This quarter, The Pinion conducted a survey with 192 responses from McKinley High School students and staff. 40.4% of respondents said they did not know what “media literacy” means, while 35.2% said they only somewhat knew. Only 6.2% of respondents rated their own media literacy as very high. These results suggest that a considerable amount of McKinley students are not very confident in their media literacy skills. At other schools around the state, these numbers are likely not much different.

One of District 46 representative Amy Perruso’s latest proposals, senate bill SB772 relating to media literacy, aims to help students at McKinley and other schools around the state become more media literate. The measure, which was introduced on Jan. 17, 2025, would allow for media literacy to be incorporated into the standards-based curriculums of elementary through high school classes throughout the state.

Perruso’s involvement in student media has early roots, and it started long before she ever became a representative. As a high schooler, she was involved in underground student journalism, and her work in an underground high school newspaper would end up becoming landmark law for the California Supreme Court.

Perruso spent her high school years in a trailer park on a racetrack in a small agricultural town in the late 1980s during the Reagan presidency. During this time period, many immigration raids were launched in California where Perruso lived. Undocumented migrants made up a large proportion of her town’s population, and so many of Perruso’s friends were undocumented as well.

“There were a lot of raids on farms and ranches and orchards, and also on the racetrack where I spent most of my time,” Perruso said. “So those raids kind of affected me personally.”

Although Perruso was never officially on her school’s student newspaper, freedom of expression was important to her. Noticing the racism going on in her school, Perruso and her peers tried to use underground journalism to resist it.

“The son of this KKK leader was trying to set up a student KKK club at our high school, and they were explicitly and overtly going after students who may have come from different countries,” Perruso said. “So for me, [those particular beginnings in journalism] were really personal.”

Today, Perruso still believes student journalism plays a potent role in high schoolers’ media literacy and critical thinking skills. She described school newspapers as a powerful vehicle for young journalists to use to communicate with other students in their school.

“I’ve seen amazing journalism come from young students who have already developed the kind of literacy that helps them think critically, and I think that is now more than ever really important,” said Perruso.

Perruso’s interest in student media didn’t end there. After that, Perruso was a civics teacher for twenty years. She said she feels instruction on civic reasoning and historical literacy has a strong connection to student media literacy in general. She described media literacy as “one of the cornerstones of civics education.” 

 Perruso said she hoped the bill would help students be taught from early in their education how to break down the sources, messaging and validity of different forms of media if it was passed.

“Young people are exposed to media in a very pervasive way. It’s everywhere,” Perruso said.

McKinley science teacher Zoe Smith said she has noticed that many students struggle with grasping key concepts in media and distinguishing between credible and noncredible sources.

“It’s definitely something that could use improvement, especially because there is just so much media that is consumable nowadays,” said Smith.

Smith said she believes media literacy is important for her students to be able to filter out misinformation while also being able to learn about real discoveries being made every day. She shared Perruso’s sentiment that school instruction on media literacy should start early. Smith said she thought Perruso’s bill would be great for students.

“It’s not something that comes inherently to a lot of people, and it doesn’t get focused on enough in the classroom,” Smith said.

This quarter, the focus for Junior language arts classes at McKinley is “The Marketplace of Ideas and Role of Media in a Democracy.” English teacher Keonaona Mahi said she thinks many students know how to access media, but they may not be able to analyze the messages behind it. 

“Especially in English language arts, anything that you read or look at, you’re trying to find the message behind what is being said,” said Mahi. “If students can’t identify the purpose and audiences of the text, it’s hard for them to figure out where to go next.”

Mahi said she liked Perruso’s proposal, but felt it was important that, if implemented in the future, the bill would be applied in a broad range of classes and that media literacy instruction would be accessible to all students. Mahi also suggested that if schools are able to add media literacy to their curriculum, teacher training should be done in a way that would help their instruction be consistent so that students can better benefit from it.

“I think the biggest part will be training teachers so that they all have the same understanding, and they’re delivering the same message to students,” said Mahi.

Viktor Cambe (c/o 2026) defined media literacy as being able to tell the difference between satirical or subjective media and media that is objective and factual. Cambe said that although he already considered himself fairly media literate before being instructed on media literacy this quarter,  having a unit on media literacy helped him be able to instantly differentiate between objective and subjective writing. He said he felt very positively about Perruso’s proposal to allow schools to add media literacy to their curriculum. Cambe said one of the things his Language arts class did to learn about media literacy is reading an objective text and comparing it to a subjective text, then trying to determine whether an article was subjective or objective in an activity.

“Now that I know a little bit more, I can finally just … look at something and immediately recognize if it’s … objective or subjective, which is something that we need in today’s modern society,” Cambe said. “How are we going to keep on going if we just fall for traps over and over again, you know?”

Billy Rasmy (c/o 2026) said he also felt he was better at differentiating between objective and subjective texts because of the Junior English unit. Rasmy said he thought Perruso’s bill was a good idea.

“Everybody should know what’s going on,” said Rasmy.

While Perruso’s bill would have the potential to improve media literacy for many students in Hawaii, Perruso said that the majority of her colleagues are unaware of the lack of instruction in schools on media literacy skills. Because of this, Perruso said although she did not expect hostile opposition, she could face opposition of a more passive kind. Because Perruso’s bill never got a hearing, it was not passed; however, it will come back next year in the same legislative position due to the Hawaii legislature’s biennial system. 

Perruso also said she thinks another cause of the absence of media literacy education in schools is the state education system’s excessive focus on standardized testing.

“My fear is that this kind of work around media literacy is not happening… simply because so much of the time, especially in the elementary grades, is dedicated to testing,” said Perruso. “And [so] I just think that we are not then fulfilling our obligation to prepare people to be informed citizens.”