Telling Fact from Fabrication

“I don’t feel anyone should be able to just spoon feed somebody their liberal or conservative politics or scientific opinions based on their own points of view,” said Marlboro alumnus and MA in Teaching with Technology student Michael Auerbach ’97 in a recent Brattleboro Reformer article titled “Learning to Discern Fact from Faux News.” “I want students to investigate how we can really tell if something is valid or true.”

Michael is currently teaching a course centered around climate change, and discerning fabricated from factual data, at Brattleboro Union High School. The class is being offered to students at the high school as one of many free dual enrollment courses sponsored by Marlboro College, through the Windham Regional Collegiate High School program. As part of the class, Michael has led his students in examining over 100 news articles, as well as the citations used within them, in order to help his class to hone in on the skills that it takes to recognize fake news.

“From my point of view, what could be better and more timely than knowing you’re sending people out into the world with a toolkit that they can continue to use, providing a process to discern things they can trust from things they can’t,” said Michael. “I think this is something that a lot of Americans could use right now.”