Illinois became the first state in the country to require media literacy education to be taught at schools through the tenacity of a former Naperville Central High School student.
Starting this school year, Illinois high school students are learning how to decipher fact from fiction through lessons stipulated by law. Lessons cover such things as how to access information, evaluate media message and sources, create media, reflect on media consumption and use social responsibility to ethically consume media.
Braden Hajer, who graduated from Naperville Central in 2021, said his interest in the subject started when he was researching the history of misinformation in fall 2020 for his senior capstone semester project. It was part of the Illinois Global Scholars program, a certification process his social studies teacher Seth Brady helped craft.
Because the program requires students to suggest ideas for actionable change based on their research, Hajer said the next logical step for him was to craft legislation with a focus on educating high school students to distinguish “fake” information from that which is not.
When investigating other legislation that had bee proposed, Hajer found bills that had been introduced but never progressed. For the most part, they just encouraged schools to teach media literacy lessons, he said.
Hajer, now a sophomore at the University of Chicago, said he didn’t think most school districts would comply without a mandate so he drafted legislation in late 2020 and reached out to state Rep. Elizabeth “Lisa” Hernandez, D-Cicero, who sponsored a previous bill.
In March 2021, Hernandez filed an amendment that included Hajer’s mandate suggestion.
While his semester project technically ended in spring 2021, Hajer continued to push the bill by getting Naperville-area legislators to join on as co-sponsors and enlisted witnesses from area school districts and the Naperville community.
The bill passed both houses in May 2021 and was signed by the governor in July 2021, taking effect this school year.
In a written statement, Hernandez said she’s proud of Hajer and his teacher for their collaboration on her legislation.
“Their hard work has helped make Illinois a leader in media literacy education, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with them,” she said.
Many Illinoisans rely on social media as their primary or even sole source of news and other important information, Hernandez said.
“Given this trend, it’s more important than ever that young people learn to discern truth from fiction and facts from misinformation,” she said.
It’s human nature to want to share an outrageous headline with friends or family, Hajer said, but it’s important to stop and consider what is presented before accepting it as truth.
He like to see high school students view media literacy as more than just another thing they have to learn and not use beyond high school, he said.
“I think media literacy is something that matters, perhaps more than most other skill sets to a terminally online generation,” Hajer said.
Media literacy expert Yonty Friesem, an associate professor of civic media at Columbia College Chicago, said everybody, including youth, should understand the impact media has on their daily lives.
Friesem worked with 90 educators over the past year to provide guidance and resources for high schools to comply with the law’s directive.
What is revolutionary about the media literary law, he said, is it gives schools the power to implement lessons based on an understanding of the community and the target audience.
“And so the teacher will customize this to what works in their community. Media literacy can be practiced the same way but the content is different, and that’s where it’s really innovative,” he said.
Concerns about the media have been raised for centuries, Friesem said.
“If you go back and you look at how people were referring to newspapers, radio, film when it was just introduced … there was a fear about the impact of it,” he said.
The same can be said for Socrates, he said. “They were afraid that his public speaking would corrupt the youth,” he said.
Hajer said he doesn’t expect every student will come out of school a media literacy expert, but he hopes some of what they learn will stay with them.
“I do hope that even if students enter in a little bit grudgingly, as high school students tend to do, they walk out of it with a couple of small little tips, pointers, perspective lighteners” and asking questions like why did the person write the article, who are they and what are they trying to prove?
