Early August was typified by two separate media storms, fuelled almost entirely by sweeping waves of misinformation and disinformation.
The first was an unexpected right-wing agenda linked to the Olympics, in which disinformation was circulated to discredit a female boxer. It was maliciously shared that she was transgender, formally a man, and had failed a testosterone test. It later emerged she was born female, and the failed test was in fact one carried out by a since discredited and disbanded organisation, who had been sanctioned for corruption. Not before, however, a maelstrom of sharing by celebrities and influencers, and a call to ban her from competition, and boycott the Olympics.
The second wave ignited riots, racism, and the Islamophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-refugee far right agenda, following the deaths of three children in Southport in a fatal stabbing. The attack was in fact perpetrated by a 17-year old British citizen born in Cardiff, but social media posts that initially originated from a fake news post out of Pakistan (for which a person has been arrested) reported the attack as a Muslim asylum seeker. It fuelled attacks on centres for refugees, mosques, and other religious centres, as well as riots in which police and civilians were injured. To date, more than 1,000 arrests have been made for civil unrest, and additionally more than 100 people have so far been imprisoned.
These are just two, very recent, examples in which misinformation (the spread of false information) and disinformation (the deliberate, malicious spread of false information) have fuelled emotional reaction. The race riots in particular have triggered government response, with Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson vowing an end to “putrid conspiracy theories” with changes to the National Curriculum to help pupils spot fake news.
National charity The Open Minds Foundation, believes that the curriculum changes need to go one step further however, embedding critical thinking skills across every subject in the curriculum. Victoria Petkovic-Short, Executive Director for the charity commented: “Our brains are assailed by thousands of pieces of information a day, forcing us to make quick decisions and index information rapidly, so that we are not overwhelmed. However, this same process makes it easy for us to accept what we read as fact, even when we are told it is an outright lie. It’s this that makes us easy to exploit with misinformation and disinformation.”
She continues: “Critical thinking on the other hand is a learned skill that helps to inoculate our brains against the threat of fake news. Not only does it teach us to think better, but it teaches us when we need to think slower, allowing time for fact-checking, reflection, and a rational, rather than emotional reaction. At the Open Minds Foundation, we have been advocating for critical thinking to be on the curriculum for years, and have a partnership with teaching resource provider Jigsaw to bring our primary-school resources into schools. It’s time that we updated the curriculum to make it fit-for-purpose in the modern world.”
What is critical thinking?
Critical thinking is a deliberate thought process used to evaluate information. It means specifically and intentionally examining information to determine its validity and relevance. It is an essential skill in improving your cognitive processes, but importantly is your first line of defence for preventing coercion and coercive control, including identifying misinformation and fake news, as well as gang membership, religious extremism, and cults.
Why is it important in education?
The British education system has long prioritised the acquisition and testing of knowledge, learning facts, figures, and information pertaining to a particular subject. This is useful when considering educational ranking, and specific subject-matter knowledge, but it is not good for teaching rational thought and resilience. Introducing critical thinking at every level of school, from primary education right through to college and university, we not only improve the way in which people think and their research skills, but we give them lifelong learning that helps foster an understanding of truth and lies. We encourage people to question how they know that something is true, and not just what they believe the truth to be. It is a small, but mighty distinction.
How can it be introduced?
As well as leaning on dedicated resources from organisations and charities such as The Open Minds Foundation, the best approach is to commit to introducing critical thinking, and to find ways to incorporate it into every day teaching. There is a real danger that the race to acquire as much knowledge as possible can mean that students never really get the opportunity to think for themselves, so critical thinking employs the opposite approach, deliberately challenging that same thinking.
For example, in one primary school based in Somerset, introducing critical thinking has been as simple as asking children “how do you know?”, and introducing opportunities for problem-solving while attaining knowledge.
Everest is the highest mountain – How do we know?; The Great Fire of London started in Pudding Lane – How do we know?; The angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees – How do we know? By employing this approach day to day, children are developing their ability to question and to think deeply. Further up the school, this skill is explored more literally through studies in propaganda relating to World Wars, advertising and other more ‘obvious’ lessons that teach children to be critical.
At the same time, the school employs a strategy a second strategy whereby they utilise waiting time, such as filing into assembly. They pose a question – often nonsense, sometimes funny – but a question that requires creative ‘out of the box’ thinking:
a) There is a ball stuck down a deep hole, how will we get it out?
b) A pig is stuck up a tree, how do we get it down?
The purpose of these questions is for children to think creatively and critically, and they are wonderfully creative in how they might solve these problems:
a) Fill the hole with water so the ball floats up; use a long plunger to suck it up; train the worms to push it up…
b) Use a ladder; wait until Autumn; chop the tree down…
The children take real delight in trying to come up with the most ‘out of the box’ answers and by sharing with the whole school, children who are less ‘creative’ in their thoughts begin to learn to broaden and deepen their thought processes. This only takes a matter of minutes, but is immensely powerful in its impact.
It’s fair that the simplicity of this skill is not going to solve the crisis of misinformation via social media, encourage a child to speak out about abuse, or even help them to avoid becoming embroiled in gang violence, but it forms the basis of intelligent enquiry, and helps determine future capability in critical thinking. When we shift away from pure knowledge acquisition, and into a process of learning to learn, we sow the seed for the future skills that young people need to protect their own autonomy.
