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Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability to Tell Fake News from Real, Study Finds

npr.org

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Re: Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability to Tell Fake News from Real, Study Finds

#4

They should teach critical thinking more in schools.

Parents don't want their kids doubting their religious/moral/political stances, and no sane politicians or business wants critical thinkers as a voters/consumers.

Re: Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability to Tell Fake News from Real, Study Finds

#5
Were the stories pushed by these media outlets about Saddam Hussein having WMD's considered fake news?

This whole push behind this buzzword is an attempt at damage control for declining readership and relevance as more people get their news coverage from elsewhere.

Re: Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability to Tell Fake News from Real, Study Finds

#6
post #4

They should teach critical thinking more in schools.

Parents don't want their kids doubting their religious/moral/political stances, and no sane politicians or business wants critical thinkers as a voters/consumers.

Then US will be a nation of fake news.

Re: Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability to Tell Fake News from Real, Study Finds

#7
In short, students actually trust people to tell the truth.

Is it really very surprising? Students are conditioned to trust the information that they are given. The teacher is always right, and the student is wrong if they disagree. Critical thinking is only correct if it agrees with the teacher's conclusions.

There is only one solution. We must destroy their faith in humanity.

Re: Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability to Tell Fake News from Real, Study Finds

#8
I wonder if the kids have ever experienced real news, news that isn't fake or propaganda at one level or another. That might be a problem.

A major problem might be that there's too much news in people's daily lives. Most people for most of their lives, even as kids, will use the news primarily as a source for gossip and the occasional social signalling. Good, real news is defined as something they can gossip about on social media with their friends to gain street cred or whuffie or likes or upvotes. Suddenly shocking them with some ridiculous (to them) view that news is like a revealed religious text and everyone thinks the one that politically agrees with them is the only true source and all else are false prophets that should be banned, or even worse, news is something like an English Lit class text to be deconstructed and symbolized is pretty much doomed by decades of regular life poisoning it. In practice, in daily life, news is like slightly more serious cute kitty video and you want to be the first to associate yourself with it, so you can bask in your friends glow as the cool kid who finds cool news. Certainly eliminating 99.9% of news from peoples lives would not impair their lives (other than socially, maybe, some of them) and would make it infinitely easier to teach an academic interpretation of news.

I guess in summary gossip should be about who your shared neighbor is having, or not having, sex with. Using cabinet picks and natural disasters and sports scores as a source of gossip is fun, but has a side effect of really screwing up some academic research disciplines.

Re: Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability to Tell Fake News from Real, Study Finds

#9
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents don't want their kids doubting their religious/moral/political stances, and no sane politicians or business wants critical thinkers as a voters/consumers.

Then US will be a nation of fake news.

Does it matter if people have weird beliefs as long as they have no power to enforce them?