The challenges for educators are changing, Bowen said. Bowen said that parents and schools have always been able to control the material students get from newspapers and magazines, but that has changed with television and the Internet. He said news happens fast and in an effort to get the news first, news agencies don't always take the time to think about how the material presented will impact children. Talk shows are a constant on television where issues are debated with obvious slants, he said. The Internet is a wealth of information, but the material presented there is hard to control for young eyes, he said.
People often take the source of such electronic media as accurate and precise.
Bowen said it is the job of educators to help young people learn to question and decide when to be critical. That is the challenge, he said, for educators today, as well as for parents. The reward is seeing the results in the kids we send out into the world. Bowen recently received an article in the mail about the Morton District 709 teachers contract dispute. The article was written by one of his former fifth-grade students at Morton.