The 2024 Presidential Election brings excitement, anger, and uncertainty to many individuals across the nation. At Princeton Day School, educators tasked themselves with teaching Upper School students techniques and resources to accurately intake information, given the rising prominence of social media. History Department Head Ms. Stefanie Santagelo gave insightful information regarding transparency concerning the 2024 Election as well as shining light on the importance of critical thinking and information retrieval for young adults and voters.
Transparency is sharing information that outlines the true intent of information being shared. As social media and online platforms have become exceedingly prominent this election season, transparency is difficult to adhere to. From an educational standpoint, transparency is a skill that needs to be cultivated. With misinformation and disinformation spreading as fast as ever, it is crucial that impressionable young adults have the ability to critically analyze given information. Most recently, in Advisory, students learned skills such as lateral reading and critical conception to question and understand information they might see. Ms. Santangelo has been one of the key figures trying to teach these skills to Upper School students. She believes that young adults nowadays are given incomplete, inaccurate, and exaggerated information, and these factors do not yield educated voters. She outlined that it is pivotal for young adults to start doing research and hard work to become fully informed.
For students, the 2024 election has been about learning skills to be informed citizens. There are practices to be employed for students to have informed perspectives, not just about the election but also about politics and news in general. In the Upper School, student forums will be introduced later in October. Ms. Santangelo explained, “Student forums will be situated around a topic, reading material will be given out beforehand, and then students will gather together to discuss the subject. Norms will be stated beforehand to guide the discussion.” She also included that these norms are crucial because they define for a student “here is what I need to enter into a dialogue, and here is what I can bring/offer/do to have a space where dialogue can happen with different perspectives.” These forums will be predicated and continue depending on student interest. Therefore, if you would like to use your voice to discuss situations in the country and the world, consider joining the forums!
