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.
As always, things will focus more on vibes and credentialism than critical thinking, because conspiracy theories are a mainstay of all the ‘serious’ papers and conspiracy itself is just how power has functioned for the last few centuries
There’s two kinds of conspiracies:
Ultimately antisemitic nonsense
Admitted to by the government thirty years after the fact
right wing vs left wing conspiracies