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Schools to teach children how to spot fake news and ‘putrid’ conspiracies online (www.independent.co.uk)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Children will be taught how to spot extremist content and fake news online under planned changes to the school curriculum.

Education Secretary 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”.

Pupils might analyse newspaper articles in English lessons in a way that would help weed out fabricated clickbait from true reporting. In computer lessons, they could be taught how to spot fake news sites and maths lessons could include analysing statistics in context.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (5 children)

This is actually a very minimal change to the already existing curriculum - the (compulsory) English Language GCSE is 50% "Critical reading and comprehension"

Gov UK states all specifications must include:

"identifying bias and misuse of evidence, including distinguishing between statements that are supported by evidence and those that are not; reflecting critically and evaluatively on text"

Most people presumably... "forgot"? but this has been in the curriculum for decades

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For me at least, most of that was just identifying rhetorical devices used by the writer and summarising what they wrote, not looking at the legitimacy of what's being said (it'd be hard to do that in an exam context anyway).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah, there's definitely a difference between curricula, what's focussed on in classrooms, and exam assessment criteria, but they're supposed to be cohesive.

I remember one of my big pieces of coursework was "writing from the perspective of an advertiser," and we had loads of lessons on identifying bias. I was taught in school that "red top magazines" are "less honest and more emotive" than "broadsheet newspapers."

Presumably not everyone had the same experience though: I mentioned this offhand and my friend told me "surely that's illegal to teach in a classroom?!"

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