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Study: Most Students Can't Spot Fake News (engadget.com)
Even those who think that the U.S. Presidential election wasn't affected by the swath of fake news articles swirling on Facebook and other social media networks, they tend to agree that there is a lot of misinformation on the web. At Slashdot, it's hard to say that anyone here will not be able to tell fake news from a real one. But what about kids? How is our future generation doing? Not so well, apparently. An anonymous reader shares an Engadget report:A Stanford study of 7,804 middle school, high school and college students has found that most of them couldn't identify fake news on their own. Their susceptibility varied with age, but even a large number of the older students fell prey to bogus reports. Over two-thirds of middle school kids didn't see why they shouldn't trust a bank executive's post claiming that young adults need financial help, while nearly 40 percent of high schoolers didn't question the link between an unsourced photo and the claims attached to it. Why did many of the students misjudge the authenticity of a story? They were fixated on the appearance of legitimacy, rather than the quality of information. A large photo or a lot of detail was enough to make a Twitter post seem credible, even if the actual content was incomplete or wrong. There are plenty of adults who respond this way, we'd add, but students are more vulnerable than most.
What do you expect when you do not emphasize critical thinking and analysis? The American school system has never been about teaching kids how to think, just what to think, to accept the corporate American mindset. This makes for the best workers who will do their jobs but never question the overall system.
That's the point. Teach logic to preschoolers, I say.
Good luck with that. There are kids in their 20s in college who can't budget, can't cook, and if it isn't on Facebook it doesn't exist. There are adults high school (drop-outs) who have never applied for even a part-time job and as a result are too afraid of rejection to give it a try (real special snowflakes) They drop out of government-paid trade schools that give them an extra stipend, and they can't budget either, which is why they get iPhones and home internet on a $150 a month plan as soon as their check comes, go to concerts at $200 a pop, eat out with their friends, and then wonder why they have no money for food or rent.
You don't need to teach them critical thinking - you need to teach them basic thinking. Cause and effect, such as "you spend money on sh*t you want, you won't have money for sh*t you need.".
Last week I had the displeasure to watch one second-year college student who works as a cook in a burger franchise screw up making grilled cheese.
Q: How the hell do you screw up making a grilled cheese sandwich?
They don't have basic life skills and you expect to teach them logic? Sheldon says (and Mr Spock agrees) that is illogical. And we have a new generation of teachers who don't know much either, because they were also special snowflakes. They teach from the book because, like the burger cook, they can't do it if it isn't laid out step by step.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Actually the ruling party in the US has banned such subject 'indoctrination' of youth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html
Lemmings. I, by default, trust nothing. Not a way to live really but is imposed on us. So sad...
This election is the first time in my life I've taken the trouble to dig down past the news reporting into the facts that were reported.
This almost looks orchestrated.
Right now we're seeing the first rumblings of a landslide change in the way news is reported. We're starting by building up a problem in the minds of the readership, being "fake news sites". (Note that it's fake *sites*, not fake *stories*.)
This will go on for awhile until most of the readership simply accepts that "fake news sites" is a real problem that needs to be addressed. Then we'll see sites rolling out their "fixes" to the problems.
Google is pulling ad revenue from sites deemed to be "fake news", under the rule that they are not "advertiser friendly". Expect many ambiguous rules and discretionary enforcement to be implemented. For example, Scott Adams being shadow banned from twitter for having insightful views on the election.
I never knew about Breitbart news until this election, and after following them for the last 3 months I think they're probably the best example of actual news reporting on the net. The site is right-wing slanted, but the actual reporting appears to be high quality and accurate.
Compare with, for example, Huffington Post which had at the bottom of each article about Trump, the statement: "Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims—1.6 billion members of an entire religion—from entering the U.S." A direct quote, and I personally saw this at the bottom of several HuffPo articles.
The difference is between *what* gets reported, versus the *style* of reporting. Sites can be left-leaning or right-leaning, but the text shouldn't be obviously dismissive, judgemental, opinionated drivel. Readers shouldn't be told what to think - they should make up their own minds.
So look to the future, where *sites* (not articles) can't be found in search engines, can't get ad revenue, and have to live in the shadows,
Oh, and here's a list of famous fake news articles published by the MSM in recent years.
Also note that the "fake news" scare originally started from a professor creating a list of "fake news" websites was itself fake!. The list has since been taken down, but the term "fake news site" that it coined will be with us for awhile.
The “fake news” freakout: The story about a professor creating an authoritative list of “fake news” websites, as widely reported across the mainstream media, was itself a fake news story. The creator of the list was a madcap left-wing activist who compiled it on a whim, not through any sort of rigorously-vetted academic process. When the list of fake news sites came under sustained criticism, it was removed from the Internet, long after generating a raft of stories on top news websites and TV shows.
As with many of the other stories above, the fake-news-site list received huge MSM coverage because it dovetailed with a Democrat political initiative – President Obama is personally involved – and it flattered both the ideological preferences and business interests of Big Media.
Perhaps that "indoctrination" allowed people to see him for the con artist he truly is.
Or, just maybe, "higher education" is just nothing more than an extension of the high school popularity contest, in which you just have to say and do and "question" the right things to get in and play the game? I should know, I still manage to play it every day. Empty shells of people walking around trying to out-signal each other to show who's most virtuous, most oppressed, or most "progressive".
The "indoctrination" is just that. And unless you want to be cast out of the group, you'd better not think outside the box. Or at least, don't say things too loudly. The real world, far outside of the walls of the echo chambers that make up the modern university are something most people there have never experienced. And I'm honestly free of sarcasm when I ask you, honestly, has this thought ever crossed your mind?