Naperville Central High School graduate Braden Hajer helped create legislation which helps students weed through fact and fiction within the media. Thanks in part to his efforts, this school year, Illinois became the only state in the country that will require all public high schools to have a unit of media literacy in their curriculum.
Where The Idea Started
In fall 2020, Hajer was a part of Naperville Central’s capstone class, where students spend the semester working to identify an actionable question related to a social issue and create a way they can bring about change.
Hajer decided to look into the spread of misinformation and the use of media literacy classes in high school. He found misinformation has always been around, but with the rise in social media it has been elevated, with stories easier and faster to access than ever before.
“Fake news has always been with us, it’s always been a problem in different forms, even before widespread print media there was still different forms of propaganda misleading people,” said Hajer. “At that point, the only reasonable next step is we certainly don’t have any education on fake news explicitly, so (let’s make a) media literacy bill.”
The Process Of Creating The Bill
Hajer looked into the history of media literacy bills in Illinois and found a handful of failed ones that had been presented. After months of class and research, he decided the next route would be drafting a bill that emphasized the learning of widespread information and media literacy.
He refined it with the help of Bill Adair, the founder of Politifact and Peter Adams from the News Literacy Project. Hajer searched for sponsors in the Illinois House and Senate, where he was able to work with state Representative Lisa Hernandez D-Cicero. Hernandez had introduced previous media literacy bills in Illinois.
The newly proposed bill eventually passed through both houses, and was signed by the governor in July 2021. Hajer said that with recent events in the media, it was the right moment this time for a media literacy bill to be passed.
Implementing The New Legislation
With the bill now in place, each high school will determine how to best incorporate the curriculum within their classrooms. Hajer explained that there are multiple different factors.
“The bill is explicitly flexible, there’s different ways that schools can incorporate it, because there’s a lot of high schools in the state and all of them with different levels of resources and the ability to insert more mandates in their schedule,” Hajer said. “It will most likely be seen in English and social studies classes across the state, but it can mold into other subjects.”
Hajer’s capstone teacher, Seth Brady, thinks his former student’s involvement in creating this legislation is notable.
“Given the politics of the day being so divisive, I think it’s really important to recognize where this law came from,” said Brady. “That it came from a student that realizes the need to have that in their own high school experience. It’s not about one political spectrum over the other.”
Hajer is now a sophomore at University of Chicago, proud to have played a part in promoting media literacy.
“It was all a combination of the right people, at the right place and at the right time,” said Hajer. It’s a little bit of luck, no matter how you put it.”
Naperville News 17’s Joe Kennedy Reports
If you have a story idea, we want to hear from you!
