Children will be taught how to spot extremist content and misinformation online under planned changes to the school curriculum, the education secretary said.
Bridget Phillipson said she was launching a review of the curriculum in primary and secondary schools to embed critical thinking across multiple subjects and arm children against “putrid conspiracy theories”.
One example may include pupils analysing newspaper articles in English lessons in a way that would help differentiate fabricated stories from true reporting.
In computer lessons, they could be taught how to spot fake news websites by their design, and maths lessons may include analysing statistics in context.
This is great, honestly.
If you go back to antiquity, education was about philosophy. It was about learning how to observe, and think critically, and see the world for what it is.
And then in modern times, education became about memorisation - learning facts and figures and how to do this and that. And that way of teaching and learning just doesn’t fit any longer with what our digital age has become.
In my opinion, we are heavily overdue for a revamp of what education should be, and what skills are most important to society in this post-truth world. Critical thinking is an important foundation to real knowledge that we don’t teach enough.
“Critical thinking” was a buzzword when I was at school in the 80s.
Memorisation is a component of learning, but the vast majority of any learning I’ve done has been understanding.
Certainly children need to learn to be skeptical, but I hope we can do better than showing them biased articles from newspapers.
Is it a buzzword though? I always took it as the ability to understand AND question in order to prove/disprove/ build upon said understanding.
I think they mean that it was a buzzword because although it was mentioned, it wasn’t a substantial part of state education at the time. They’re saying that it “was” a buzzword, rather than that it is one.
The difference between intelligence and wisdom. We have been prioritizing the former at the detriment of the latter.
This is how you end up with people like Elon Musk who I will give the benefit of the doubt and say he isn’t dumb, but Christ he’s a moron.
I’m not sure you mean intelligence and wisdom.
Intelligence is the capability to apply your brain to problems. Wisdom is the lessons you learn through experience.
Maybe “knowledge Vs wisdom” is a better way of putting it.
We were shown different news articles from about the same event and were given the task to point out their biases based on the differences. Do schools over there do that too?
If you go back to antiquity, education was about philosophy.
Well, formal education was. I’m pretty sure ancient Greeks Athenians still had to be taught to do things like follow instructions, and to read and write
(If they were in a social class where literacy was even expected).
Of course we should be doing a better job teaching students critical thinking skills, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking ancient Greek children all spent their days having deep conversations with Aristotle in a park. Plato is even on record against reading because he thought it interfered with students’ ability to memorize things!
Can they teach the adults as well?
basic media literacy is really needed, hopefully it doesn’t come with any political bias built in
All information has a bias, so teach that it all has a bias and ways to figure out the biases. Also include that we all have biases in everything we think.
that is probably the best way to go about it. I worry they’ll simplify or strip away too much nuance. But if done well this can be great initiative
I also often ask folks to list one article or outlet that is “strictly fact based” and neutral.
And even if somebody manages to find an article they think is “strictly fact based and netural,” the question then becomes “why did the news agency decide to cover that topic instead of some other topic?” The choice of what to talk about is just as subject to bias as the choice of what to say about it is.
Can someone teach the boomer generation too? They are vastly more susceptible to believing anything they read online
1000%. And the fucked up thing is that I didn’t (formally) learn about it until college, and even then, it was an elective course that basically nobody took. The only reason I ever took it was because I hadn’t declared my major yet. Turned out to probably be the most important classes I ever took throughout my entire education.
As someone in a STEM field, it’s a major bummer to see how one-dimensional a lot of my peers’ education was. And it becomes pretty obvious, pretty quickly.
I get why it’s silo’d like that, but I really wish majors like engineering would require a bit of a more well-rounded education. I may have inadvertently turned a 4 year program into 5.5 years, or whatever (plus all that additional debt), but I think it was worth it in the long run because now I can understand the reasons my society is collapsing while I watch, rather than just watching!
