Crossposted from Media Literacy Now.
On Tuesday, the Washington state House of Representatives approved by a vote of 94 to 3 the media literacy bill being shepherded through the legislative process by Action for Media Education in partnership with Media Literacy Now.
Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos (D), chair of the House Education Committee, said to her colleagues on the House floor, “Recognizing that this is a new age, our children are using [media] in a way that we never before could have imagined. It is about time our policies evolved to meet this new reality that our students engage every day.”
The ranking minority member of the House Education Committee, Rep. Chad Magendanz (R) said, “There’s a whole bunch of dangers out there in social media and kids learning by the school of hard knocks. There’s not adequate support from teachers, because we adults know even less. This bill is a great step forward to ensure we have good professional development in place to train teachers, so that we can follow thru with the next step, which is to have informed teachers train kids about how to behave responsibly online.”
The House-passed bill must now be reconciled with the Senate-passed bill before the legislation can go to the governor’s desk.
For more information, see Washington state legislative page.
