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/

It's overlooking that fact that schools don't have enough teachers to teach the things they are already meant to be covering as well. If the school wants to teach the kids how to spot lies, they could start by pointing out the obvious fact that they don't have enough adults in the building to teach anything, let alone that.

Very well put.

Teach then critical thinking generally instead of giving them a fish.

Isn't this what the BBC used to be for though? I thought they used to be the trustworthy news source, but now they are full of terrifying news stories that give everbody the heebie jeebies.

Maybe they could just overhaul the BBC to make it sensible again?

Kids aren't getting their news from the BBC, and when the conspiracy theorists are consistently telling you not to believe the 'MSM', then what?

True. I never look at the BBC either. I used to read the BBC then the Guardian but then I realised they are the golden road to anxiety disorder.

I only look at the FT now. It expresses the severity of problems in a nice round $ figure, which is much less alarming.

I think part of the problem is that kid do get their news from wild places though. I think the schools could start by saying "Don't believe all these daft news sources" and that would at least be a solid piece of information.

I agree with the intent, but think that given how fast social media changes, it could be out of date very quickly.

How are schools meant to do this with a straight face, when many of them are seriously considering using AI to mark essays. Many of these essays will have been written with the help of AI, so it's quite possible that AI is marking its own essay and the teachers and kids will have only been slightly involved. Perhaps they could talk about that first?

It reminds me of a story from a teacher friend 20 years ago when she and her colleagues were trying to figure out how to explain internet porn to the kids. They found out that some of their boys were already running a porn site with photos of the female teachers on it. The kids were way ahead of them.

Then finding trustworthy information is really hard. It’s horrible but that is our world now and a reality we need to face up to. It possibly always was and we were in blissful ignorance!

You think we don't already do that?

sorry, yes I know you do. We do too. The problem is that for quite a long time the actual government was one of the major news sources that made no sense.

Our perhaps most trusted news source, the bbc, thinks humans can change sex and gladly describe men who commit violent crimes against women as she.

Let's make sure we instill critical thinking and a good understanding of biology into our young people.
They should put Trans by Helen Joyce on the reading lists.

I did media studies.

Just do that.

Does media studies include social media?

They need to teach the BBC critical thinking skills. It would save the rest of us a whole world of trouble.

Its media. What do you think media is? Social media is a certain type of media. Its useful to know how it applies differently to multiple sources, including 'mainstream' media and newspapers.

Why should we only be focusing on social media?

There's a media studies teacher on this thread so I was hoping for a bit of info on the syllabus.

GCSE English Language used to include language and the media. Until Gove came along and killed it off.

When MSM fuck up or have a clear agenda, social media will be there to flag up their mistakes and obvious biases meaning that younger people are even less likely to believe what is going on.

It wasn’t until the the interview with someone at the rally saying that they saw someone on the roof and flagged them to the security services that people realised that there was a massive story that they weren’t being told.

It wasn’t just CNN reporting things incorrectly and minimising the assassination attempt but an excellent example that Trump can use to fuel people’s anger.

Like the ICT lessons referred to in the Telegraph article...

I think its problematic to almost set up this narrative that traditional media = good and social media = bad.

Its HOW its used and there's still issues with content with 'reputable' sources.

We should be teaching about this, because it also demonstrates that institutions can mislead and abuse power.

What we want is to restore trust and accountability of all media.

Exactly

How can you restore the trust of all media when Twitter is being run by a guy who currently appears to be trying to take down the British government?

Ooh, minefield.

Fact checking and querying neutrally and dispassionately is one thing. But much disinformation is the power of group think or of ‘official’ sources. I don’t mean that in a ‘sheeples’ way (🙄) but as a product of reflexive attitudes and regrettable recognition of dubious sources.

For example, how could a schoolchild be expected to understand the wider historical and other issues about Israel/Gaza than is pumped out by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, using Hamas sources? (Other than showing The World at War regularly in class of course.)