By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Society needs people who can produce real news, so should Arkansas high schools be required to offer a class teaching those skills?

Rep. Julie Mayberry, R-Hensley, says yes, which is why her House Bill 1015 would require high schools to offer journalism as an elective. That’s the way it was until July 2018, when the Arkansas Board of Education voted to instead allow school districts the option of providing the class.

Mayberry believes that was a mistake for several reasons. Journalism has always been a critical check and balance on the government. In fact, she said, it’s so important that the Founding Fathers listed freedom of the press in the very First Amendment. She as a legislator relies on the newspaper to inform her about meetings she can’t attend.

Mayberry said journalism classes also teach students skills they can use even if they never file a story after high school. Those include public relations and understanding the differences between fact, fiction and opinion. These days, anybody can communicate with a mass audience through social media. They need to do it responsibly.

“I think it’s important for the development of human beings … and to our society as a whole. We need to understand that what we put out on that social media has long-term effects and can damage someone’s life,” she said.

The counter argument is that Mayberry’s bill would be a mandate forced on local schools by legislators, most of whom are not educators. Removing the journalism requirement was part of a larger effort to give flexibility to school districts and offer more choices to students; the Board of Education also stopped requiring schools to teach physics. Some small districts might not have a teacher particularly qualified to teach journalism but great at teaching other optional classes such as debate, calculus or U.S. government. (U.S. government is optional?)

If Mayberry’s name sounds familiar to you, it may be because from 1996 to 2001, she co-hosted the KATV morning news show “Daybreak.” Afterwards, she and her husband, Andy, started The East Ender, a newspaper serving the East End community in Saline County. In other words, she’s a journalist by trade.

It’s possible you’ve heard of Andy Mayberry, too. He has served three terms in the House of Representatives himself. The two have created a mini-dynasty in House District 27, trading the seat back and forth since 2011.

Mayberry – Rep. Julie, that is – introduced her bill Dec. 5, more than a month before legislators descend on the Capitol for the 2019 regular session.

She pre-filed the bill earlier than she had intended after being inspired by recent events in the Springdale School District. There, the Har-Ber High School Herald newspaper uncovered that football players had transferred to Springdale High, another of the district’s high schools, for football reasons, which was against district policy. According to Buzzfeed News, the principal then suspended the newspaper in violation of state law and threatened to fire the teacher advisor. The story was picked up by other national news organizations. The district – one of the state’s otherwise more respected ones – eventually backed down.

The odds are against Mayberry’s bill passing. Schools and some legislators will oppose it because it’s a mandate. Some legislators won’t see high school journalism classes as a priority amidst the thousands of other bills that will be filed in three months’ time.

In today’s (mis)information age, having the conversation is more important than passing this particular bill. Mayberry said some of the same lessons taught in high school journalism could be emphasized in English classes. I think that’s the direction I would lean. Unlike journalism, those are courses all students take.

In fact, those lessons should be a primary focus of Arkansas’ schools, even before high school. Students may never read another work of classical literature after they graduate, but they’ll see things on social media every day. Few skills could be more important these days than knowing when the news they are consuming – or producing – is real, and when it’s fake.

Related: Truth, lies and not-quite-lies