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The new curriculum

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Cleisthenis

Posted: Feb 15 2005, 08:03 PM

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QUOTE (Interview with George Papandreou @ Greece’s former foreign minister and current leader of its main opposition party, Pasok)

openDemocracy: In an earlier conversation you used a striking phrase – “info–glut” – meaning that you can have too much information. Citizens can be faced with so many points of view and differences of opinion that it confuses rather than enables you to make up your own mind.

George Papandreou: Absolutely. People can become lost in an ocean of information. They will always be looking for a lighthouse, faros, as we say in Greek. But what are these lighthouses? In an information society they will be those who are trusted to be able to help interpret or analyse what is happening. Is it a CIA or World Bank report that you’re going to be reading, is it the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a university, an NGO, or a Google–type search engine? There will be sources you trust to choose your information. But this also means that you yourself need to create a critical capacity.

This is a thing for our whole education system right now – we do very little on critical, analytical and synthetic capacity, which is the new road to learning. It is what our society is going to be about. But this is also deeply democratic – to be able to put value on information, to choose and decide for yourself. So what we would like to do as a party is to develop a culture of debate, dialogue, and critical understanding of issues, where people can set priorities and are not simply told by the experts or their “leaders” what is right and wrong for them. We have enough information; what we need now is knowledge.

Read the whole interview here.

If you're interested I would like to collaborate in developing a draft curriculum that I've touched on here, and in the media literacy thread here (which goes on to discuss meme's).

It should be comprehensive and include at least the major areas of media literacy, citizen and consumer responsibility, and critical thinking and analysis. It should start in kindergarten and get appropriately more complex from K-12. We should start by sresearching and collecting existing resources and curriculum that already exist and build from there.

This post has been edited by jschroder on Feb 15 2005, 08:05 PM

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carnivalesque	Posted: Feb 15 2005, 08:44 PM
Sr. Reporter Group: Members Posts: 74 Member No.: 82 Joined: 5-November 04	At my library, we teach a series of media awareness modules for parents and educators. It's quite good, actually. Canadian content. Talks about hate literature, direct marketing to kids, Internet safety, evaluating and authenticating information online, etc. There are other components, too, that we don't teach - those relating to advertising, etc. It's right...here! C. -------------------- Dum Vivamus, Vivimus semaphora.ca

Cleisthenis	Posted: Feb 15 2005, 08:48 PM
Director Group: Admin Posts: 539 Member No.: 1 Joined: 20-September 04	Thanks for the link Car', I'll check that out for sure. Sounds like it covers a lot of great material, however if I had to pick I'd say media literacy in regards to p.r., marketing and advertising is what is most important. Any ideas on existing curriculum in that regard? -------------------- Welcome to the project! Click HERE to get started. = Make some cash and help spread the word = "The true reflection of ourselves, of our society, is the one amongst us who has the least." - John Ralston Saul

Raos	Posted: Feb 16 2005, 04:37 PM
Sr. Writer Group: Members Posts: 119 Member No.: 70 Joined: 26-October 04	In social studies, I found part of the curriculum for Advanced Placement in European history a great tool for teaching critical analysis and media awareness. One portion of the testing component was a data based question, where several historical sources were given on on the topic, and points were awarded based on what analysis criteria was met. The sources covered broad ranges of media and authors, including public releases by political figures, artistic works, and private letters. Some of the criteria for analysis included identifying and explaining biases, and combining different sources into groups based on which side of the position the author fell (this was a form of position paper). I found it was a very effective way of getting students to actually try applying critical analysis of more than one opposing source into their perspective on a topic.

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