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.
The Guardian - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for The Guardian:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - United Kingdom
Wikipedia about this source
Search topics on Ground.News
Can someone teach the boomer generation too? They are vastly more susceptible to believing anything they read online
“Extremist content” == “not wanting Palestinians to be dehumanized, dispossessed and murdered by Israel”
Hopefully it tries to be as neutral as possible, and just gives kids the general tools to spot when something’s fake/exaggerated.
Introducing this sort of thing without trying to be strictly impartial sounds like a slippery slope.
this class sounds like a malicious teacher could easily introduce bias and radicalize children… :/
Hopefully it tries to be as neutral as possible
No. Forcing a neutral perspective between absurdity and objectively true claims is how we got here.
When one party says that scientific evidence is real and the other says it’s a Marxist conspiracy, forced neutralized lends undue credence to the latter.
Similarly, forcibly neutral newsrooms and the neoliberal Starmer government consider it extremist to acknowledge that the fascist apartheid regime of Israel is committing genocide and to call for your country to not supply them with arms, funds, and political cover.
It should try to be as FACTUAL and OBJECTIVE as possible, not chase neutrality when neutrality flies in the face of evidence and the most basic accountability and human rights.
Introducing this sort of thing without trying to be strictly impartial sounds like a slippery slope.
Yeah, they’re GOING to consider extremism as anything too far from the interests of the neoliberal and capitalist elite in either direction rather than pursue an evidence-based curriculum of critical thinking like they’re pretending.
This is rich, coming from the government that labels pro-palestine protestors as extremists and antisemites ( yes I’m aware that the government changed, but looks like the new ones are more than happy to continue the policies ).
There are many people in a government, and different people pull in different directions.
Regardless of other policies, this is a step in the right direction.
There’s admittedly some potential in there, like teaching them to analyse statistics and ‘teaching critical thinking’ whatever that implies.
Conspiracy theory belief however is emotional rather than rational. You cannot ‘teach’ people to not do it. I worry that they will condition kids to dismiss any news that deviates from official propaganda by just labelling them as conspiracies. And frankly with the UK being the police state that it is, that might just be the end goal.
This is the UK: whatever New Labour or Tory politicians say should be presumed to be complete total crowd-pleasing bollocks until proven otherwise (by it actually being done, in the way it was promised and properly funded and supported, which is a pretty rare outcome over there).
Get them all some fine excerpts from ml comms
