A few days ago I stunned how one of my students did a school activity on one of the center’s available computers (in theory protected by a safe digital environment) and while, in loop, he reproduced, embedded on an educational page, a video of a video of A Donald Trump rally. If this occurs in environments a priori Reliable, what can happen in the times and spaces where our young people move in their spare time with mobile phones and other devices?
We live a complex era in which the school cannot be left out of citizenship education against misinformation. The proven facts succumb to the seductive power of opinions, of the personal judgments that really mask and a permanent sensationalist background that, once again, warn us of the enormous power that words and the iconic in the information society have in the information society . Surrounded by conspiracy theories, of permanent exaltation of the emotional and the proliferation of beliefs that only seek to generate impact, current education develops in the midst of an inhospitable, convulsive and unusual media territory that requires the maximum involvement of all its professionals.
in About education (2018), it maintains that in the contemporary world “it is not just about being able to say, to be able to express yourself, but to be able to think, to learn to think about, indeed, to have something to say.” The school, in its curricular deployment, today has that crucial mission: to teach the current generations of young people to have something to say.
extremist positions only represent a problem for just over five percent of Spaniards. The population seems sunderstand yourself at ease In the field of mines that involves polarization and social tension, or at least, it is accustomed to it. When we have normalized that hate speeches penetrate in our homes through channels, networks and media while we contemplate it with parsimony?
Who do not settle for being passive spectators as if we were within The Truman showwe firmly believe in the importance of article 27 of the Spanish Constitution at the present time. This dictates that everyone has the right to receive an education provided by the State that has as its object “the free development of personality in respect for democratic principles of coexistence and fundamental rights and freedoms.”
If this new public and social order prevails and the great narratives change frames towards the preponderance of populisms and the permanent drip of radicalist speeches – many of them against human rights – the school will have something to say. Thus, the current education system cannot be understood without critical thinking as an essential competence in the education of the 21st century. A new form of criticality that also reacts against, for example, the self -censorship processes that many language and literature departments live in regard to the choice of literary works or other texts that deal with values and diversity because the kingdom of fear prevails in As for respect for identities and denunciation of any form of cultural supremacism.
In all this battle against misinformation, teachers and public education they have to be erected as the authorities of knowledge and knowledge they represent. In a permanent question of the academic and the scientific, it is the turn of working more thoroughly than ever in the classrooms of compulsory education the recognition of the quality of the sources, the identification of biases, the difference between information and opinion , the distinction of the most common fallacies and the development of solid arguments against the superficiality of the foundationless assessments.
The neutrality or inoperance of the school in the fight against false news and misinformation implies a bankruptcy of the main task of public education: preparing young people to incorporate an increasingly complex society with maturity. A society that resembles which shows the recent French series Fever. In it, an isolated event related to the world of football leads, due to its informative and media treatment, in a national confrontation that divides the country, tense social relations, triggers interest in controversy and distorts reality about cultural diversity, as well as the different positions that can be adopted in the face of the problem of racism. Is that the manipulable society that we want for our sons and daughters?
Carol Hanisch maintains, that “the personal is political.” The role of new educational policies has to question what personal development is the one that intends for future generations of citizens. Ask, for example, if people at street level are able to distinguish between the moral or scientific authority of public institutions that ensure protection through dissemination, on the one hand, and the hypermodernist show based on emotional experiences of the calls influencers who move like fish in water on social networks such as Instagram o Tiktokon the other.
Educational communities may not be aware of the role that school could play to change things. It is worrying that, according to the report, almost half of our country’s students believe that creative intelligence is something that is started or does not have, and it cannot be changed too much in the person. Given this panorama, it is normal for our young people to get carried away by what others tell them about any fact or reality. Under the mandate of misinformation, any lie can be credible.
In the midst of this battle against fakes news And due to the possession of the truth, it is key to recover the power of learning on the modification of individuals’ behaviors. To do this, the axis of school practices must be based on the generation of contrasted ideas in any area or subject, the critical analysis of information, the debates or oratory contests and the planning of cooperative projects that include forms of guided investigation from of additional sources (hyperlinks, references …). It is about educating in critical thinking as a shared priority.
All this to make the main school competence that is fully existential. The one that sits in the premise that we are, permanently and although we do not realize, used by language. And to win this battle, the school must lead the possibility of reinventing it, of possessing it again so that humanism and science return to occupy the public territory that should never be abandoned.
