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.
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?
I honestly don’t remember. That’s not a yes or a no but “I’m not sure”. The critical thinking they were talking about wasn’t necessarily relating to media though, but more general - like a habit of challenging assumed knowledge.
I did in history class, the point being that when trying to assess historical evidence you have to take into account the source of the information to understand the biases contained in it.
It wasn’t in general classes though.