Critical Thinking

 Sir, Duncan Gardham calls for better citizenship classes "to tackle the extremist messages enticing our young", but education could go further than one subject in schools. From the first years of primary, pupils need to learn critical online thinking so that, equipped with the right tools and sources, it becomes instinctive for young people to query, check and verify what they read, see or hear. AI may provide solutions, even though it creates its own issues.

Socrates
unknown artist
Photo Credit:Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford [CC BY-NC]

The rest of us would benefit from a public information campaign to explain what misinformation and disinformation are and how they spread. It needs to be on the scale of the Covid health messaging because the risk to democracy is equally grave.

I have known serious, intelligent postgraduate journalism students who believe the moon landings were faked because they'd read an apparently authoritative blogger making the case and citing convincing "evidence". Disinformation disorientates even the most thoughtful if they don't understand how it works.

(Julie Nightingale, Nottingham Trent University, The Times, 2024)

Manna from heaven! Question, question and then question again. Like a historian, check the sources. Are they credible? Finally, consider things carefully so that you can determine what you are being told is accurate. In other words, assess the validity and reliability of the information presented to you.

  

Minerva Spearing Ignorance

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

Photo Credit: The Banqueting House -Whitehall Palace, 

Historic Royal Palaces [CC BY-NC-ND]

Given the sheer prevalence of misinformation around us, I believe that ways of identifying misinformation, combined with critical thinking, should now be taught in every school. After all its not just the fake political news that we need to avoid, but health scams and financial fraud. A firmer grounding in sceptical reasoning could help everyone – whatever their IQ – to use their intelligence to make wiser judgements.

(The Guardian, 2019)

Would not critical thinking or, as I would say, the critical spirit, be an excellent counterpoint to the shallowness of much of modern media?