At the risk of incurring yet more wrath of the “you guys are absolutely disgusting” variety, we’d like to suggest a media literacy assignment for Marion High School social studies or English students.

Basically, it’s an assignment to separate fact from myth, to identifying real news from fake news, and to determine how to tell a crackpot website from a legitimate one.

We have the perfect assignment in mind. What, exactly, are the dangers of putting, say, a cell phone antenna atop a tall water tower half a block away horizontally and about that far away vertically from school classrooms?

Do such antennas emit dangerous radiation? Or are air conditioning fans outside school windows more dangerous. Students can certainly find websites that say one thing or the other, and they will find far more reputable ones saying the entire notion is hogwash.

Once the students write essays explaining which websites to believe and which to doubt, perhaps they could forward them to parents and school board members as evidence that the only brains being damaged these days don’t belong to students.

— ERIC MEYER