Blog #5
It wasn’t very clear to me, initially, what kind of website this was (http://www.martinlutherking.org/). But as I kept reading, it was obviously written by “anti-Martin Luther King Jr.” people. I eventually assumed it was a group similar to the KKK, or along those lines, because they mentioned other races as well, like Jews. As far as using this site in schools, it depends what age group we’re talking about. I would strictly use this site with high schoolers and above only. It had graphic language that I don’t feel appropriate using with elementary/junior-high students, and I believe younger kids may still be vulnerable to misinterpreting what they real as real, without studying all sides and all facts. I was very surprised that this site was toward the top of the list in a google search (second, to be exact), and this was obviously done intentionally by the authors so this information would be impossible to miss. This is a very biased website and it was clear they wanted their readers to be convinced of everything they were talking about, and as I browsed some more, I was disgusted that they even encouraged readers to print and pass out flyers in schools and out in public. I think kids can learn to be more trusting of the information they read when it isn’t geared at any particular subject (or person/group of people, in this case) in a hateful way. The students might not recognize this site as hateful, so I would encourage them to always research any information that might seem out of the ordinary to what they may have heard before. If it seems like all the information is in a negative light, that should set off warning bells in their minds to maybe look into it more. Personally, I was shocked and appalled by this site and angered that it is so easily accessable to younger students who may be doing reports about him. We can only do our best to teach our students how to be good researchers when it comes to the information they read, be it good or bad, and able to know the difference.
