There is no question that misinformation can be dangerous. I think we would all agree with that notion. Ultimately, it can ruin lives. What most do not realize, however, is that its destruction is not always blatant and instant. More dangerously, it can be an extremely slow, drawn-out process. The perils are greater with the latter simply because the victims are incapable of detection. Something so gradual, and in some cases methodical, is conducted with the sole intent of delivering the false storyline under an overlay of darkness. We know there are malevolent people in our world, in all walks of life, that do this very thing. The question is not whether they can be stopped, but rather, how do we fortify ourselves from such deception, and more importantly, teach our children how to do the same.
I understand the irony if I were to include anything in this post that could be considered bias and for this reason, I will do what I did back in my teaching days. To this day, I would be willing to bet not a single student of mine knew my political leanings. And that is the approach I will employ here. I taught high school history and civics, and refraining from interjecting my own opinions was of course a challenge and today, far too rare. But I do believe I was successful. I was inspired to take this approach by a college professor of mine. It was an ethics class and solely driven by the Socratic method. None of us knew his thoughts on the matters. And though we all came from differing backgrounds equipped with every political ideology, there never seemed to be any discrepancies in how he graded our work. That is exactly how teaching should be and has sadly become far too scarce in academia.
One of the methods I applied when teaching my students, not only how to think critically when looking at issues, but also how to distinguish what is true, was to apply comparative scrutiny when reviewing sources. For example, when we delved into public policy-related research, I instructed students to find 10 sources about the same topic. Five were to be from sources they knew had a bias in one direction, and the other five from a clearly opposing viewpoint. They understood that they had to be honest about finding five on each side, or their findings would be skewed. Their next step was to go through each and find any shared information. Everything else should be considered as potential bias. This would then be their starting point for sound research. My instruction to them was to incorporate this maneuver throughout their lives and I hope that this is the one thing I shared with them over the years that took hold.
Truth is all that matters. And it isn’t enough to believe something to be true. We all must do our due diligence in this endeavor. We are on our own going forward. Most people have lost faith in an impartial news outlet, no matter what side of the political spectrum one resides in. Truth is truth. It is that simple, but its discovery is so enormously imperative. Teach your children how to think for themselves. Teach them how to value the truth. This world is grueling enough and living in darkness will only make the journey impossible.
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