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.

  • absquatulate@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    There’s admittedly some potential in there, like teaching them to analyse statistics and ‘teaching critical thinking’ whatever that implies.

    Conspiracy theory belief however is emotional rather than rational. You cannot ‘teach’ people to not do it. I worry that they will condition kids to dismiss any news that deviates from official propaganda by just labelling them as conspiracies. And frankly with the UK being the police state that it is, that might just be the end goal.