Navigating This Perfect Storm: Teaching Critical Reading in the Face of the Common Core State Standards, Fake News, and Google

This article exposes and explores what has become a perfect storm of sorts for educators at the secondary and postsecondary levels: a set of educational standards that encourage a reverence before texts and ignore the role a reader plays in the construction of meaning, the widespread use of the Internet and related technologies that promote passivity, and a political administration that releases fake news, denounces real news as fake, and provides what it calls “alternative facts.” Considering these elements independently, as well as the potentially calamitous consequences of their convergence, this article sounds a warning about these consequences and details how instructors at the secondary and postsecondary levels might respond.