Above photo by Ted Eytan

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Teachers: Princeston Grayson (middle school gifted and talented), Maddie Burkemper (4th grade, “all of it”) and Jason Steliga (high school AP and honors science.)

By: Kyle Palmer and Matt Hodapp

The mainstream media has been doing a lot of hand-wringing recently about fact-checking and calling out Trump Administration officials on some of their more dubious statements. One reporter even seemed to get in a kind of Socratic-style back-and-forth with the Mr. Trump himself on the size of the president’s electoral victory.

In this episode, we ask: what can teachers teach the media about confronting liars? (Though we should point out, the use of term “liar” and “lying” has also been thoroughly hand-wrung, too.)

Maddie says point blank: “I think they [the media] need to learn how to diffuse the lie. I don’t see a lot of success in that. All the news segments I see just go back and forth, and then we say, ‘Let’s shake hands and move on.’”

Princeston puts it this way: “In my classroom, I do not accept it [a lie.] We talk about it and get back to that point, ‘Ok, you lied, now let’s recover from that.’ In the media, we don’t recover from it. We’re so nice about it, calling it falsehoods.”

Jason says the media can play the role of teacher for the nation. “The media can’t jump on everything that gets presented. It’s so important that we stay on course and educate to the best of our abilities. And the media can do that: just present the facts, again and again. People will start to listen and engage.”

Also, in this episode, we talk about what good came (or didn’t come) from protesters blocking Betsy DeVos’ entrance into a Washington, D.C. public school. Our teachers disagree on whether that was an effective oppositional tactic.

Finally, fifty shades of sex education. What does the success of the “Fifty Shades” movie and book franchise say about the state of sex and relationships for young people? What our teachers say may surprise.

If you care about education and want to hear what teachers think about the big issues of the day, subscribe and review our podcast at iTunes. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. Send us comments and questions at our email: nowronganswerspod@gmail.com.

Music used in this episode is Inspiring Corporate and Scottish Indie by Scott Holmes, Manele by Blue Dot Sessions; all have been edited.