Education secretary launches review of curriculum in primary and secondary schools aimed at teaching critical thinking

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.

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    3 months ago

    Hopefully it tries to be as neutral as possible

    No. Forcing a neutral perspective between absurdity and objectively true claims is how we got here.

    When one party says that scientific evidence is real and the other says it’s a Marxist conspiracy, forced neutralized lends undue credence to the latter.

    Similarly, forcibly neutral newsrooms and the neoliberal Starmer government consider it extremist to acknowledge that the fascist apartheid regime of Israel is committing genocide and to call for your country to not supply them with arms, funds, and political cover.

    It should try to be as FACTUAL and OBJECTIVE as possible, not chase neutrality when neutrality flies in the face of evidence and the most basic accountability and human rights.

    Introducing this sort of thing without trying to be strictly impartial sounds like a slippery slope.

    Yeah, they’re GOING to consider extremism as anything too far from the interests of the neoliberal and capitalist elite in either direction rather than pursue an evidence-based curriculum of critical thinking like they’re pretending.