruit. In one study with our curriculum in high school classrooms, six-hour-long lessons over a 10-week period moved the needle.

There's no question that we have a tremendous amount of work to do. But we're optimistic that, with enough will on the part of educators and a strong curriculum that's integrated into the school day, we can see an impact. Listen, misinformation and disinformation are polluting the information stream. If we can't find a way to upgrade the skills of ordinary citizens - and fast - democracy itself will be the casualty.

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Judging fact from fiction online | Stanford News

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Soon after the 2016 presidential election, as debates raged over "fake news" and its influence on the outcome, a landmark report from researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) provided sobering evidence of just how easily young people are duped by information online.

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Perceptual Illusions, Cognitive Distortions and Common Thinking Traps Slides

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Perceptual Illusions, Cognitive Distortions and Common Thinking Traps Slides

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This SEE Learning-inspired slide presentation engages students in a process of coming to understand common perceptual illusions, cognitive distortions and thinking traps; students will examine what is at stake when they fall for these and how to proactively avoid them

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SEE Learning Experience (to accompany slides above): Perceptual Illusions, Cognitive Distortions and Thinking Traps

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SEE Learning Experience (to accompany slides above): Perceptual Illusions, Cognitive Distortions and Thinking Traps

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Freedom Forum Institute: First Amendment Free Speech Primer

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Our primers are designed to get you up to speed on First Amendment issues-from the basics to cutting edge topics-in a minimal amount of time. We use interactive graphics and visual aids to simplify and explain complicated issues.

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Our primers are designed to get you up to speed on First Amendment issues-from the basics to cutting edge topics-in a minimal amount of time. We use interactive graphics and visual aids to simplify and explain complicated issues.

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Confirmation Bias Activity: Why is it so easy to fall into this?

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Confirmation Bias Activity: Why is it so easy to fall into this?

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Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving

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Here's how it works:

We've chosen a rule that some sequences of three numbers obey - and some do not. Your job is to guess what the rule is.

We'll start by telling you that the sequence 2, 4, 8 obeys the rule:

Now it's your turn. Enter a number sequence in the boxes below, and we'll tell you whether it satisfies the rule or not. You can test as many sequences as you want.

Enter your first sequence here:

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A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving (Published 2015)

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Here's how it works: We've chosen a rule that some sequences of three numbers obey - and some do not. Your job is to guess what the rule is. We'll start by telling you that the sequence 2, 4, 8 obeys the rule: Now it's your turn.

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The Backfire Effect: What is it and how do we overcome it?

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The Backfire Effect: What is it and how do we overcome it?

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Believe Comic (classroom friendly)

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You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you (classroom-friendly version) - The Oatmeal

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This is a classroom-friendly (no cuss words) comic about the backfire effect.

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Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities

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Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities

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Resource Guide for the day after the election

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Civic Engagement

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In today's interconnected world, it's essential that we expand our notions of the who, what, and where of civic engagement. From early ages, young people have important ideas about how their schools, communities, and the larger world might be changed for the better.

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Essentials of Dialogue

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Essentials of Dialogue Resource

Essentials of Dialogue Resource

Students need tools to build societies that welcome diversity and encourage an open-minded and inclusive approach. To support this, teachers need straightforward and simple classroom activities.

"Essentials of Dialogue" is part of the Institute's response to that challenge. It is a resource for use in classrooms to build skills of dialogue and critical thinking in young people, and an indispensable part of the Institute's Generation Global programme.

Each chapter includes both theory and practical activities to help explore, develop, and practise dialogue. The resource is free to use in classrooms all over the world.

Download the resource:

Endorsements for Essentials of Dialogue

"[The Institute] is keen to share the learnings from our education programme which has given thousands of young people around the world the opportunity to take part in activities helping them to overcome prejudice, develop critical thinking, and open their minds to difference. Now these freely available resources make that best practice available to everyone." Tony Blair

"The Essentials of Dialogue is the most effective resource available to classroom teachers for teaching the skills of civil dialogue to young people. At a time of growing sectarian and ideological conflict, educating for respect and understanding across differences must be an urgent priority for every school. The outstanding activities included in this set of resources are innovative, field-tested ways to create in young people the habits of mind and heart needed to fight prejudice and promote mutual understanding among people of all faiths and beliefs." Charles Haynes, Director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute

"There is an urgent need for more resources that enable young people both to gain knowledge and understanding of the diversity of religions and other worldviews and to learn how to discuss differences of beliefs and values with civility, tolerance and respect. In a divided world, this need for civil dialogue is crucial, a point made strongly in the Council of Europe's ongoing work on education about religions and non-religious convictions. However, high quality resources which help both students and teachers to engage in this process are few and far between. Essentials of Dialogue is thus a very welcome publication, covering key issues in both teaching and practising dialogue. Drawing on the practical experience of the [Generation Global] programme, Essentials of Dialogue deals clearly and succinctly with skills of communication in relation to beliefs and values, while introducing important information, ranging from issues relating to the use of the Internet, to the use of videoconferencing. Essentials of Dialogue is highly recommended." Robert Jackson, Emeritus Professor of Religions and Education at the University of Warwick

"In an educational climate where religious literacy is of the essence, this resource provides training for dialogue which avoids the adversarial stance of debate, and encourages active listening. There are fresh snappy ideas for active, enjoyable engagement outside of their normal friendship comfort zones, and inspiring case studies enabling learning on the impact of words rather than swords in the world at large. It equips students around the world for positive engagement in all areas of their lives: present and future family relationships, in the workplace, and equips our young people for taking leadership roles in the future, and making the world a safer place to be. Invaluable." Barbara Usher, Head of RS at Coopers' Company and Coborn School

"As a parent and school governor I strongly encourage teachers to introduce dialogue training into their curriculums immediately. There is no need to reinvent the wheel because the Essentials of Dialogue is a complete and tested resource used by thousands of teachers and students around the world. I have witnessed violent extremism first-hand and have devoted my life to helping leaders resolve conflict through dialogue and negotiation. The better we train our young people to dialogue today the fewer problems we'll have to solve in 20 years from now. The solution is in the dialogue." Peter Nixon, TEDx speaker and author of Dialogue Gap

"Deliberately teaching students the skills to dialogue will help create a strong constituency that expresses, sees, and reaches out to persons of different cultural practices and faiths. I endorse this free resource for use especially by schools in the Philippines as it can help create a culture of encounter and understanding - seedbeds of voices for peace." Luisito G. Montalbo, Undersecretrary, Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Philippines)

"Italian teachers are captured by the idea of incorporating the teaching of dialogue in the curriculum and find the Essentials of Dialogue materials engaging and effective. Teachers appreciate the new opportunities for internalizing knowledge about "the other" and for making learning deeper. In Italy the [Generation Global] experience has mobilised the interest of experts and scholars from a variety of domains, originating very interesting developments in the notion of global communication and its enactment in the school practice." Giovanna Barzanò, Senior Civil Servant, Ministry of Education University and Research, Italy

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Around the world, education systems are struggling to prepare young people for the complex realities of our interconnected world. While many are concentrating on centralised curricula and standardised testing, there is also a consensus that education should give young people the soft skills that they need to make sense of, and play an active part in, a globalised society that is more integrated than ever before.

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Youthivism

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Youthivism is a student-led organization striving to educate the next generation of voters through collaboration and bipartisan political awareness.

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2020 Civil Conversation Challenge for Teenagers

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Beginning Sept. 22 and running through Oct. 30, we're inviting teenagers (13 and up) to have productive, respectful conversations about some of the issues dividing us this election season.

Four years ago we ran an experiment we called our Civil Conversation Challenge. We invited teenagers to come to our site and, via the comments section, have productive and respectful conversations around some of the issues at the center of that year's election - immigration, gun control, climate change, race and gender, and more. We loved the results.

By popular request, we're bringing it back for 2020, this time with some new features. Our overall focus, though, will be the same: What we'll be looking for are not so much excellent posts by individual students, but civil, productive discussions between students. Sometime after the contest ends, we'll be calling out favorite conversations and notable individual and school participation, just as we did in 2016.

Back then, we explained our rationale for the contest this way:

For much of this year we've been thinking about what more we could do on this site to help students grapple with both the issues of Election 2016 and the classroom challenges of a race marked by extreme rhetoric and deep partisan divide.

Four years later, the country's partisan divide is even deeper, and the classroom challenges are unprecedented.

For many teachers, meeting with students to have in-person "civil conversations" at all this fall will be impossible. At the same time, since 2016 the very notion that "civil conversation" works for all of us has been called into question by those who say that, without equity, "civility" can " feel like an effort to stifle people's outrage over injustice or hate." And, of course, four years later all of us, not just students, are worn out by a fog of news - and by having to constantly figure which of it is true, false or spin.

None of this is easy, but we hope our challenge can still help. We hope the online forums we'll begin publishing on Sept. 22 will be welcoming, equitable places for students all over to practice the skills of respectful, informed conversation across ideological and demographic divides. In fact, we hope that, at a time when many teenagers are isolated, encouraging them to not only to post their thoughts but also to read and respond to the thoughts of others might make them feel a little more connected. To make that easier, we're beginning with a forum in which they're invited to introduce themselves and think about how their political beliefs are grounded in who they are.

For teachers, we hope this challenge is fairly easy to integrate into the curriculum as you struggle to adapt to new and ever-changing circumstances - and we hope a related Reader Idea about using it in the context of media literacy can help cut through the noise.

Here's everything you need to know. As always, post any questions you may have in the comments, or write to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com. We will update this post as needed to provide more explanation as we go. We'll also link below to all the Student Opinion forums as each publishes this week.

Here's what you need to know:

A new forum for this challenge will publish each school day starting Sept. 22, and you can find the forums all in our Student Opinion column, as well as linked below as they publish.

Any teenager (13 and up) is welcome to respond to any or all of these, simply by visiting a forum or forums and submitting a comment on it, anytime between Sept. 22 and Oct. 30.

We encourage students not only to submit their own thoughts, but also to comment on, and "recommend," the thoughts of others.
Here is what we'll be asking.

If you're interested, you can find more about how and why we chose these topics in our FAQ, below.
1. Students can respond to any or all of the forums, as often as they like through Oct. 30. 2. When responding, students should not only post their own comments, but should also read and respond to the work of others.
For this challenge, we are much less interested in individual posts than we are in the conversations you have about these issues. Please read and respond to the ideas of others, and hit the "recommend" button for anything you particularly like. And don't forget to revisit those posts often to continue any conversations that have started.

We'll be "listening in" as we moderate and looking to find exchanges between students that do all of the following.

3. All submissions must follow Times commenting standards. Please read the full list of commenting standards, but pay special attention to these:

To be approved for publication, your comments should be civil and reflect The New York Times's standards for taste present on NYTimes.com and in The New York Times newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: name-calling, personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, and SHOUTING.

We only accept comments written in English; foreign language comments will be rejected.

While we encourage students to post their genuine questions and concerns, keep in mind that many of the topics we're asking you to discuss are sensitive. Please enter the conversation with respect for others in it.

4. Students should try to advance the conversation about an issue somehow, whether introducing a new idea or perspective, asking useful questions, making connections to other issues, reflecting back to the writer what you understand about his or her post, finding themes or commonalities among comments, presenting new evidence, or anything else.

5. Submissions should be grounded in fact and buttressed by reliable sources. This is not to say that everything you post must be footnoted sentence by sentence, but commenters should provide reliable sources for any controversial claims they make. And, at a time when the reliability of news is more in question than ever, we will reject comments that post incendiary claims without those sources.
6. Submissions should show evidence of "listening" and attempting to understand other points of view.
To better see what we're looking for, check out our reflections on the 2016 winners. Can our 2020 participants do even better?

_________
Some tips and fine points:

Any teenager (13 and up) in the United States and the United Kingdom, and any teenager 16 and older elsewhere in the world, is invited to join the conversation. Though the issues as we present them will be defined by positions taken by candidates in the presidential election, insights from elsewhere in the world are very welcome.

The first time you comment, make sure to check the box saying that you would like to receive an email with a link to your comment when it is published. Though our system does not, unfortunately, let you know when someone replies, if you visit the link to your comment regularly, you can see all the responses.

Feel free to comment, reply, recommend or do any combination of the three as often as you like - within reason, of course. (In other words, we hope you'll chiefly respond on those topics you feel passionate about and weigh in on conversations in which you feel you have something of value to add.)

Video

Arguments don't have to be heated, explosive moments

From The Learning Network
2020: Lesson of the Day: 'Learn to Argue Productively'

In this lesson, which we hope can be a starting point for teachers interested in this contest, students will practice putting six practical tips into action. They will also consider how those tips apply to online disagreements, to teenage "cancel culture," and to questions many have posed about what it means to have a "civil conversation" in the first place.

2020: Reader Idea: News Groups: A Simple but Powerful Media Literacy Idea to Build Community

An English teacher tells how she adapted the structure of book groups to help her students become critical consumers of news - and suggests ways to use News Groups with the Civil Conversation Challenge.

2020: A complete list of all our materials for teaching and learning with Election 2020.

2016: Ideas for Productive Discussion: Reflections on Our Civil Conversation Challenge

Our observations about the best of the conversations submitted to our 2016 Challenge, with notes on what made them work and unedited student examples for each.

2016: Talking Across Divides: 10 Ways to Encourage Civil Classroom Conversation on Difficult Issues.

Teaching activities for each of our 2016 guidelines, taken from The Times and a number of educational organizations.
From Other Educational Organizations
Facing History and Ourselves | Fostering Civil Discourse: How Do We Talk About Issues That Matter?

Facing History has updated this essential guide for 2020. In a related blog post, it explains:

We see "civil discourse" as a tool for deep engagement, a framework that allows us to show up with our mind, heart and conscience to be in dialogue and extend our understanding in connection with others. "Civil discourse" does not mean prioritizing politeness or comfort over getting to the heart of an issue. If we're going to ask students to listen and engage civilly, we have to ensure that the classroom is an equitable space. Our revised guide offers approaches to educator self-reflection on issues of power and privilege, and strategies to intentionally shape classroom environments with equity in mind.

Teaching Tolerance | Speaking Up Without Tearing Down

A veteran human rights educator explains the difference between "calling out" and "calling in," and makes suggestions for how "calling in" might work in the classroom.

Who is eligible to participate?
For this challenge, our guidelines are the same as our daily commenting guidelines. Any teenager (13 and up) in the United States and the United Kingdom, and any teenager 16 and older elsewhere in the world, is invited to join the conversation.

Though the issues as we present them will be defined by positions taken by candidates in the presidential election, insights from elsewhere in the world are very welcome.
How can I find my posts so I can keep up with the conversation - and prove to my teacher I did it?
Make sure to check the box that asks if you would like to be emailed when your comment is published. If you do so, the system will send you a link to your comment, which you can use to show your teacher, your parents, your friends or anyone else. (Please note that you will not get an email until the comment has been approved, which may take longer over weekends.)

You can also use the "View Your Comment" link in your confirmation email to find your published comment and to see if anyone has replied. (Another tip? To prove to your teacher that you did the work, many students simply take screen shots.)
How did you choose these topics?
Back in May, we asked students What Issues in the 2020 Presidential Race Are Most Important to You?, and we collected answers through August. Students were passionate: climate change, health care, gun rights, immigration, the economy, criminal justice, abortion, child sex trafficking, family-separation policies, women's rights and gay rights all came up, most several times over.

We weren't surprised to see that two of the issues we ended up choosing - our national response to Covid-19, and racial justice - were mentioned again and again. A third - student debt, which is part of our forum on education in general - was also mentioned often.

So why did we end up with voting rights as a fourth forum, when it was barely mentioned? Well, because it covers so much that is critical right now to thinking about our democracy and how it works. We thought it was too important not to include.

But, in general, we also decided not to ask about topics where the debate, at least among adults, seems to have hardened into talking points. Instead, we are choosing four issues that are very much alive, in flux and in the news every day as we urgently discuss them ahead of the election.

But, just as it was in 2016, our final forum will be an open one. There you're welcomed and encouraged to post about issues that didn't get mentioned in the previous five forums.
Who will be judging this? How? When will you announce "winners"?
We will judge this challenge the same way we did in 2016, and you can read more about that in our reflections that year.

The Learning Network staff will be reading through all the comments posted, looking for conversations between students - especially students not from the same class or school - that are especially interesting or productive. Sometime in late November or early December, we will call out our favorite conversations, highlighting the work of both individual students and whole schools.

We know this doesn't sound like our other contests, and that's because it's not. It's more of an extension of the daily work we do via our Student Opinion questions. That's partly because we want as many teenagers as possible to participate, and posting a comment is very easy.
Who can I contact if I have questions about this contest or am having issues submitting my entry?
Leave a comment on this post or write to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com.

QUESTIONS ABOUT TEACHING WITH THIS CONTEST Do my students need a New York Times subscription to get access to these resources?
The New York Times is now available to high school students and teachers across the United States for FREE through Sept. 1, 2021. Learn more and invite your classes here. (Please note that once teachers send an invitation, students will need to accept it to get their free account.)

If your students are not yet in high school and they don't have a subscription, they can get access to Times pieces through The Learning Network. All the activities for students on our site, including mentor texts and writing prompts, plus the Times articles they link to, are free. Students can search for articles using the search tool on our home page (scroll down past the featured articles to the article stream). In the rest of The Times, they can get access to up to five free articles a month.
How do my students prove to me that they entered this contest?
Assuming they have checked the box that asks if they would like to be emailed when their comment is published, your students should receive an email from The Times with the subject heading "Your Comment ..." soon thereafter. They can forward it to you to show their entry has been accepted. Some teachers also have their students take screen shots of the comment as proof that they participated.

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Our 2020 Civil Conversation Challenge for Teenagers

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Beginning Sept. 22 and running through Oct. 30, we're inviting teenagers (13 and up) to have productive, respectful conversations about some of the issues dividing us this election season. Four years ago we ran an experiment we called our Civil Conversation Challenge.

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National Council for the Social Studies is pleased to offer a limited number of registration scholarships to educators who have never been able to attend the NCSS Annual Conference in the past for lack of financial support. Teachers from across the United States and its territories are welcome to apply.

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Explore our programs and resources with the topics below or by using our EDTools

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Understanding how school discipline policies can contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline is essential for educators and families. Harsh punishments, automatic out-of-class time and police involvement for discipline can push young people out of classrooms and into the criminal legal system. But educators, parents and caregivers can help to change this harmful system by advocating for and implementing practices that prioritize mental health and well-being.

We offer this new resource page that highlights LFJ articles and content to open dialogue, shift practices and foster change to benefit all young people.

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Learning for Justice | Education Resources

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Learning for Justice provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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Series of videos to help students understand common errors in their own judgement and others (eg. black and white thinking) from PBS Digital Studios:

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Five Fallacies | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios

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YOU DID A FALLACY Tweet us! http://bit.ly/pbsideachanneltwitter Idea Channel Facebook! http://bit.ly/pbsideachannelfacebook Talk about this episode on reddit! http://bit.ly/pbsideachannelreddit Idea Channel IRC! http://bit.ly/pbsideachannelirc Email us! pbsideachannel [at] gmail [dot] com Support Idea Channel on Patreon! http://www.patreon.com/pbsideachannel In the US it's presidential election season.

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Even More Fallacies! | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios

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SEE Learning Resilience Skill: Shift & Stay is a skill that brings the nervous system back into regulation when bumped out due to stressor

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SEE Learning Stand Alone Resources to explore how to navigate difficult emotions

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SEE Learning Stand Alone Resources to explore our interconnectivity and reliance on countless others whom we may or may not meet

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1-2 minute practices

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The SEE Learning Playbook - Minute Practices

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These 1-2 minute practices can be done multiple times during the day. Especially when you are busy or working hard or something unexpectedly stressful happen...

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We have some fun ways to learn and think about racial equity and other components of equity work. This page is a work in progress, so check back every once in a while as we add more material. Feel free to email fakequity@gmail.com if you want PDFs of any of these. We enjoy hearing how people are using the material; hint if you like it tell us so we'll be motivated to do more.

Do not alter the material without asking permission. Personal use is, personal use is defined as one copy at a time. If you would like to use it for a training or anything more than one copy please contact fakequity@gmail.com.

Download: entitlement-bingo

Download the Fakequity chart, best printed in color on legal or larger size paper: fakiequit5

Download: entitlement bingo Social Justice Version

Power Hoarding BINGO

PDF of Power Hoarding BINGO

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We have some fun ways to learn and think about racial equity and other components of equity work. This page is a work in progress, so check back every once in a while as we add more material. Feel ...

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JUSTICE for all

Longstanding inequalities and systemic discrimination have put under-resourced communities in danger. This includes abuse by law enforcement, as a long list of unarmed black victims makes clear, and more general disinvestment in communities over time that has prevented access to opportunity and compromised people's health.

During the coronavirus pandemic in particular, specific communities in the United States are facing higher risks and challenges and suffering disproportionate harm. These include African Americans; immigrants; those experiencing homelessness; the LGBTQ community; those who are incarcerated; and people in institutional settings, particularly the elderly and people with disabilities.

Federal, state, and local leaders must closely collect data about police violence in communities of color, reform public safety and policing, and provide enough resources to address challenges. Leaders should also correct the long-standing inequities that put under-resourced communities at risk.

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Longstanding inequalities and systemic discrimination have put under-resourced communities in danger. This includes abuse by law enforcement, as a long list of unarmed black victims makes clear, and more general disinvestment in communities over time that has prevented access to opportunity and compromised people's health.

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Article: Are Politically Diverse Teams More Effective?

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Article: Are Politically Diverse Teams More Effective?

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by Feng Shi, Misha Teplitskiy, Eamon Duede, James A. Evans

Harvard Business Review

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Executive Summary

Political ideology has thus become a growing fault-line across teams and organizations with which today's managers must contend and yet, research findings suggests that we tend to not handle these divisions well. Nevertheless, decades of social science research has found that the presence of diverse perspectives is beneficial for creative companies and teams. Diverse perspectives enable groups to search a wider space of solutions to their problems, even if that creative process can be uncomfortable and taxing. A study recently published in Nature Human Behaviour, sought to discover whether these potential benefits of diversity could be realized in practice. The researchers found that higher political polarization among a team of Wikipedia editors was strongly associated with higher quality encyclopedia entries. This was especially true for political articles, but also those on social issues and science. Political polarization is typically regarded as negative, but the study suggests that if the power of diverse, polarized perspectives can be unleashed, it can positively influence quality productivity.

C. J. Burton/Getty Images

Political polarization in the United States and around the world is on the rise. Voting patterns, surveys, and discussions on Twitter all indicate that we now agree on fewer and fewer issues and like each other less and less. A 2015 study revealed that Americans were more comfortable having children marry into a family of another race than another political party. Moreover, U.S. politicians from the political right and left have become more polarized in how they vote and how they talk on the floor of Congress, resulting in fewer compromises and more insurmountable conflicts. Political ideology has thus become a growing faultline across teams and organizations with which today's managers must contend and yet, research findings suggests that we tend to not handle these divisions well.

Nevertheless, decades of social science research has found that the presence of diverse perspectives is beneficial for creative companies and teams. Diverse perspectives enable groups to search a wider space of solutions to their problems, even if that creative process can be uncomfortable and taxing. In our own prior research, we examined millions of book co-purchases online and found that those on the political right and left - those who bought conservative versus liberal books - purchased very distinct books of science and literature. This may make conversation across political divides more difficult as interlocutors cannot even appeal to the same "facts," but it also increases the possibility that political conversations can unlock diverse perspectives on more and more issues.

In our research, recently published in Nature Human Behaviour, we sought to discover whether these potential benefits of diversity could be realized in practice. To do so, we turned to a particularly important setting, one in which teams collaborate to create collective knowledge products consumed by billions around the world: Wikipedia, the online, crowd-constructed encyclopedia. Behind each Wikipedia article - each information product - is a team of volunteer editors who created it, often with tremendous individual effort and collective coordination. When editors produce articles on particularly divisive topics, such as abortion, minimum wage laws, or President Donald Trump, does political diversity increase or decrease their effectiveness in creating high quality, balanced treatments? Moreover, how does polarization influence how they collectively agree on what content should be included, excluded, and how it should be framed?

First, we estimated the political affiliation of more than 600,000 Wikipedia contributors through their intensity of contribution to liberal versus conservative articles. We assumed that editors who make frequent contributions to pages associated with American liberalism would hold left-leaning opinions, and vice versa. This was a controversial hypothesis, and many in the Wikipedia community felt that perhaps the opposite would be true, with liberals correcting conservative pages and conservatives returning the favor. Nevertheless, a survey we conducted of active Wikipedia editors found that millions of editor contributions to liberal versus conservative pages was a significant predictor of whether they identified as liberal or conservative and how they voted.

Following this validation, we then measured the political diversity or polarization of each team of editors behind 232,000 different Wikipedia pages, considering editor groups with a broader range of ideological alignments to be more "polarized." When this measure of polarization was used to predict Wikipedia's internal ratings of article quality (ranging from "stub" up to "featured article"), we found that higher team political polarization was strongly associated with higher page quality, far exceeding the quality of similarly sized biased, neutral, or moderate editor teams. This was especially true for political articles, but also those on social issues and science.

In order to understand the drivers behind this polarization premium, we analyzed team discussion on article "talk pages" where editors debate over what should be included and how the article should be written. For popular topics, these debates read like the transcripts from a high-stakes academic conference or product development meeting. Analyzing the content of these discussions, we found that polarized teams engage in more debates but with less toxic conflict than ideologically unbalanced teams, where the efforts of lone, contrarian editors to "de-bias" articles sometimes provoked charged disputes. Moreover, polarized teams focused on similar content as moderates, but discussed it with many more words in many more ways. Finally, polarized teams more frequently appealed to Wikipedia's norms encoded in consistent policies and guidelines, such as that articles should manifest a neutral point of view (NPOV), cite respected sources for support (CITE), and avoid or disclose conflicts of interest (COI). Adherence to these norms buffered against the raw emotions and abuse found in many less-regulated online communities. When surveyed, editors engaged on polarized teams described grueling discursive work that led to superior products.

The findings are surprising. Political polarization is typically regarded as negative, but we reveal that if the power of diverse, polarized perspectives can be unleashed, it can positively influence quality productivity. Beyond documenting a "proof of concept," it is even more important to understand why Wikipedia succeeds where so many other platforms fail. This is partly because Wikipedia has an encyclopedic monopoly and if people want a voice on the web, they need to play ball. But other patterns are clear as well.

Frequent appeal to Wikipedia guidelines and policies in polarized teams, the violation of which could lead to an editorial crack-down on participation, suggest that increased oversight and bureaucracy might be beneficial. In a community or media environment without laws, or with weak or attenuated norms, the potential increases for that environment to turn toxic, with shorter conversations, less collaboration, leading to lower quality. Another way in which Wikipedia is different is its well-known and publicized commitment to discourse and consensus. Strongly signaling such a mission upfront may induce self-selection from those individuals willing to cooperate for the common good. Wikipedia's guidelines and policies generate not only high-quality articles, but a sustained collaborative culture. Guidelines and policies are not simply rules concerning what may be written; they constitute a culture by stipulating appropriate social conduct, such as how editors treat one another in talk-page debates, and even how we, as researchers, needed to engage with the community. It required enormous effort to earn the right to conduct this study. We had to become members of the community in order to understand the community. But these protections preserved a space that unleashed the power of diversity.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from our work is a new perspective on bias. At the individual level, bias is generally undesirable. It leads to bad investments and wrong conclusions. But bias is sometimes driven by passion, which leads those we deem biased to work longer and harder for something they believe in. Bias also enables access to useful information and perspectives forged deep within ideological echo chambers. Collectively, teams with mixtures of bias that are willing to engage and collaborate can yield superior performance. This reveals a "silver lining" of political diversity and disagreement in these polarized times. Even as political polarization rises in the U.S. and around the world, if we realize the other side has something worthwhile to say, the arguments become smarter than the participants.

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Are Politically Diverse Teams More Effective?

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Executive Summary Political ideology has thus become a growing fault-line across teams and organizations with which today's managers must contend and yet, research findings suggests that we tend to not handle these divisions well.

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Article: Opera, travel, food, law: The unlikely friendship of Ruth Badar Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia

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Article: Opera, travel, food, law: The unlikely friendship of Ruth Badar Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia

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Richard Wolf, USA Today

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WASHINGTON - Long before they became federal appeals court judges, Supreme Court justices, travel companions and New Year's Eve celebrants together, Ruth Bader Ginsburg watched Antonin Scalia speak to the American Bar Association.

As she would for decades to come, Ginsburg disagreed with Scalia's thesis. But, she recalled in 2014, "he said it in an absolutely captivating way."

Thus did the two ideological opposites attract for what became from that day on a close friendship - one their families, friends and colleagues recalled affectionately after Scalia's death at a Texas ranch in 2016 and again following Ginsburg's death Friday on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.

"What's not to like?" Scalia said of Ginsburg at that joint appearance six years ago. "Except her views on the law."

"We agree on a whole lot of stuff," he added. "Ruth is really bad only on the knee-jerk stuff."

In an era of increasingly bitter partisan enmity, the odd coupling of Ginsburg - petite, serious, seemingly shy - and Scalia - rotund, garrulous, overtly opinionated - may be viewed as an anachronism. But many cited it over the weekend as a signal of hope.
Justices on RBG:'A superb judge' who 'inspired us all'
One of those was Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, who recalled in a Washington Post column the many New Year's Eve dinners when "Nino" and Maureen Scalia would join Ruth and Martin Ginsburg at their Watergate apartment. The dinners often featured venison or boar that Scalia hunted and Ginsburg's husband, a renowned tax attorney who died in 2010, had expertly prepared.

"They were both New Yorkers, close in age, and liked a lot of the same things: the law, teaching, travel, music and a meal with family and friends," Eugene Scalia wrote. "They had a bond, I think, in that they both grew up as outsiders - to different degrees - to the elites who had ruled the country: she as a Jew and woman, he as a Catholic and Italian American."
Replacing RBG: Trump eyes Cuban American judge from Florida for Supreme Court
Their shared love of opera was on display in 1994, shortly after Ginsburg (a Bill Clinton nominee) joined Scalia (a Ronald Reagan nominee) on the Supreme Court. They appeared together as extras in the Washington National Opera's opening night production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.
Replacing RBG: Front-runner to replace Ginsburg is a favorite of religious conservatives Replacing RBG: Trump says he will nominate a woman to the Supreme Court next week
Years later, they became the subjects of "Scalia/Ginsburg," Derrick Wang's 2014 comic opera inspired by their legal opinions.

"It opens with Scalia's rage aria," Ginsburg recalled a few years ago. "He sings, 'The justices are blind, how can they possibly spout this? The Constitution says absolutely nothing about this!'" To which she responded that the Constitution, like society, "can evolve."
Replacing RBG: Here are the Senate Judiciary Committee members up for reelection
The two justices appeared together many times over the years. When tickets went on sale in 2015 for a joint appearance at George Washington University, the first 350 tickets were scooped up in less than three hours.
Ginsburg's opinions, dissents: From VMI to Voting Rights Act
Those occasions exhibited the many traits they had in common. They were fellow New Yorkers, Ginsburg having grown up in Brooklyn, Scalia in Queens. They were fellow academics, Scalia having taught at the University of Virginia and University of Chicago law schools, Ginsburg at Rutgers and Columbia.

Their bond was cemented at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the most common stepping-stone to the Supreme Court. Ginsburg served there from 1980-93, Scalia from 1982-86.
More: Supreme Court is shorthanded but could play role in election
"From our years together at the D.C. Circuit, we were best buddies," Ginsburg said following her colleague's death.

At Scalia's memorial service in 2016, Ginsburg recounted the story of how, when she was writing the high court's majority opinion striking down the Virginia Military Institute's ban on admitting women, Scalia showed her his unfinished dissent.

"It was a zinger," filled with "disdainful footnotes," she said. But "I was glad to have the extra days to adjust the court's opinion. My final draft was much improved, thanks to Justice Scalia's searing criticism."

To sum up their friendship, she quoted Scalia: "I attack ideas. I don't attack people. Some very good people have some very bad ideas."

Then later that year, in her memoir "My Own Words," she summed it up her own way:

"How blessed I was," she wrote, "to have a working colleague and dear friend of such captivating brilliance, high spirits and quick wit."

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Opera, travel, food, law: The unlikely friendship of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia

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WASHINGTON - Long before they became federal appeals court judges, Supreme Court justices, travel companions and New Year's Eve celebrants together, Ruth Bader Ginsburg watched Antonin Scalia speak to the American Bar Association. As she would for decades to come, Ginsburg disagreed with Scalia's thesis.

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Op-Ed: Education as Politically Contested Spaces

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Op-Ed: Education as Politically Contested Spaces

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Paul Thomas, The Daily Censored

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Steve Strieker in The Answer Sheet confronts ths current state of education from the specific events of his home state:

"In Gov. Scott Walker's Wisconsin, teaching has been relegated from professional status to political fodder."

He then builds to this conclusion:

"In Walker's Wisconsin, education is not a profession. It is politics....

"With the current attack on public education, however, our next generation of professional educators will have to be seasoned young, impervious, and politically active. Otherwise, future educators will be doing more political initiatives in education, for less than professional pay, and with less professional liberties."

This commentary offers the opportunity for educators to examine closely both traditional calls for teachers to be objective and not political as well as many educators' own claims that education shouldn't be political.

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"Politically Contested Spaces"
First, let me offer where I believe the discussion of education as political (or not) often becomes distorted. We must begin this discussion with a clarification of terms, specifically between "political" and "partisan."

I will concede and even argue that classrooms, teachers, and education in general should avoid being partisan-in that teachers and their classrooms should not be reduced to mere campaigning for a specific political party or candidate. And this, in fact, is what I believe most people mean (especially teachers) when they argue for education not to be political.

But, especially now, we must stop conflating partisan and political, and come to terms with both the inherent political and oppressive call for teachers not to be political and the inevitable fact that being human and being a teacher are by their nature political.

Joe Kincheloe (2005) clarifies the inescapable political nature of teaching and the classroom:

"Thus, proponents of critical pedagogy understand that every dimension of schooling and every form of educational practice are politically contested spaces. Shaped by history and challenged by a wide range of interest groups, educational practice is a fuzzy concept as it takes place in numerous settings, is shaped by a plethora of often-invisible forces, and can operate even in the name of democracy and justice to be totalitarian and oppressive." (p. 2)

Every choice made by an administrator, a teacher, and a student is a political choice. Humans are always in a state of politics, a negotiation of power. To deny this is to push our political nature beneath the surface (that which shall not be spoken) and relinquishing the power to the status quo.Bill Ayers recognizes that education that denies the inherent politics of teaching and learning is reduced to silence and compliance:

"In school, a high value is placed on quiet: 'Is everything quiet?' the superintendent asks the principal, and the principal the teacher, and the teacher the child. If everything is quiet, it is assumed that all is well. This is why many normal children-considering what kind of intelligence is expected and what will be rewarded here-become passive, quiet, obedient, dull. The environment practically demands it." (p. 51)

These are the facts before us:

People in positions of authority who mandate or coerce others to be politically neutral or objective are themselves being political and oppressive; thus, they are either purposefully or implicitly using their authority to act politically themselves to maintain the balance of power in their favor. Politicians do this, administrators do this to teachers, and teachers do this to students. To remove another person's political autonomy is the most corrosive act of politics we know; it is oppression.

Silence and inaction are political acts, often invoked as stances against being political. This irony is not without consequences. To remain silent, to remain passive-both are political acts of compliance, both are acts of endorsing those who are speaking and acting.

Teachers have only two choices: Act or be the tools of other people's actions.

Teachers have long been prone to being the tool of other people's actions, prone to put up a hand and wave off being political, prone to shutting doors and pretending that silence and stasis are objective and professional behaviors.

These tendencies were always political behaviors, as Kincheloe notes: "...educational practice is a fuzzy concept as it takes place in numerous settings, is shaped by a plethora of often-invisible forces, and can operate even in the name of democracy and justice to be totalitarian and oppressive."

To pretend to be objective, to wave off or deny the politics of teaching and learning, to shrug off our voices because we must do as we are told are all political concessions to those in power who are the ones using their politics to beg for our silence and inaction.

The silent and inactive teacher is molding the silent and inactive student.

These acts are conceding the world to the status quo, conceding our voices and our humanity.

Another irony: That's not teaching, and that's not education.

Indoctrination is the result of silent and inactive teachers committed to being compliant.

Strieker's commentary asserts that the current state of education is a shame. I agree, but for me the shame is that educators remain silent and inactive, willing to be the tools of other people's politics.

To embrace the politics of teaching and learning, however, Ayers explains:

"Education will unfit anyone to be a slave....Education tears down walls; training is all barbed wire." (p. 132)

Calling for teachers not to be political is barbed wire. It is far past time for teachers to tear down walls.
References
Ayers, W. (2001). To teach: The journey of a teacher. 2nd ed. New York: Teachers College Press.

Kincheloe, J. L. (2005). Critical pedagogy primer. New York: Peter Lang.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

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Education as "Politically Contested Spaces"

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Steve Strieker in The Answer Sheet confronts ths current state of education from the specific events of his home state: "In Gov. Scott Walker's Wisconsin, teaching has been relegated from professional status to political fodder." He then builds to this conclusion: "In Walker's Wisconsin, education is not a profession.

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Article: Talking Civics in Remote Classes in 2020: What Could Go Wrong?

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Article: Talking Civics in Remote Classes in 2020: What Could Go Wrong?

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By Alyson Klein, Education Week

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Getting students to talk respectfully about issues like gun rights, race relations, and a polarizing presidential campaign can be a tall order, even under the best of circumstances. This school year, with millions of students forced to attend classes online only, is not the best of circumstances.

Students are almost certain to have a tougher time communicating and feeling comfortable sharing contradictory views when they can't read each other's body language and may not have met the teacher-or each other-outside of a Zoom square. Add to that the not-always polite mode of discourse online, mixed with the historically high levels of political polarization, and you could end up with a situation that one teacher described as her "worst nightmare," where someone breaks down crying in class.

"It takes longer to form a classroom community in virtual classes," said Diana Hess, the dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's school of education who has studied the role of politics in the classroom.  But she said, "It's even more important. All the natural [aspects] of community, all those things that can happen so easily in a face-to-face classroom can't happen as easily virtually."

Respectful discussion will be especially important in the run-up to a contentious presidential election, which could wind up contested, due to an unprecedented volume of mail-in votes. President Donald Trump has said, without evidence, that this may lead to massive voter fraud.

What's more, Trump has attacked what he terms "left-wing indoctrination" in history classes. In particular, he's lambasted curriculum linked to the New York Times' 1619 project, which sought to put a spotlight on the role slavery had in the nation's founding.

Giving Students a Voice

One helpful strategy for collegial debate and discussion in a virtual classroom: Allowing students to help set the classroom norms.

Teachers may want to start the year by asking students what they think a respectful online discussion would "look like, feel like, sound like," said Mary Ellen Daneels, a civics instructional specialist at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation in Chicago, which works with schools across Illinois to improve civics education. (The foundation helped underwrite an Education Week event on civics education earlier this year.) Then, teachers should allow students to set the rules of the road for those kinds of conversations. "That gives students voice and ownership in a very productive way," she said.

Daneels also suggests that teachers let parents-who may be in the room during a heated Zoom session-know what they are trying to accomplish. Explain why the discussion is done in a nonpartisan format and why it is important.

"Inform parents about what you're going to be doing with this online learning and make them part of the process," Daneels said.

Many teachers who had to jump quickly into all-remote instruction last spring said they were able to rely on the relationships they had already built with students through the fall and winter.

But that opportunity to build relationships in person does not exist for many teachers this year because their schools have started with full-time remote learning. Candace Fikis, a social studies teacher at West Chicago Community High School, plans to start off the year placing extra emphasis on creating a collaborative, respectful environment.

"The hardest part of that is going to be building that climate online, so students feel safe," she said. "I'm going to need to spend more time at the beginning of the year getting to know kids, teaching them how they can debate, discuss, argue, challenge" in a respectful way. "When you're in person, the kids just kind of know how to be polite, but with online and social media, you kind of have a little barrier."

Similarly, Chris Johnson, who teaches at Rowva High School in Illinois, said he has "slowed down a bit" this year. He's spending more time than usual trying to build a classroom community, in part by explaining to his students his own motivations for keeping discussion respectful and evidence-based.

He showed them a clip from the TV show "The Newsroom" that argues America is no longer the greatest country in the world, in part, because of political polarization.

"To be honest, as adults we haven't exactly rocked it in terms of [civil discourse]," he said. "I want to teach them to be better than we are."

Easing Into Discussions

Both Fikis and Johnson plan to start the year modeling discussions of less controversial topics, so that students get the hang of communicating respectfully, before moving on to issues like gun control that tend to spark passionate debate. Fikis's students will consider whether schools should be open while COVID-19 is still a health threat. And Johnson is going with an even less controversial issue: Which is better-pancakes or waffles?

Another challenge: It's going to be hard for Fikis to use what a colleague of hers calls the "spidey sense" to figure out how students feel about the discussion. "You can see how the mood changes and if kids feel comfortable or not in a classroom." That is missing, she said, when you're looking at 30 boxes on a Zoom screen.

To get a better feel for the classroom climate, Fikis may have students fill out a quick survey at the end of each week, asking them to rate how they felt the discussions went on a scale from one to 10. And she plans to hold office hours so that kids have a space to get help or talk about something they may be reluctant to share in a larger group.

She also plans to use a technique she employs in class: Having students comment on each other's views in Google classroom. Just like in person, she'll show kids examples of "good," "bad," and "ugly" online comments.

"They always laugh at the 'ugly'" she said. But then they admit they've seen plenty of similar sentiments in virtual discussions.

Of course, there's also a flip side. Some students actually find it easier to express themselves in a virtual setting.

"We're hearing from some students that they felt more comfortable participating online than they did face to face," Hess said. "You're literally not sitting right next to people. That literal distance causes some people who are intimidated in face-to-face classes to feel safer."

Zoom Adaptations

Some of the techniques that work to get students to discuss hot button issues in a respectful way can also be used in Zoom classrooms, with a few twists, Daneels said.

For instance, she recommends a strategy called "structured academic controversy," in which students work in teams of four and consider a hotly debated question. For example, students might tackle the question of whether the electoral college should still be used to determine who is elected president. Two students are required to take one position, and the other two are assigned the other position-no matter what their personal beliefs are. Each team tries to convince the other, and then they switch perspectives, and try again. Finally, the group works to come to a consensus, informed by their own take on the topic. The format can still work online, Daneels said, since Zoom and other platforms allow for "breakout rooms" where students can do group work.

Another exercise-"philosophical chairs"-can be tweaked for an online-only environment. Students are given a topic to debate that has a relatively clear yes or no answer, such as "should we raise the federal minimum wage to $20 an hour?" Students read a common text and come up with their opinion - yes, no, or undecided. Then the class holds a discussion, where kids argue their own position.

If this activity is taking place in person, students are encouraged to move around the room as their position changes based on their classmates' arguments. On Zoom, kids could change their username to "Yes," "No," or "Undecided"-or they could hold up a green, yellow, or red object to reflect their thinking as the discussion progresses. The class could use the Zoom chatbox to respond to arguments in real time.

Students can also respond to a prompt in Padlet or on a Google jam board or another online forum for discussion and write back to one another silently. That's especially good for a prompt that might be "more emotionally charged," Daneels said.

Having students talk about an issue in small groups can be great for discussion, but it isn't easy to pull off when all the students are remote, said Matt Wdowiarz, who teaches 5th grade at Winfield Central School in Illinois, near Chicago.

"The challenge is going to be finding ways to break out the groups fast enough," Wdowiarz said. "It's going to be a matter of being a little bit more patient with the flow of time. There's so much going on right now with just how do we do things efficiently with the tech we have. That's been the dominant struggle."

That's why Daneels encourages teachers to just start with one activity and master it, and allow students to master it, before moving on.

"If you're getting stressed out using this new technology, your students are probably getting stressed out using this new technology," Daneels said.

What's more, teachers shouldn't be afraid to tell their students that creating a classroom community and teaching content online doesn't come naturally to them.

"It's really good for us to say as teachers we need to figure this out together because this is new for all of us," Johnson said. "Kids may offer suggestions of new techniques or tools to use, but it's also good modeling. Being a little bit vulnerable and saying 'I don't know how to do this, and 'this is hard for me, too' is a good way to connect with students. If we're teaching civics, we gotta practice what we preach."

Published in Print: October 7, 2020, as Talking Civics in Remote Classes in 2020: What Could Go Wrong?

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Talking Civics in Remote Classes in 2020: What Could Go Wrong?

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Getting students to talk respectfully about issues like gun rights, race relations, and a polarizing presidential campaign can be a tall order, even under the best of circumstances. This school year, with millions of students forced to attend classes online only, is not the best of circumstances.

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Article: Can We Talk? Tips for Respectful Conversations in Schools, Workplaces and Communities

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Article: Can We Talk? Tips for Respectful Conversations in Schools, Workplaces and Communities

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ADL

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Can We Talk? Tips for Respectful Conversations in Schools, Workplaces and Communities

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The ability to engage in respectful and civil conversations is the bedrock of any relationship-whether those connections take place at home, school, work or in communities.

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Better Angels is now Braver Angels. Our Story Building a House United "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have

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Statement: Managing the COVID-19 infodemic: Promoting healthy behaviours and mitigating the harm from misinformation and disinformation

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Statement: Managing the COVID-19 infodemic: Promoting healthy behaviours and mitigating the harm from misinformation and disinformation

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World Health Organization

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The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is the first pandemic in history in which technology and social media are being used on a massive scale to keep people safe, informed, productive and connected. At the same time, the technology we rely on to keep connected and informed is enabling and amplifying an infodemic that continues to undermine the global response and jeopardizes measures to control the pandemic.

An infodemic is an overabundance of information, both online and offline. It includes deliberate attempts to disseminate wrong information to undermine the public health response and advance alternative agendas of groups or individuals. Mis- and disinformation can be harmful to people's physical and mental health; increase stigmatization; threaten precious health gains; and lead to poor observance of public health measures, thus reducing their effectiveness and endangering countries' ability to stop the pandemic.

Misinformation costs lives. Without the appropriate trust and correct information, diagnostic tests go unused, immunization campaigns (or campaigns to promote effective vaccines) will not meet their targets, and the virus will continue to thrive.

Furthermore, disinformation is polarizing public debate on topics related to COVID-19; amplifying hate speech; heightening the risk of conflict, violence and human rights violations; and threatening long-terms prospects for advancing democracy, human rights and social cohesion.

In this context, the UN Secretary- General launched the United Nations Communications Response initiative to combat the spread of mis- and disinformation in April 2020. The UN also issued a Guidance Note on Addressing and Countering COVID-19 related Hate Speech (11 May 2020).

At the World Health Assembly in May 2020, WHO Member States passed Resolution WHA73.1 on the COVID-19 response. The Resolution recognizes that managing the infodemic is a critical part of controlling the COVID-19 pandemic: it calls on Member States to provide reliable COVID-19 content, take measures to counter mis- and disinformation and leverage digital technologies across the response. The Resolution also calls on international organizations to address mis- and disinformation in the digital sphere, work to prevent harmful cyber activities undermining the health response and support the provision of science-based data to the public.

The UN system and civil society organizations are using their collective expertise and knowledge to respond to the infodemic. At the same time, as the pandemic continues to create uncertainty and anxiety, there is an urgent need for stronger action to manage the infodemic, and for a coordinated approach among states, multi-lateral organizations, civil society and all other actors who have a clear role and responsibility in combatting mis- and disinformation.

We call on Member States to develop and implement action plans to manage the infodemic by promoting the timely dissemination of accurate information, based on science and evidence, to all communities, and in particular high-risk groups; and preventing the spread, and combating, mis- and disinformation while respecting freedom of expression.

We urge Member States to engage and listen to their communities as they develop their national action plans, and to empower communities to develop solutionsand resilience against mis- and disinformation.

We further call on all other stakeholders - including the media and social media platforms through which mis- and disinformation are disseminated,researchers and technologists who can design and build effective strategies and tools to respond to the infodemic, civil society leaders and influencers - to collaborate with the UN system, with Member States and with each other, and to further strengthen their actions to disseminate accurate information and prevent the spread of mis- and disinformation.

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Managing the COVID-19 infodemic: Promoting healthy behaviours and mitigating the harm from misinformation and disinformation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is the first pandemic in history in which technology and social media are being used on a massive scale to keep people safe, informed, productive and connected. At the same time, the technology we rely on to keep connected and informed is enabling and amplifying an infodemic that continues to undermine the global response and jeopardizes measures to control the pandemic.

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Article: TikTok launches US elections app to fight misinformation

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Article: TikTok launches US elections app to fight misinformation

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By James Farrell, siliconANGLE

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In an effort to fight misinformation, TikTok announced today that it's launching an in-app guide for the 2020 U.S. election.

The guide will be available today to all users inside the U.S. and will be accessible either on TikTok's Discover page or will appear with various search results related to the election. The company said the information will appear in English as well as "dozens" of other languages.

The information provided will tell people about candidates at the federal, state and local level. There will be information about how to vote, powered by the National Association of Secretaries of State, while the digital media literacy initiative MediaWise will supplement the information with educational videos about misinformation, media literacy and the elections process.

The company said in a blog post that the guide will also contain information regarding voting as a person with disabilities, powered by SignVote. The Federal Voting Assistance Program will supply information on voting from overseas, and the Campus Vote Project will help students to cast their vote. Lastly, Restore Your Vote will give information on voting for people with past convictions.

Katy Byron, editor and program manager of MediaWise at the Poynter Institute, said the goal is to help teach the TikTok community "how to sort fact from fiction online" through videos. "Our series of videos will teach first-time voters on TikTok how to spot misleading information online so they can feel confident their vote is based on reliable and accurate information and, at the same time, slow the spread of misinformation," she said.

The Chinese-owned app just skirted a ban by the Trump administration after a federal judge temporarily blocked an executive order. Trump had earlier accused TikTok of being a threat to national U.S. national security, stating that if it wasn't bought by a non-Chinese company it would banned from operating in the U.S. The company is currently in negotiations with Oracle Corp. and Walmart Inc.

"Our elections guide is built with user privacy in mind, so a user must visit the website for a state or a non-profit for anything that involves sharing their information, including registering to vote," said Michael Beckerman, TikTok's head of U.S. public policy in the blog post, perhaps in an effort to placate the company's critics. "Interactions with this guide in our app have no bearing on future TikTok experiences, such as recommendations or ads."

Since you're here ...

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tiktok launches us elections app to fight misinformation

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TikTok launches US elections app to fight misinformation - SiliconANGLE

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In an effort to fight misinformation, TikTok announced today that it's launching an in-app guide for the 2020 U.S. election. The guide will be available today to all users inside the U.S. and will be accessible either on TikTok's Discover page or will appear with various search results related to the election.

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Article: Twitter imposes restrictions, more warning labels ahead of U.S. election

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Article: Twitter imposes restrictions, more warning labels ahead of U.S. election

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By Elizabeth Culliford, REUTERS

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(Reuters) - Twitter Inc said on Friday it will remove tweets calling for people to interfere with the U.S. election process or implementation of election results, including through violence, as the company also announced more restrictions to slow the spread of misinformation.

Twitter said in a blog post that, from next week, users will get a prompt pointing them to credible information before they can retweet content that has been labeled as misleading.

It said it would add more warnings and restrictions on tweets with misleading information labels from U.S. political figures like candidates and campaigns, as well as U.S.-based accounts with more than 100,000 followers or that get "significant engagement."

Twitter, which recently told Reuters it was testing how to make its labeling more obvious and direct, said people will have to tap through warnings to see these tweets. Users can also only 'quote tweet' this content, as likes, retweets and replies will be turned off.

Twitter says it has labeled thousands of misleading posts, though most attention has been on the labels applied to tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump. Twitter also said it would label tweets that falsely claim a win for any candidate.

The company announced several temporary steps to slow amplification of content: for example, from Oct. 20 to at least the end of the U.S. election week, global users pressing "retweet" will be directed first to the "quote tweet" button to encourage people to add their own commentary.

It will also stop surfacing trending topics without added context, and will stop people seeing "liked by" recommendations from people they do not know in their timeline.

Twitter's decision to hit the brakes on automated recommendations contrasts with the approach at Facebook Inc , which is amping up promotion of its groups product despite concerns about extremism in those spaces.

Social media companies are under pressure to combat election-related misinformation and prepare for the possibility of violence or poll place intimidation around the Nov. 3 vote.

Reuters has reported that Republicans are mobilizing thousands of volunteers to watch early voting sites and ballot drop boxes to find evidence to back up Trump's unsubstantiated complaints about widespread voter fraud.

On Wednesday, Facebook said it would ban calls for poll watching using "militarized language."

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social media & networking (trbc level 5)

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Twitter imposes restrictions, more warning labels ahead of U.S. election

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Twitter Inc said on Friday it will remove tweets calling for people to interfere with the U.S. election process or implementation of election results, including through violence, as the company also announced more restrictions to slow the spread of misinformation.

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Article: Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories: Research project finds humans, not bots, are primarily responsible for spread of misleading information

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Article: Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories: Research project finds humans, not bots, are primarily responsible for spread of misleading information

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by Peter Dizikes, MIT News

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MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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A new study by three MIT scholars has found that false news spreads more rapidly on the social network Twitter than real news does - and by a substantial margin.

"We found that falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude," says Sinan Aral, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a new paper detailing the findings.

"These findings shed new light on fundamental aspects of our online communication ecosystem," says Deb Roy, an associate professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab and director of the Media Lab's Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM), who is also a co-author of the study. Roy adds that the researchers were "somewhere between surprised and stunned" at the different trajectories of true and false news on Twitter.

Moreover, the scholars found, the spread of false information is essentially not due to bots that are programmed to disseminate inaccurate stories. Instead, false news speeds faster around Twitter due to people retweeting inaccurate news items.

"When we removed all of the bots in our dataset, [the] differences between the spread of false and true news stood,"says Soroush Vosoughi, a co-author of the new paper and a postdoc at LSM whose PhD research helped give rise to the current study.

The study provides a variety of ways of quantifying this phenomenon: For instance, false news stories are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories are. It also takes true stories about six times as long to reach 1,500 people as it does for false stories to reach the same number of people. When it comes to Twitter's "cascades," or unbroken retweet chains, falsehoods reach a cascade depth of 10 about 20 times faster than facts. And falsehoods are retweeted by unique users more broadly than true statements at every depth of cascade.

The paper, "The Spread of True and False News Online," is published today in Science.
Why novelty may drive the spread of falsity
The genesis of the study involves the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent casualties, which received massive attention on Twitter.

"Twitter became our main source of news," Vosoughi says. But in the aftermath of the tragic events, he adds, "I realized that ... a good chunk of what I was reading on social media was rumors; it was false news." Subsequently, Vosoughi and Roy - Vosoughi's graduate advisor at the time - decided to pivot Vosoughi's PhD focus to develop a model that could predict the veracity of rumors on Twitter.

Subsequently, after consultation with Aral - another of Vosoughi's graduate advisors, who has studied social networks extensively - the three researchers decided to try the approach used in the new study: objectively identifying news stories as true or false, and charting their Twitter trajectories. Twitter provided support for the research and granted the MIT team full access to its historical archives. Roy served as Twitter's chief media scientist from 2013 to 2017.

To conduct the study, the researchers tracked roughly 126,000 cascades of news stories spreading on Twitter, which were cumulatively tweeted over 4.5 million times by about 3 million people, from the years 2006 to 2017.

To determine whether stories were true or false, the team used the assessments of six fact-checking organizations (factcheck.org, hoax-slayer.com, politifact.com, snopes.com, truthorfiction.com, and urbanlegends.about.com), and found that their judgments overlapped more than 95 percent of the time.

Of the 126,000 cascades, politics comprised the biggest news category, with about 45,000, followed by urban legends, business, terrorism, science, entertainment, and natural disasters. The spread of false stories was more pronounced for political news than for news in the other categories.

The researchers also settled on the term "false news" as their object of study, as distinct from the now-ubiquitous term "fake news," which involves multiple broad meanings.

The bottom-line findings produce a basic question: Why do falsehoods spread more quickly than the truth, on Twitter? Aral, Roy, and Vosoughi suggest the answer may reside in human psychology: We like new things.

"False news is more novel, and people are more likely to share novel information," says Aral, who is the David Austin Professor of Management. And on social networks, people can gain attention by being the first to share previously unknown (but possibly false) information. Thus, as Aral puts it, "people who share novel information are seen as being in the know."

The MIT scholars examined this "novelty hypothesis" in their research by taking a random subsample of Twitter users who propagated false stories, and analyzing the content of the reactions to those stories.

The result? "We saw a different emotional profile for false news and true news," Vosoughi says. "People respond to false news more with surprise and disgust," he notes, whereas true stories produced replies more generally characterized by sadness, anticipation, and trust.

So while the researchers "cannot claim that novelty causes retweets" by itself, as they state in the paper, the surprise people register when they see false news fits with the idea that the novelty of falsehoods may be an important part of their propagation.
Directions for further research
While the three researchers all think the magnitude of the effect they found is highly significant, their views on its civic implications vary slightly. Aral says the result is "very scary" in civic terms, while Roy is a bit more sanguine. But the scholars agree it is important to think about ways to limit the spread of misinformation, and they hope their result will encourage more research on the subject.

On the first count, Aral notes, the recognition that humans, not bots, spread false news more quickly suggests a general approach to the problem.

"Now behavioral interventions become even more important in our fight to stop the spread of false news," Aral says. "Whereas if it were just bots, we would need a technological solution."

Vosoughi, for his part, suggests that if some people are deliberately spreading false news while others are doing so unwittingly, then the phenomenon is a two-part problem that may require multiple tactics in response. And Roy says the findings may help create "measurements or indicators that could become benchmarks" for social networks, advertisers, and other parties.

The MIT scholars say it is possible that the same phenomenon occurs on other social media platforms, including Facebook, but they emphasize that careful studies are needed on that and other related questions.

In that vein, Aral says, "science needs to have more support, both from industry and government, in order to do more studies."

For now, Roy says, even well-meaning Twitter users might reflect on a simple idea: "Think before you retweet."

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Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories

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A new study by three MIT scholars has found that false news spreads more rapidly on the social network Twitter than real news does - and by a substantial margin.

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Article: U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation DividedDeep partisan divisions exist in the news sources Americans trust, distrust and rely on

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Article: U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation DividedDeep partisan divisions exist in the news sources Americans trust, distrust and rely on

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BY MARK JURKOWITZ, AMY MITCHELL, ELISA SHEARER AND MASON WALKER, Pew Research Center

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Pew Research Center's Journalism Project

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U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided

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As the U.S. enters a heated 2020 presidential election year, Republicans and Democrats place their trust in two nearly inverse news media environments.

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National Center for Civil and Human Rights

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National Center for Civil and Human Rights

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National Center for Civil and Human Rights

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Plan Your Visit

A typical visit lasts approximately 90 minutes to two hours. Make the most of your visit to The Center by planning your visit.

Hours

Tuesday - Friday & Sunday:
12pm to 5pm

Saturdays:
10am to 5pm
Last entry at 4pm daily.

Experience the virtual tour! The National Center for Civil and Human Rights invites you to enjoy the rich history and contemporary relevance of our exhibits.

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Home - National Center for Civil and Human Rights

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Looking for something to do in Atlanta? Visit the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and explore the museum connects the history of civil rights movements to the human rights movements of today.

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ADOPT A STATE

The election will most likely come down to what these states' voters, and therefore their electors, do on November 3rd. Just because you don't live there (or better yet, if you do), you can have a huge impact on helping these voters make their decision and getting them to the polls on Election Day. All from the comfort of your own home. Adopt a state. Save America.

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The election will most likely come down to what these states' voters, and therefore their electors, do on November 3rd. Just because you don't live there (or better yet, if you do), you can have a huge impact on helping these voters make their decision and getting them to the polls on Election Day.

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ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos

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538 uses statistical analysis - hard numbers - to tell compelling stories about elections, politics, economics, and American society.

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Article: College students struggle to spot misinformation online as 2020 election approaches

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Article: College students struggle to spot misinformation online as 2020 election approaches

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By Nathan Bomey, USA Today

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Don't fall for the premise that young people, otherwise known as "digital natives," are immune to misinformation.

That's the message from Stanford University researchers who say their new research provides further evidence that college students are prone to being deceived online.

The researchers found that most sophomores, juniors and seniors were easily fooled by misinformation, even when they were given the time and resources to fact-check the material.

The study adds to "a mountain of evidence that students struggle to evaluate the content that streams across their devices," said Joel Breakstone, director of the Stanford History Education Group and co-author of the study.

The study gave two separate tasks to 263 students - a mix of sophomores, juniors and seniors - at a "large state university on the East Coast":

1) Assess the trustworthiness of a news story.

2) Evaluate the credibility of an informational website.

The students were allowed to use the internet to complete their evaluations.

But they "struggled" with the tasks, the researchers reported. "They employed inefficient strategies that made them vulnerable to forces, whether satirical or malevolent, that threaten informed citizenship."

In the first task, two-thirds of students failed to identify that the story was published on a satirical website and was not reliable.

In the second task, more than 9 in 10 students failed to realize that the website purporting to provide unbiased information on the minimum wage had actually been established by a public relations firm funded by an interest group of restaurants that opposes increases to the minimum wage.

In many cases, students attempting to validate the information did not visit any other websites, choosing to trust the material they were presented based on the apparent credibility of the site's design or its unsubstantiated claims.

The Stanford researchers advocated for incorporating lessons on source validation and basic fact-checking skills into regular coursework.

Nadav Ziv, co-author of the study, said students are too trusting of the information they scroll through on their smartphones.

"People somehow expect these platforms to do the work for them," Ziv said. "We can't rely on tech companies to do the work of fact-checking for us no matter what platform, whether it's Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc. because information spreads faster than any ability to moderate it."

Follow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @ NathanBomey.

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College students struggle to spot misinformation online as 2020 election approaches

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Don't fall for the premise that young people, otherwise known as "digital natives," are immune to misinformation. That's the message from Stanford University researchers who say their new research provides further evidence that college students are prone to being deceived online.

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Article: Educating for Misunderstanding: How Approaches to Teaching Digital Literacy Make Students Susceptible to Scammers, Rogues, Bad Actors, and Hate Mongers

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Article: Educating for Misunderstanding: How Approaches to Teaching Digital Literacy Make Students Susceptible to Scammers, Rogues, Bad Actors, and Hate Mongers

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By Sam Wineburg, Joel Breakstone, Nadav Ziv, and Mark Smith; Stanford

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Educating for Misunderstanding: How Approaches to Teaching Digital Literacy Make Students Susceptible to Scammers, Rogues, Bad Actors, and Hate Mongers

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Introduction
 Russian troll farms sow disinformation. Fake news runs amok on social media. Bots impersonate real people. Real people assume false identities. How do we know what's true? The onl...

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NAIS Research: Civil Discourse in Independent Schools: The 2020 Election and Beyond

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NAIS Research: Civil Discourse in Independent Schools: The 2020 Election and Beyond

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Executive Summary
The 2016 presidential election created a climate of political polarization that few Americans had experienced before. In schools across the country, the divisive rhetoric and partisan combativeness affected even the youngest students. Many school leaders, administrators, and teachers reported feeling unprepared to manage the situations in their schools.

Leading up to the 2020 presidential election, many school leaders want to ensure that their communities nurture open, respectful interaction among diverse groups. They seek to engage students in the civic process and create climates that welcome authentic dialogue, but some worry that fostering political discussion could inflame divides.

To help schools address these concerns, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and Pollyanna, Inc. collaborated to gather information about independent school educators' experiences before and after the 2016 election and their hopes for the 2020 election season. Between August and September 2020, the organizations administered a survey to heads of school, administrators, and teachers. The survey responses suggest key lessons from the 2016 election. This report also provides suggestions to help educators foster civil discourse in their communities during the 2020 election season.
Downloadable Content

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NAIS Research: Civil Discourse in Independent Schools: The 2020 Election and Beyond

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The 2016 presidential election created a climate of political polarization that few Americans had experienced before. In schools across the country, the divisive rhetoric and partisan combativeness affected even the youngest students. Many school leaders, administrators, and teachers reported feeling unprepared to manage the situations in their schools.