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/

I think this is really the problem.

Yet again the government is loading the world's problems onto the shoulders of the teens, when they could just be giving the BBC a kick up the backside and telling them to do their job.

Them not deliberately lying would also be an improvement. But they seem to have decided to throw away their reputation in the pursuit of short term social media approval.

Easily mitigated by giving them source material they can use in the exam - with references. That is what happens in history, economics etc. It's not hard.

We already do this a bit and it's difficult to get students to see past their own bias to be honest.

Where are the reliable sources? Like you, I use the FT but it’s limited. Fine for me atm as I don’t look at much but not enough for people who actually want to learn

I find people groan at the suggestion of looking at the wording of a bill on the government website. They want a newspaper headline. I find those are often wildly inaccurate.

I haven’t been looking at news much since 2020 but I doubt things have changed much.

as for sources being behind a paywall - nothing can be done about that. I also said, 20 years ago, that the free model of everything can’t continue. Not a popular thing to say but there it is.

if I want information it’s usually best to look at the relevant legislation.

this last week has been the first time in ages that I’ve needed to follow a fast moving news situation and I had no idea where to turn. Hence a long look at twitter.

I do now accept that I didn’t need to follow it but that’s partly because my area was quiet, which is sheer luck.

I don’t know where I’d go for up to date news in future. Sky looks okay. But half the issue with news is that they want to create drama.

It is, without completely re-accrediting the current GCSE. Which is not an overnight process.

But it's also difficult for the teachers to see beyond their own bias. And the politicians. And every single adult. None of us are free of bias, and I think the real dangers come when people are convinced that they don't have biases.

Totally messed up, yes that's also true. I try never to give my personal opinion just state different sides of the argument. When we look for bias we look for where the author might be showing one sidedness rather than judging accuracy. I think it is important to recognise opposing viewpoints and to be able to understand why they exist.

Given the number of adults that believe the world is flat and evidence on YouTube is their source, there may be an uphill battle.

Well... The BBC takes its casualty figures from Hamas, so I guess they're ruled out as a reliable news source.

I'm fairly sure the kids are likely to be educating most of the teachers on this one. And as for critical thinking, I reckon that particular gene was surgically removed from most of humanity a long, long time ago....even scientists and some medics don't seem capable of it these days (Surgisphere articles in the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine being just one fairly recent example).

GCSE curricula are regularly revised. Change needs things to change.

I am aware of that, thank you.

There is a difference between bias and fake news.

It's important to use real facts in conditions where you can. In an exam, where you're under pressure to write about a probably unfamiliar topic, they can't be expected to have real facts to hand.

@MrsHamlet im sorry, I don’t understand this. If the exam candidates don’t have the real facts to hand when answering a question and make things up, won’t they be marked down?

Many schools are still struggling with trans issues and that you can change sex.
So I don't see how the system can be trusted with this.

@Barbadossunset no they won't.

If we still had coursework or controlled assessment, then that would be a perfect place for students to be taught to use source material to support their own argument. The igcse I moderated certainly did that. But in an exam, under time pressure, students can and do make up facts and statistics, and that's allowed.

I saw a very good discussion about this online recently. Of course we should be aware of the bias that exists in all media, but there is a significant difference between a mainstream media outlet and Some Guy on Twitter. MSM is imperfect but it also has the ability to have people quickly on the ground where things are happening, the budget to conduct months of investigation before coming up with a major story, people to fact check. Saying 'Don't trust anything' is unhelpful - but one can say that on balance the BBC, for example, is going to be better than a random person on social media or 'World Amazing News' site or something which is clogged up with bad AI pictures of celebrities and clickbait headlines.

I don't think anyone is planning to teach 'Believe mainstream media without question!' but I think one can say there are heirarchies of how well facts are checked, even if they may come with biases.

Recently it's really struck me how often I'm turning to MN for "facts" - just because we have so many pairs of eyes and ears on the ground, watching situations evolve, and because our anonymity means we can be very honest.

It was really striking during the election for example. The threads in which conservative voters were allowed to come and talk about why they voted the way they did, and the great threads by people who man (or woman) the polling stations.

I feel as though the internet is changing the way society works. I suspect that this thing that the government is asking us to teach is something that is:

a) not yet fully understood
b) changing on a daily basis as the internet evolves and we change with it.

That makes it very hard to teach in any definitive way.

There’s a far bigger problem with conspiracy nuts following the push to identify fake news, so I’m pretty sure this will backfire spectacularly.

Here's the FT stepping up for us:

https://www.ft.com/content/8f0a08c9-1ba6-4df5-a6bd-ac7d288e5ca2

"TikTok users are being sent inaccurate news-style alerts"

Careful, your own bias is showing 🙄

It's really very simple, educate children on a broad range of topics with a focus on analysis and critical thinking. Encourage an enquiring mind with lots of consequential thinking.

Schools do this already I think, maybe just need to up it within the context of subjects and perhaps at secondary more linkage within subjects (although not sure how teachers are supposed to fit this in).

One thing that does strike me is how those, pre SM, who held all the information control and were masters of this now hate it's out of their control. Frankly how do any of us know whether it's Russian or UK misinformation!

From the FT piece:

TikTok declined to reveal how the app determined which videos to promote through notifications, but the sheer volume of personalised content recommendations must be “algorithmically generated”, said Dani Madrid-Morales, co-lead of the University of Sheffield’s Disinformation Research Cluster. Edelson, who is also co-director of the Cybersecurity for Democracy group, suggested that a responsible push notification algorithm could be weighted towards trusted sources, such as verified publishers or officials. “The question is: Are they choosing a high-traffic thing from an authoritative source?” she said. “Or is this just a high-traffic thing?”

Weighting algorithms towards ‘authoritative’ sources sounds sensible, but it’s still tricky to see how this could be achieved without bias.

But this is the problem as well. Black and white thinking, one is good then other is bad.

I was taught growing up that the BBC was a reliable place to get news and that it could be trusted.

It is clear that in some areas this is a lie.

Same with X, lots wrong with it but also lots right with it.