Case study in fake news

I find the story about Orson Welles’ 1938 radio production of the War of the Worlds and its impact on many Americans who had tuned into their favourite radio program, utterly fascinating.

On October 30^th, 1938 (Halloween Eve or Mischief Night) the American public were about to get punked big time.  The story goes, that Orson Welles and the players of the Mercury Theater had adapted the novel by H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, into a radio play.  The play was presented as if it was taking place in ‘real time’ with credible sounding newscasters describing the unfolding invasion of aliens in Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Many of the listening audience thought the story was true and panicked, thinking they were about to be captured or killed by Martians.  Police were called, hospitals were overrun, switchboards at CBS and other media were swamped with calls, and people were running amok in the streets. The story goes viral.  Fascinating, right?

Spooked!: How a Radio Broadcast and The War of the World Sparked the1938 Invasion of America by Gail Jarrow presents an absorbing account of how this all came to be, played out in reality and the aftermath.  It is a well-researched book that frames the context of the radio play in terms of the mindset of the American people at this time (post-Depression era, increasing unease over the rise of Nazism in Europe, increasing interest in Mars) and why it was seemingly, possible to dupe the public.

Fake news, anyone?

That’s right.  Fake news.

But the book goes beyond looking at the radio play and its unintended consequences. It also explores the characters involved in the production, the public’s response and it looks at the media’s coverage of the aftermath, presenting another angle of fake news.  The mass hysteria that supposedly gripped the nation after the play’s broadcast was greatly exaggerated. The studies done at the time are shown to be inaccurate and then wrongly reported.

This book presents a terrific historical case study to bring into the classroom to look at fake news today, understanding how the media can slant a story and the importance of critical thinking.

The book includes sections of the radio broadcast, descriptions of how the play was read, the pacing, the music, the characters, as well as excerpts from letters, telegrams and editorials sent to CBS, Orson Welles, newspapers describing the impact it had on listeners. The breakdown of the myth of mass hysteria shows how to work through information and fact check.

Additional material such as a timeline, a list of web resources, an author’s note, source notes, a selected bibliography and an index provides substantial support for students to follow up and explore the story on their own. You’ll be happy to know that there is a link to a site that has the original radio play for you to listen to.

Gail Jarrow does an amazing job with all her books.  As already mentioned, they are well-researched.  She picks stories that allow us to connect on an emotional level to the people involved and then gets us thinking.

I highly recommend this book for middle grades and up.

Reviews for other books by Gail Jarrow: 

Bubonic Panic: when plague invaded America

Fatal Fever: tracking down Typhoid Mary

Red Madness how a medical mystery change what we eat

Divergent thinking

Recently, I offered a workshop about children’s literature with a focus on divergent thinking. We looked at how children’s literature can encourage readers to be divergent thinkers as well as model divergent thinking. This can be embodied by the characters in the book or the book itself might be designed in some creative way or tell a story with some element of originality.

I did base some of my workshop on the book by Marianne Saccardi, Creativity and Children’s Literature: new ways to encourage divergent thinking (2014).  Click HERE to read my blog reviewing this book from a couple of years ago.  This was the first time I had run this workshop.

I did modify the workshop a little by introducing some of the thinking behind the new Alberta Education curriculum that is currently being rolled out over the next couple of years.  There is a set of 8 competencies that will span the K-12 curriculum in which I saw components of divergent thinking. These included critical thinking, problem solving, managing information, creativity and innovation, communication, collaboration, cultural and global citizenship and personal growth and well-being. If you’re keen to read more about the new curriculum or the competencies please take a look at The Guiding Framework for the Design and Development of Kindergarten to Grade 12 Provincial Curriculum (Programs of Study) by Alberta Education, 2017.

One of my main objectives in this workshop is getting books into the hands of students. A significant amount of time is given to ‘playing’ with the books (book spine poetry exercise) and then reading books with an eye to evaluating books for embodying some attribute of divergent thinking. I collect their evaluations and will be posting their recommendations on the Doucette Library’s Pinterest page. I’ll create a board specific to this workshop so that students can revisit some of the titles that were featured.

Here are a few student-teacher recommendations:

The Water Walker by Joanne Robertson : divergent thinking attributes include problem solving and taking risks

I’m Coming to Get You by Tony Ross : divergent thinking attributes include being imaginative and a metaphor (“for the destructive nature of people”)

Why Am I Here? by Constance Orbeck-Nilsson : divergent thinking attributes include promoting wondering, problem solving and being philosophical (“starts to create empathy and thinking about things through the perspective of someone else. Subtly brings up the topic of immigration. Love!”)

Who Says Women Can’t be Doctors? By Tanya Lee Stone : divergent thinking attributes include taking risks and promotes original thinking (“Very inspirational story…Good non-fiction information presented in an interesting way that is appropriate for various age groups.”)

There by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick : divergent thinking attributes includes being philosophical, ambiguous and promoting problem finding (“Bigger philosophical question about life/meaning of life.  Can be universally applied to anyone with an imaginative twist.”)

Fact or fiction?

Now this is a book that teachers, librarians and those of us who teach research skills will approve –

Two Truths and a Lie: it’s alive! by Ammi-Joan Paquette & Laurie Ann Thompson is a pretty fun book that teaches us about the natural world (plants, animals and us, humans, too) but promotes critical thinking and digging for the truth, along the way.

The book is divided into three parts each focused on either plants, animals or humans. Each part has three chapters and within each chapter there are three stories written loosely connected about a particular topic. 

Now, the three stories within a chapter has two stories based on facts and one that is fabricated.  All the stories capture the mystical nature and sometimes strange wonder of the natural world making it tricky to figure out which one might be the ‘lie’. The fake story often does contain bits of information that is true but the overarching information is false.

Along the way, there are pull-out boxes that give us additional information, quick lists of true or false statements to research, define words, provide maps and photos, and suggest activities and tips on research.  The answers are provided at the back of the book as well as a bibliography of the sources the writers consulted.

The introduction sets up the book, what to expect and how to read through it.

A section at the back of the book provides the reader with suggestions on how they might tackle figuring out which stories are true and which are not. It promotes using the internet and how to best work through the information found there. They caution the reader to be extra careful as there are people out there who intentionally want to fool us into believing false information. Selecting reliable sources, checking these sources, verifying information from more than one source, visiting libraries and thinking critically about what you’re reading are outlined in the book and promoted as crucial for good research.

This will appeal to a certain kind of reader who will likely be keen to work through it on their own but I think this book will have a bigger appeal for classroom work teaching research and critical thinking skills. The stories have a ‘wow’ factor that holds the reader’s attention and then there’s the gaming element that presents a challenge of figuring out fact from fiction.

I can see introducing this book to student-teachers when I next hold a workshop about information literacy or dealing with ‘fake news’.

I highly recommend this book for grades 4 to 8 but could see it being used at higher levels, as well.

Today’s recommendation is Which One Doesn’t Belong? : a Shapes Book by Christopher Danielson.

It would be an interesting resource to bring into a math classroom especially when doing geometry but not necessarily only limited to mathematics. This book presents four varying shapes on a page and asks the viewer to select which one doesn’t belong.

There is no wrong answer.

Each shape has some feature that makes it distinct from the others. This promotes critical, analytical thinking and rationalizing skills as students look to justify their answers.

There is a teacher’s guide that I haven’t seen yet but the publisher’s information suggests that it will promote mathematical thinking across many grades going beyond the obvious geometry connections.

I do think the student book is quite clever in the way it gets the viewer to work through the reasoning behind their selections but then also to see how the other shapes are different in their own ways. I see this as good (and fun) practice for developing logic thinking skills.

I’m recommending this for elementary and middle grades. I have hopes that the teacher’s guide will have suggestions to use with high school students.

Promoting critical thinking

How to Fake a Moon Landing: Exposing myths of science denial by Darryl Cunningham though published in 2013 is right on target in this day of ‘fake news’.

Looking at the science and controversies behind such topics as climate change, fracking, evolution, chiropractic and homeopathic care, vaccinations causing autism and the conspiracy story that astronauts did not land on the moon, Cunningham looks to give us some insight into the veracity of all claims.

Let’s take the chapter on climate change, a topic that is often explored in classrooms.  Presented are common arguments that the Earth’s climate is becoming warmer and as well as those that refute this claim.

Cunningham explains that to really understand climate change we need to see the big picture, we need to see what is happening on a global level, and not base our opinions on local events such as extremely hot summers or extremely cold winters.  In addition to looking at patterns on a global level we need to look at the Earth’s historical data, as well to see these patterns over very long periods of time.

Overall, there is an immense amount of data to breakdown and analyze but the science does back up the theory that the Earth’s climate is indeed changing. He presents the following facts:

*global sea levels have risen about 17 cm in the past century, a rate of increase that has doubled in the past decade.

*there has been a consistent global surface temperature rise since the 1880s and most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s with two of the warmest years happening in the past 12 years.

*all this has taken place even though the 2000s have experienced a solar output decline.

                                                                                                                         --from page 139

                                                                                                                                            

He presents additional information about shrinking ice sheets from highly credible sources with measurable points for comparison over time.  He explains how Earth’s atmosphere traps greenhouse gases and that there is a correlation between human activity since the industrial revolution and increases in global temperatures.

Next, he addresses the points of contention that arise in discussions about climate change like, “Isn’t it true that a growing number of eminent scientists now believe climate change to be wrong?” But statistical analysis of the opinions of climate experts showed that only 2.5 percent of the world’s top 200 climate scientists are skeptical of human-made climate change.

Cunningham explains that many of the conspiracy theories come from interest groups, such as the fossil fuel industry who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo.

Now all of this sounds like pretty heavy going, doesn’t it? But the book is done in fairly short chapters in graphic novel-style. The tone is conversational as our narrator is depicted in each section and leads us through the controversies and evidence. I think it’s taken me longer to write up the section above describing the chapter about climate change than it did for me to read about it.

This book will be a terrific addition to classrooms to promote discussions about climate change and any topic which might fall into either category of ‘news’ or ‘fake news’.  It will with encourage critical thinking for those at the secondary levels.  Each section is credited with the sources that the author consulted to write this book.

I recommend this for grades 9 or 10 and up for anyone interested in this timely topic.