DHS Is Training Teachers To Develop Student ‘Disinformation’ Informers – I Know, I Took The Training

DHS Is Training Teachers To Develop Student ‘Disinformation’ Informers – I Know, I Took The Training

I’m a Providence, Rhode Island, high school teacher. You may remember me from when I blew the whistle in July 2021 on how a new Critical Race Curriculum was creating racial hostility in the Middle School where I taught at the time, and the subsequent retaliation and harassment.

I’m blowing the whistle again, this time as to Department of Homeland Security funding for training of teachers on combatting so-called “disinformation” as part of supposed “media literacy” programming through the University of Rhode Island, called Courageous RI. The training is not what it purports to be. It’s all about training teachers to teach students to become “disinformation” informers. I know. I took the training.

Starting in September 2023, I attended a twelve week online training through “Courageous Rhode Island” at the University of Rhode Island, funded by a DHS grant of over $700,000. The program is for K-12 teachers and is promoted as “media literacy.” But it’s so much more than media literacy, and the impact of the training turned to teacher interaction with students and how students could be utilized as reporting sources.

I’m about to tell you what I witnessed and what this taxpayer-funded “disinformation” training is all about. What follows are a lot of details. But the bottom line is that the is a direct track from media literacy theory to DHS goals and objectives to URI training to teachers to students, and back again up the chain in a feedback loop. It’s dangerous to our society, and shows how something claimed to protect freedom has the potential to damage freedom.

What follows is background on media literacy and “disinformation” ideology, how it is a DHS focus, and some of what I experienced in the course. It’s long, but necessary.

DHS Media Literacy Has Little To Do With Media or Literacy  

In order to understand the DHS/Courageous RI approach and training, it’s important to understand the ideological foundations of Media Literacy.

The idea of Media Literacy made its way into K-12 schools as a solution to combat perceived “disinformation” and “violent extremism”.   Both terms are defined as a result of children being exposed to “disinformation” while at school.  According to the Courageous RI website, the inspiration for the Courageous RI program comes from an essay titled Learning To Avoid Extremism  by Sigal Ben-Porath, an education theorist, Learning To Avoid Extremism by Sigil Ben-Porath

In her essay, Sigal Ben-Porath calls for schools to respond to a rise in “extremist ideologies and actions” even though she provides no data to support this claim. The claim made by the Department of Homeland Security, Courageous RI and Sigal Ben-Porath is that domestic acts of terrorism have their roots in information shared to children from literary sources, textbooks, media and school culture.

“What should this similarity tell us in terms of our expectations of teachers? If teachers are expected to identify extremist patterns of thought and belief, both cases I describe here could potentially represent students caught up in the net. And there is good reason to identify these students — they both seem to veer off from reality and toward a misguided, unfounded, and at least potentially antisocial View.”

This quote by Sigal Ben-Porath, attempts to justify classroom monitoring of any student who may “veer off from reality”.  But who should  judge what is mere opinion vs “disinformation”? This sort of subjective judgment is exactly what public school teachers should never do. The beginning of Sigal Ben Porath’s essay provides Courageous RI with the theory they use to justify their teacher training (emphasis added).

“Democracies are calling on schools to respond to a rise in extremist ideologies and actions. In this article Sigal Ben-Porath situates the rise in extremism within the broader context of political polarization. She suggests that the latter is a more appropriate target for school intervention than the former. She further suggests that addressing polarization can result in a reduction in extremism, and that polarization can be addressed by refocusing the use of existing teaching and learning tools, rather than by instituting new forms of intervention such as the Prevent strategy used in the UK. Tackling polarization through media literacy and the development of democratic habits can help rectify false beliefs, which contribute both to broad political polarization and to individuals’ slide toward extremism. Focusing on strengthening knowledge as well as social ties can fortify individuals’ and communities’ resilience against extremism, as well as build bridges and connect people to a sense of shared fate across political divides. These practices are more effective and more justified than targeting individual students who are suspected of holding radical beliefs.”

What Sigal Ben-Porath is suggesting here is justifying teams of teachers and support staff to surround any child who they feel poses a threat.  But what happens once a child is identified as “extremist”?  Well, naturally, any child identified as an extremist would want to please their teachers, therefore abandoning their pattern of “disinformation” and “violent extremist” views for the accepted viewpoint.   The student then becomes a member of the accepted in-group and may in fact help in identifying other children and teachers that are seen as extremist.

In fact, we are seeing this play out in K-12 schools across the nation.  Students are encouraged to identify peers or worse their teachers who they feel represent extremist views then report that individual to other adults in the “in-group”.  In some cases, teachers are protested, harassed and bullied, while in other cases, peers may be  singled out and bullied.

Sigal Ben-Porath makes the claim that “extremism lies in the broader context of political polarization in K-12 schools”. Again, she provides no data to support her argument.  Still, Courageous RI uses her essay to justify their media literacy teacher training. Once approved for funding, Courageous RI created a teacher training module to “train” educators in “media literacy” across the disciplines. The program is based on the premise that violent extremism begins in K-12 classrooms and is propagated through literature, media messages, historical texts, and school discussions.

Courageous RI uses the following arguments from Sigal Ben-Porath’s essay titled “Learning To Avoid Extremism”. In Ms Ben-Porath’s essay, she makes the claim that:

“Shifting attention to the early stages in which young individuals are drawn to consider extremist ideologies is meant to offer them an alternative path before they veer off course. Reaching young people before and during the radicalization process is suggested to help law enforcement through engagement with partners (coaches, teachers, school counselors, and others) who can help reconnect young people to their peers and to acceptable institutions, thus helping them avoid extremist ideation and especially action.”

Courageous RI uses this idea as it is expressed by Ms Ben-Porath as justification for student surveillance and a K-12 culture of surveillance. This is a dangerous approach to take, the assumption that children need to be monitored for perceived “hate speech” and “disinformation”. The reason is simple; K-12 children go through many stages of development that make them particularly prone to various beliefs and convictions that may change sometimes on a daily basis. It is perfectly normal for children to explore and argue their beliefs and convictions and it is not normal for adults and peers to judge and report on a student’s personal viewpoints.  Ms Ben-Porath and Courageous RI are making assumptions about children and their personal beliefs.   

The term media literacy as it applies to K-12 education means the ability to access and analyze information, then reflect on the information with a teacher or peer, and take action to correct any presumed ‘disinformation’ gleaned from the “information” source. Both the DHS and Courageous RI make the claim that children and faculty in K-12 schools need government oversight for the protection of the “greater whole”.  Courageous organizre themselves had this to say in their DHS grant application.

URI Grant Application Qualified Courageous RI for DHS Funding

The University of Rhode Island’s Courageous RI team  had this to say in its grant application to the Department of Homeland Security (emphasis added):  

“Abstract. Disinformation, conspiracy theories, and propaganda have become large-scale social problems, shaping the way citizens view facts, define truth, and make decisions. Learning to critically analyze information, digital media, and popular culture can benefit all members of society by diminishing the appeal of us-vs-them thinking that activates strong emotions and oversimplifies ideas and information. We seek to reach members of faith communities, military spouses and family members, public health and public safety workforce, K-12 educators, librarians, high school and college students, and media and public relations professionals in programs that include dialogue, active listening, and creative media production. In Program 1, online and face-to-face dialogues help demonstrate how to critically analyze propaganda, disinformation, and domestic extremism. In Program 2, high school and college educators learn how to integrate media literacy into civic education. In Program 3, high school and college students participate in a multimedia social media campaign, with support from local state public safety experts as well as communications and public relations professionals. This statewide initiative aims to empower people across Rhode Island to be resilient to extremist recruitment strategies while building resilience through media literacy education. ”

In this quote, Courageous RI is referring to teachers and children in public school classrooms and suggests there is a need to monitor and flush out children who may become spreaders of “disinformation” and “violent extremism”.

Courageous RI makes a dangerous developmental error in assuming K-12 children need to be identified, reported on and if necessary protested as a way to “save democracy from violent extremism”. Throughout the ten session training, Courageous RI facilitators seemed to chanel Ms. Ben-Porath’s essay when she claims:

“Shifting attention to the early stages in which young individuals are drawn to consider extremist ideologies is meant to offer them an alternative path before they veer off course. Reaching young people before and during the radicalization process is suggested to help law enforcement through engagement with partners (coaches, teachers, school counselors, and others) who can help reconnect young people to their peers and to acceptable institutions, thus helping them avoid extremist ideation and especially action.”

Courageous RI, the Department of Homeland Security and Sigal Ben-Porath essay argue there is a need to create school-based point teams and student informers to curtail arbitrary, subjective opinions about the community, and all information.

According to one of the Courageous RI facilitators during the course, “disinformation” oversight is justified; and comes in the form of classroom lesson plans and classroom activities intended to reduce media influence over children who may become future “domestic terrorists.” During the training, Courageous RI facilitators were hyper-focused on Donals Trump as their media literacy poster-child. A great deal of classroom content centered around Trump and his alleged influence over individuals and “violent extremism,” Specifically January 6th. Violence from the left was largely ignored.

The Courageous RI facilitators often pointed to Trump as the root cause of all social media and media disinformation, they blamed  Trump for influencing “MAGA republicans” to commit violence and more. During the weekly online training sessions, I asked for evidence to support their claims that violent extremism and disinformation existed in K-12 schools.  I was quickly dismissed or directed to chat conversations where conservative voices were singled out and suppressed.

Any student or faculty member with opposing political view-points on controversial topics like climate change, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) agendas, race-based narratives, and more could be identified by a media literacy teacher or student, then referred to thought partners who would set out to correct said student’s line of thinking or to persuade the child to abandon their point-of-view.  Worse case, peers and friends would report on each other and in some cases teachers like me would be protested and singled out for conservative view-points.

DHS Media Literacy Goals and Outcomes are Embedded in The Training

To better understand the root of this K-12 “disinformation” campaign, I looked at the DHS Media Literacy Goals and Outcomes for K-12 education.  Embedded in the Goals and Outcomes language are broad definitions and rationales for implementing K-12 media literacy programs. Yet, not one of the goals or outcomes could be attached to measurable standards.  This is important as every curriculum goal must be measurable.  Media literacy is not in any way measurable nor are the terms disinformation definable as applied to curriculum and children.

Courageous RI claims their program aligns with standards, but in fact, the school standards recently written are not measurable and so media literacy can not be academically  justified and fairly implemented.   These media literacy courses and training means students and teachers would be open to subjective mob-like attacks from overzealous politically motivated individuals.  This is dangerous as children will become unknowing targets of potentially dangerous leftist ideologues

It appeared from the training, Courageous RI allegedly believes students can be politically manipulated by the media to commit acts of “violent extremism” and therefore seeks to use teachers to detect and re-educate students who may be extremist and express dangerous thoughts and actions. But what happens once a student or teacher is identified as a “violent extremist”? Data is collected on the individual(s) and source of their “disinformation” and presumably it is addressed.  The DHS goes as far as to recommend “reentry” programs for offenders of disinformation, which is particularly disturbing when you consider the ages of the children being surveilled or used for surveillance.

Hard to believe the DHS intentions are to protect the nation from six year-olds to seventeen year-olds whose opinions may simply differ from the teacher, even harder is the public manner in which some children and teachers will be made examples of when identified as spreaders of “disinformation” and “violent extremists”. Families need to know exactly what is happening at school.  Children are not safe so long as this government sponsored surveillance program is advanced.

K-12 Government Surveillance Across The Disciplines Encouraged During Training  

There are several ways Courageous RI instructed educators to monitor K-12 “disinformation; students and teachers were told to implement media literacy practices that use children and other faculty as “thought partners” for the “greater cause”  The terms “thought partner” “in-group” “outer-group” and “conflict entrepreneurs” were used to label any student or teacher that expressed a viewpoint different from the “group”.

Strategy #1: Media Literacy As A Stand-Alone Course

We were given several ways to advance media literacy in K-12 schools: one way was to have media literacy taught as a stand-alone class, or it would be integrated throughout the disciplines and grades.

In stand-alone classes, students would be given a K-12 school-based news platform like NewsELA  (News English Language Arts) which aggregates left-wing, progressive news stories. This sort of media course would serve as a direct way to shift any opposing political view-points a student or teacher may have.  It would also provide teachers with the opportunity to teach children how to protest events they feel strongly about.

NewsELA comes complete with articles, videos, lesson-plans and commentary designed to direct a student’s thought process. The articles and lesson-plans are scripted for the teacher to further direct the political message.  The platform is protected by a firewall that does not allow students or teachers to access alternative news sources; creating a direct leftwing political pipeline to the classroom. Stand alone courses like this are justified by Courageous RI as a necessary way to “protect children ” from harmful viewpoints that may influence them to commit violent acts of terrorism at a later date.  The actual fact is that NewsELA and other biased K-12 news sources indoctrinate children to think in one way only. The danger is clear. If we do not reverse course, then an entire generation will be educated in a surveillance and reporting environment while at school.  Truth, and freedom of thought will be suppressed if not altogether wiped out.

The terms “deep listener” and “thought partner” came up as media literacy teaching strategies when embedded into a discipline.  In this manner, media literacy would be used to teach classic literature or history to fit a political narrative.   Teachers were encouraged to teach from a “democratic position” that aligned all discipline content with “democratic values.” Teachers were told to use students as “thought partners” and to create a reporting system.  Classroom thought-partners could be used to identify anyone with an opposing viewpoint.  In the following example, teachers discuss erasing history they feel is violent.  One of the Courageous RI facilitators led teachers in a tutorial discussion that openly promotes the re-telling of history.

One of the alarming factors of this disinformation campaign is the advancement of a student reporting system; instead of calling 911, K-12 schools across the state, students are told to make anonymous reports of “violent extremism” through the app “Say Something”.   DHS has a Say Something portal as does Sandy Hook Promise working with law enforcement. The apps ware designed in a way to help students report true danger, but instead, media literacy initiatives have co-opted the app to help in their K-12 surveillance initiatives.

The danger to children and families is real.  For example, imagine a kindergartner or middle schooler using this DHS reporting app simply because they have been told by their teacher that their classmate’s thoughts and opinions are bad and need to be reported. Families and friends could be reported for apparent thought crimes and mere opinions.

Strategy #2: Hyperfocus On Donald Trump

Every opportunity to discredit Trump was visibly present in every class. Teachers participated in unprofessional chat sessions where they made disparaging comments about Trump. Conservative teachers like myself were implicitly silenced by these aggressive comments; lest anyone say something that would make them a target.

In the breakout sessions, and project sessions, some teachers complained about their students with opposing views, according to one facilitator,  these students were part of the”outer-group” and would need to be brought back into the “inner-group” specifically conservative students that may have outwardly expressed support for Trump, these students were considered “violent extremist MAGA republicans” in the making.  At every juncture, Trump was attacked and used to make the point that “violent extremism” and “disinformation” were a result of “influencing entrepreneurs” like Trump.  When I asked for specific examples illustrating their point, none were forthcoming.  Certainly, Courageous RI was obsessed with advancing their leftist disdain for conservatives in general, but in particular, Trump was one of the major targets of this disinformation campaign.

Strategy #3  Media Literacy In Which Students Are Taught to Report On Their Classmates and Teachers

Media literacy teaching practices were used by the Courageous facilitators to explain the second way extremism and “disinformation” makes its way into the classroom: in order to be completely effective in intercepting disinformation in classrooms,  Courageous RI told teachers to look for “threats across the disciplines”. But what does a domestic terrorism threat look like in a K-12 classroom?  Well, according to Courageous RI, threats to safety are implicit in every discipline.   In this way, surveillance of student and faculty opinions could be included into all the disciplines and ensure literature and history could even be altered by the classroom teacher and students to fit a specific political narrative.

An example of this can be seen in three lesson plans presented by Courageous RI.  In the first lesson, facilitators talked about taking literature and changing the plot, themes and characters to fit a “less extremist viewpoint”.  There were several examples provided by the Courageous group, but the three lessons that stand out I call “Feminist Versions of Little Red Riding Hood” (English Language Arts)  “Captain America is a Violent Extremist” (Art) and “Insurrectionists and January 6th” (Civics)

Teachers were told to have students discuss the harmful potentially dangerous themes expressed in classic literature and iconic characters.  “Little Red Riding Hood” was seen as anti-feminist, and “harmful” to women, while “Captain America” was seen as a symbol of violent extremism.  Social Studies looked to January 6th to tell and retell the story how dangerous conservatives are.  In fact, one facilitator wrote a book dedicated to discussing the polarization of MAGA republicans in Middle School classrooms.  Presumably, classic literature, history, and art were all a threat to homeland security.

This image was used to illustrate “violent extremism”-

Courageous RI makes the claim that “Rhode Island residents who attended the January 6th rally in Washington escalated into the insurrection that breached the Capitol Building was caused by dangerous Rhode Islanders.”  Courageous RI said: “They left their homes in Richmond, Johnston, and Cranston, in Newport, West Greenwich, Providence, and Warwick, responding to the call of a leader who needed his ‘Patriots.”  In other words, they were from every part of this small state – north, south, east, and west.” and as such, media literacy must be taught in schools because they claim, January 6th could have been prevented if “only those individuals that participated in the January 6th gathering could have been identified in Middle School before they became adult “insurrectionists”, then perhaps January 6th could have been avoided.”

It is plain to see that Courageous RI is trying to link violent extremism with children, in fact eleven and twelve year olds to be specific.

The facilitators in Courageous RI claimed that the harmful themes, characters and plots identified across the disciplines and in the media needed to be exposed and altered to distract any student from spreading harmful “disinformation” leading to violence.  In the lesson, teachers would have students write an alternative version that reflected politically accepted narratives.  Teachers were told to look for any disinformation in literature or history classes, then actively change the narrative to line up with politically correct narratives and then correct the potential trend towards “hate crimes”,  “extremism”, “domestic terrorism”, and “violence”.

The training Courageous RI provided K-12 educators attempted to provide teaching and learning goals for teachers to look at where “disinformation” that purportedly may be influencing children to commit acts of “domestic terrorism” or “hate speech”, and with the goal of teachers intervening and redirecting students’ viewpoints and political beliefs so that they align with the classroom teacher’s political views and approved curriculum.

I realized early on in the course that one of the many problems with this media literacy training is that there is no way to define or measure disinformation; nor is it the role of the school to police student’s thoughts and opinions in a space where children’s thoughts and opinions help them to learn and become critical thinkers.  As the training progressed, it was becoming clear that the Department of Homeland Security and Courageous RI, were creating a broad network of teachers and students intent on monitoring the speech of others, by way of identifying the target, reporting the target, and if that did not sway the target’s opinion, then protest the target and publicly shame and worse destroy the targets reputation.

But we are talking about doing this to children.

Strategy #4 “Performative Protesting” Is The Third Way Students Are Used To Shame And Report On Teachers And Classmates

The fourth most disturbing manner in which media literacy would make its way into K-12 classrooms would be through a classroom practice called “Performative Activism and Protests”.  This was the most  concerning teaching and learning practice where teachers were told to instruct children on how to stage student walk-outs and protests.

Courageous RI suggested to teachers that this form of protesting would be a great action-step for students to take when they see or hear something they believe to be “extremist” or “dangerous”. This strategy is one we are seeing playout around the nation; children are being taught to protest anyone that expresses alternate viewpoints, it is the final most harmful practice advanced by Courageous RI.  The potential for serious physical and emotional harm on children and faculty is real with long-lasting consequences.

Oddly enough, during one of our small group discussions, we talked about media literacy strategies that could be used to identify students who “spark debate”.  Some teachers expressed concern for students whose opinions seemed radical or extreme; those students were referred to as  “the “ideological other”. The term “ideological other” was used to describe children who may engage in spreading “disinformation” through “lively”  debate. In a normal classroom, lively debate would be encouraged, but here, the term seemed to be co opted to mean students with potentially “extremist view points.”

The Courageous RI curriculum does not align with any academic goals, it does not serve children, and no child will ever benefit from the content.  Media literacy courses will be expressly used to create a network of students and teachers who will surveille other students and teachers for having opinions that have been arbitrarily labeled “disinformation”.

Students are encouraged to “listen to their angry neighbors”, their classmates and teachers:   If they hear something they think is “disinformation” or “violent extremism” they are encouraged to say something through the anonymous reporting app called “Say Something”.

Courageous RI along with funding and objectives from the Department of Homeland Security have effectively created a surveillance and reporting community justified by the Rhode Island Department of Education. This is not only dystopian in nature but dangerous to all American children and faculty in K-12 schools.  The possibility for wrongful accusations is high, especially in public schools where children are prone to making off the cuff statements.

I emailed one school principal here in Rhode Island about the way media literacy is scaffolded into school curricula.  She confirmed the role of ‘media literacy’:

In all the examples of how media literacy looks in the classroom, the academic and social harm could have devastating impacts on innocent children who fear being accused of violent extremism.  It also creates a network of student and teacher informers  A student hears something in class or at home that he or she believes to be dangerous, then complains through the reporting app, or worse, organizes against the target.   Allowing media literacy to drive instruction gives teachers the right to see violent extremism everywhere in K-12 schools.  It also weaponizes children to analyze peers and faculty for spreading “disinformation.” I can attest to the power of such actions first hand.  I was targeted, harassed, and protested for speaking out in the media about critical race theory in my school.

The danger of K-12 surveillance programs like media literacy can already be seen in the violent protests we have seen around the country.

Students As Paid Activists For The State

Separate from encouraging children to report on their friends and teachers, Courageous RI offers after-school paid programs and contests that train children of all ages to report on anything they feel is “violent extremism” or “disinformation”. The Program is explained by the Executive Board of Libraries in the following letter:

Quite literally saying the quiet part out loud, the executive board of librarians sent their letter of support to the DHS on behalf of Courageous RI’s teacher training grant proposal. In the letter, the board articulates the exact function of media literacy for students: using the name “media contest” students are paid to create video productions, memes, billboards, “targeting” Rhode Island residents who may be threats to domestic safety.  Students participate in a statewide art contest with the winner receiving thousands of dollars, making this aspect of media literacy an overt informer program enticing children to tell on their family and friends.

CONCLUSION

Most, if not all, you have ever heard about media literacy violating civil rights and civil liberties is being advanced through programs like Courageous RI.  Seeing first hand what media literacy materials look like across the disciplines and in stand-alone courses, I can say that children in K-12 schools are not safe.

Sigal Ben-Porath says in her essay which forms an ideological foundation of Courageous RI’s DHS-funded media literacy program:

“The goal thus is not to persuade, but rather to create a sense of shared fate, or of shared civic goals, among students, both as members of the classroom community and as members of the same nation”

The goal is to have all K-12 children think the same, along approved lines.  School children will become targets by other children and teachers for merely expressing their point of views.  They will be manipulated and weaponized by partisan teachers and student informers, they will be targeted, isolated, silenced and perhaps falsely reported to the authorities. In the end, no child, teacher or community member will be safe as media literacy initiatives will create a surveillance and punishment culture.

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