Truth Detectives: Equipping Our Children and Ourselves with Critical Thinking Skills to Combat Fake News
It may be hard to find, but the truth is out there
Preface: This is a bonus post for all my subscribers. I hope it gives you a taste of my “other” writing style. See if you can pick out good and not-so-good elements.
In Finland, a country not quite as large as the state of Montana and barely larger than Great Britain, life is of higher quality than in most countries. In fact, Finland scores in the top five worldwide on nearly every measure of life satisfaction.
They focus on making life satisfying and safe for their people. To wit, Finland recently committed to teaching schoolchildren, from kindergarten on, to recognize fake news and apply critical thinking to their daily lives. And that process is impacting every aspect of these children's success.
Fake news makes my teeth hurt. Understanding how many adults get sucked up into dangerous fake news without a thought for how stupid much of it is, sets my nerves on edge. We are smarter and better than that—or we should be. And still, across the globe, bad actors daily obliterate reality with carefully orchestrated fake news.
Fake news is often more visible than truth
Since about 2017, the small nation has proven that teaching real research skills and encouraging children to dig deep into details builds, in one teacher's words, "social resilience to misinformation." But change requires effort and understanding.
Example: for six days this October, fake news about hurricane assistance caused thousands of people to avoid seeking help after two hurricane's destroyed parts of their lives. Today, an intelligent writer on Medium referred to those stories, proven false multiple times, as known truth.
Those false stories were born of an intentional desire to control people's responses. You may declare then that we must focus on more effective communications and on what sources we believe. We have to work on algorithms and content moderation. True.
But way more effective and much harder to sabotage is teaching all people, young to old, how to determine whether news and information is trustworthy. You can teach yourself with a bit of effort. Many more people access fake news, exaggerated news, deep fakes, and opinion masquerading as news than they do actual fact. Many can't tell the difference.
Why? Social media masquerading as sourced news. Rumors made viral because they sound compelling. Citizen journalists who don't bother to check their facts or, indeed, read their own writings. News outlets that have a serious axe to grind. And the list goes on. We pick our favorites, suck up the "news," and repeat it far and wide.
Finland, on the other hand, has earned the top spot in media literacy among European countries.
These scores (derived from scores on press freedom, civic engagement, public trust, reading competency, and scientific literacy) are taken as a measure of resilience to fake news. Included in this measure is the fact that Finland also scores well in science in international student achievement assessments. —Kari Kivinen
Yes, we can change the world—or at least the blind acceptance of fake news
A decade ago, influential people in Finland noticed a veritable flood of Russian propaganda, medical mythology, climate denialism, election horse manure, and other rubbish flowing unchecked like the Nile at flood stage.
Their observations weren't unique, but the Fins decided to act. What if they taught everyone how to simply be their own Snopes?
Faktabaari EDU was born to incorporate pragmatic and understandable research skills coupled with fact-checking skills into every classroom.
"In math lessons, kids learn about how statistics can be deceptive; in history, they study propaganda campaigns from the past. Even folklore, in which the wily fox tries to trick his victims, reinforces the idea that active critical thinking should be a regular part of ordinary life." —Kari Kivinen
Basic critical thinking skills are part of every lesson in those schools now, and kids get excited digging down to find truth. Teachers hand down "facts," and kids use their own superpowers to applaud the truth or call out the lies.
They're taught to use various tools to determine what we all should be asking about everything we read:
Who stands to gain and who is behind the story?
What’s the evidence—what factual proof can I see, touch, feel, read, or hear?
What are other sources and experts saying?
The early learners in Finland play games and fun activities to help them see the difference between mistakes and hoaxes. They learn about motive. Kids with more life experience expand this kind of detective work to look at governments, elections, wealth, and power, for example. All kids are encouraged to think and to enjoy the process of thinking and the outcomes.
The program works because all teachers receive continuous training, guidance, and support, while schools consistently improve ways to measure the results of the program. Imagine if we had adult education classes that operated this way.
Why Finland's program succeeds
There seems to be a foundation of strong cultural values that transcends politics, power, and personal gain. Where many countries confine kids to overcrowded classrooms where creativity and personal expression is constrained, apparently it's typical in Finland to see lessons blended into an enjoyable setting.
Kids divide time between desks, the school yard, and woods and fields, exploring, testing, discovering, and enjoying themselves.
Children have the right to play, to learn through play, to enjoy what they learn, and to build a sense of themselves, their identity, and the world according to their own starting points. —per the Finnish national curriculum for early childhood education
Yes, other countries can emulate this program
Five years ago, a US study of 500 high school students found that a week of daily 50-minute lessons saw students demonstrating appropriate skepticism of various facts gathered online.
Example: An image of "a Syrian child lying between his parents' grave mounds" on X(Twitter) was determined to actually be a Saudi child posing between two rocks for an art project. Students noted that the tweet was anonymous, and many of them chose to inspect the photo to see what it really depicted.
If we shift from handing down simple facts in the classroom and requiring children to accept and memorize those facts, we'll begin to teach children to trust but validate when that's appropriate.
It's incumbent on all of us to value our children's intellectual development as much as we value their right to suck up information from YouTube, Instagram, and television without questioning what they are swallowing. We are obligated to help them learn to protect themselves with skills that shine a light on pseudoscience, fanatical idealism, and political manipulation.
For me, whenever my 15 grandkids bring me stuff they have learned online, it's a pleasure to listen to them, ask questions, and show them another side if there is one. If we all give our kids that much respect and hold ourselves to a high standard of fact-finding, we should see a more tolerant world evolving.
Footnote: Finland scores in the top five nations (worldwide) for happiness, press freedom, gender equality, social justice, transparency in education, education, work-life balance, environmental quality, social connections, safety, and life satisfaction. The US appears in none of those top five.
Story sources:
Issues in Science and Technology
This is just what I needed. I've got huge aspirations to transform the education system by helping allowing children to stay inspired, creative and passionate about their dreams. Saving this article to help build a business dedicated to prosperity for our kids.
As academics, we talk daily about getting students to develop and use critical thinking skills. It might surprise the general population that many students who have made it to the college level do not understand the concept of critical thinking. They look, instead, to the instant gratification of getting a grade by doing what they think the instructor wants.
In the age of AI, instilling the ability to think must happen early in a child's life. Thanks for this article. I had no idea that there was anyone on the planet that had developed this educational philosophy.