Kids don’t need to tell fact from fiction on internet

A recent story in The Herald suggests introducing fact checking into classrooms, perhaps like Finland as early as preschool.

This is just more social engineering. A whole new way of identifying and avoiding misinformation from the various online sources. We kids had no formal structured classroom instruction to be suspect of what was printed in the paper, in part because in “grade school” we couldn’t read. At some point as youngsters we heard, “don’t believe everything you read in the newspaper, hear on the radio or see on TV. As a society we’ve always been susceptible to hearsay and mob rule, it’s a human failing.

Classroom instruction, no matter how well intentioned isn’t the answer.

Rich Needham

Everett