Schools to wage war on putrid fake news

[noblegiraffe]

"Children will be taught how to spot extremist content and fake news online in a revamp of the curriculum following last week’s riots.
Schools will use lessons such as English, ICT (information and communication technology) and maths to “arm” pupils against “putrid conspiracy theories”, the Education Secretary has said."

Fine, not sure how that's going to fit into maths lessons, and ICT was binned a decade ago, but anyway.

"The planned changes will help children identify all extremist content, including far-Left conspiracy theories and religion-based propaganda.
One example could involve using English classes to dissect newspaper reports, examining their style and use of language compared to fake news.
That would teach children to differentiate between independent journalism and propaganda by looking out for bias and hyperbole in the latter."

This is printed, unironically, in the Telegraph. I'm not sure I could teach children to spot the bias and hyperbole in propaganda by comparing it to newspaper output. How could they tell the difference?

And it will surely conflict with our duty to remain politically impartial if we are supposed to teach kids the dangers of extremist content while it is being spread about liberally by elected representatives?

Schools are going to have a hell of a time dealing with the fall-out from these riots in September and obviously we already teach lessons about staying safe online and not being racist. But I'm not convinced that a curriculum review that teaches about 'photoshopped images' in an era of AI, deepfakes and TikTok is really understanding the scale of the problem.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/10/schools-wage-war-on-putrid-fake-news-in-wake-of-riots/

As recently as twenty years ago, broadsheets such as the Times or the New York Times at least aspired to a neutral tone of voice and balanced presentation of the facts. Nowadays it’s pretty much impossible to identify any media outlet that isn’t jaundiced to some extent. And these “lessons” will likely be equally so. Teaching independent thought on the basis of a full grasp of the facts has become deeply unpopular.

So they will be tackling the BBC and it's 'Oppression of the DragQueen' narrative then?

I’m not even sure if Epstein island counts as a conspiracy theory or not. It’s getting really difficult to work out fact from fiction

One of the biggest sources for disinformation for these kids will be TikTok and it doesn't even get a mention.

These are adults saying 'oh, adults got sucked in by a fake tweet and therefore that's what we should be looking at, that and print media' while kids roll their eyes at another boring and irrelevant lesson.

There does seem to be the assumption that adults know what the conspiracy theories are.

They get news from tiktok.

But the use of the riots as the basis of the need for the lessons suggests otherwise?

Goodness the number of seemingly educated adults that can't tell the difference between fact checked articles and regurgitated nonesence.....and we lived in time when there was a difference..... I'm not convinced there is much hope for youngsters. My kids, who I can influence and educate still don't always seem to understand what I say when I tell them it's not a substantiated, proven fact - just because it appears many times doesn't make it true.

Oh good... something else to fit into the curriculum

Polls of how many people think the moon landings were fake are always depressing.

I'm intrigued by "The planned changes will help children identify all extremist content, including far-Left conspiracy theories and religion-based propaganda."

What do they mean by far-Left conspiracy theories? That communism is great, it just hasn't been implemented properly?

Religion-based propaganda? 👀

I read the financial times with my teen and it's very good. Written in a style that he can access and very sensible views presented.

The latter might mean the resurrection of Christ?

I am sure information about propaganda and deceptive language was taught when I was in school. Both in English and History. This feels like an update of that.

This has been on the pshe curriculum in my school for at least a decade.

History and English also teach about looking at bias etc.

It makes sod all difference as far as I can tell

The problem is that the riots are partly triggered by the anger against run-down public services. My DS no longer trusts the school because it's clear that they value ofsted and the league tables more highly than teen mental health.
So what is the point of the schools teaching the kids to detect dishonesty in public life? The kids will just laugh.

I agree that it’s a decent publication & I have a subscription myself. Even the FT is not immune to bias, however. We tend to consider things “very sensible” if we agree with them.

I am reading Fake Heroes right now which would actually be a useful source of material. Highly recommend!

But I am imagining the English GCSE right now...

'Write your own website page in which you argue that all immigrants are living in 5 star hotels'

Or,

'Write an online blog post in which you claim all vaccines cause premature ageing .'

Ensure you show clear persuasive bias in your writing.

25 years ago we were always taught to consider our sources (part of history) - it's just sensible I'd say.

Reminding kids that wikipedia and random websites are not sources of truth can be good - brow-beating them to believe the side you think is true not so much....

One real problem is that it is getting increasingly difficult to tell what is real and what is fake at all anymore. How can we teach telling whether a photo is AI when it's getting to the point where you can't?

We've just had an election where there were deepfake clips circulating of Wes Streeting being rude to a Muslim.

We are well beyond 'photoshopped newspaper articles'.

I used to teach this to NEET teens 20 years ago. 2 newspaper articles on the same subject with opposing bias was what I used in those days. The best piece of work (out of a lot of good stuff) was a teen writing an article, based on her research including going out into the City and doing a survey, was "Eminem: Man or Misogynist". She was a non academic Learner who found that she enjoyed having her thought processes challenged.
They can and will respond well to this.

2 newspaper articles on the same subject with opposing bias was what I used in those days

Yes, this is obviously good. However the suggestion is that we should use the newspaper article as the unbiased 'independent journalism' to compare with the 'extremist' propaganda being spread online.

I think it's going to be very difficult tbh. We're still reeling from Boris Johnson's election promises on the side of the bus.

Children, now and always, have to be taught to think critically. The phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ is now often itself a kind of dog whistle to delegitimise critical thought. I’d be concerned if my children grow up learning to dismiss out of hand issues without critically evaluating the available evidence - many people dismiss ‘conspiracy theories’ without doing any such thing. The days of being able to fully trust authorities are past, sadly, there is plenty of evidence for that, so our kids more than ever need well developed skills of evaluating evidence. As well as being humble enough to say ‘I haven’t looked into this so I can’t be sure’ and be able to live with the reality of uncertainty.

This isn't something that can ever possible done correctly in school. Lole plenty of other things, its something that parents should be teaching their children.

On the other hand, will we be allowed to point out that Richard Tice, an elected MP has approvingly retweeted a racist porn meme attacking Keir Starmer that was originally posted by one of the richest men in the world?