Destroying Children's Trust

Warning: the information you find online can be misleading, damaging and dangerous!

In a column in American Libraries called "Why Johnny Can't Search," Joseph James discusses the results of a test from the Educational Testing Service, "Information and Communication Literacy Assessment." The results are not heartening: only 49% of students taking the test could evaluate selected websites on objectivity, authority and timeliness; only 35% could narrow an overly broad search, and only 44% could select a research statement that reflected the demands of a research assignment. So how do we teach children to evaluate websites and to employ effective search strategies?

It is touching that children trust what they find as they Google away. My job is to destroy that trust. Under the guise of teaching essential note-taking skills, I present a fake website on the screen. This year's alarmist site was a "science" site about the troubling chemical compound, DHMO (Dihydrogen Monoxide). Used by elite athletes to enhance performance, present at every school shooting, fatal if inhaled, can cause tissue damage in its solid form, DHMO appeared to our 10-11 year olds as a serious threat. And every warning, every troubling danger, was true: true of the chemical compound H2O. "You tricked us!" exclamations were followed by requests, "Try to trick us again! That was fun!"

If you are interested, check out these hilariously misleading sites:
Facts About the Civil War
The Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
All About Explorers

Teaching them the grammar of the URL is a first step in helping students understand that they must always look for the author or source of a website. Although it is unlikely that students would actually encounter these sites during a research project, the lesson heightens their awareness. And we all laugh.

I've also used a now-dated little video in a presentation on Wikipedia and the need for students to understand how it works: Stephen Colbert does a brilliant examination of what he calls "wikiality," which is the notion that something is true or correct if the majority of people think so (think of Galileo, slavery, etc.). Humor is my only weapon in this quest or students will consider me a Luddite.

Our discussions then take a more serious turn as I talk about their obligation to be part of an informed citizenry. When I explain that there is no governing body guaranteeing validity of information online, many children will exclaim that the government should make one. As we get into issues of free speech, I mention web sites of white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, moon-landing deniers, and other conspiracy theorists. I love their outrage. I mention that an 11-year old once argued vehemently with me that a web site he found was the one he chose to believe: it claims that the killer of Martin Luther King Jr. was not James Earl Ray but a mysterious "tavern owner." Persisting in his belief even after I showed him FBI documents and other more authoritative sites, he concluded, "Well, I'm entitled to my opinion."

Hey. I did my best. And information literacy remains a standard part of the library curriculum.