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Cultivating a Critical Mass: Conspiracy Theories and the Composition Classroom

Efforts at targeted resistance to disinformation have been underway at the elementary and high school levels for years, but recently there has been an increase in those efforts. Generally working under the framework of “information literacy,” school districts have been updating their curricula to meet current challenges. In Colorado, for example, State Reps. Barbara McLachlan and Lisa Cutter have cosponsored a bill that promotes media literacy in the state’s curricula. The goal, of course, is to teach students not what to think but how to assess the credibility of a source. The resulting curricula would not address strategies of discerning real from fake news in a special, standalone unit or lesson but instead weave critical thinking into courses to make it a more fundamental aspect of education from the very beginning. Likewise, at Normal High School in Normal, IL, history and government teacher Tracy Freeman has made “standards of proof” a central feature of all her classes. Reporter Sarah Schwartz (2020), who interviewed Freeman for Education Week, wrote: