What do we say to someone we know is misinformed? Tell them they’re wrong, present the facts and make a case, right? That might be well and good for debate class, but it doesn’t fare too well in reality. We have a problem in modern discourse where we cannot agree on what the facts are. It does not mean the real facts do not exist or that the facts are hard to find — it means we cannot distinguish the truth from a lie. It is not a problem in our character. It’s just that some of us were never given a chance to learn how this works. Even now, there’s no standard required class that teaches us how to find out the truth. Instead, some of us have to develop this sense through other classes, like biology or U.S. government. We cannot blame the public for not knowing how to recognize and distinguish truth and falsehood. We do nothing to combat it. When so many of our serious problems are created by people who think they’re doing the right thing, how could we not label this as a failure of the public school system?
We cannot agree on what is fact because we don’t know how to distinguish fact from fiction. That’s why it needs to be something that’s learned early on. We need to instill a sense of awareness and doubt in students, teaching them how to recognize when they’re being manipulated, why it’s happening and how to discern the truth of the matter. It’s essentially the ability to doubt and to do research. It would not be a stretch to demand this as an entire class by itself, since the ability to question and learn is fairly complicated. I think the school system does its part to try and instill an idea of “liberal education” in us, where we can be open to a diversity of opinions and interests. But this system of education does nothing to help combat the incredible amount of misinformation constantly surrounding us. Without any tools the majority of society settles for secondhand information provided by news outlets and the like. News outlets can be openly deceiving without restraint. Blatant falsehoods carry no real consequence, and as long as your audience isn’t prone to looking anywhere else but their selected news outlets, how can we hope to have any communication over serious issues when we can’t even agree on what is fact? Modern discourse intentionally warps the meaning of the word “fact” so that it exists to support opinion.
There’s not much that can be done to alter our present society’s ability to get information. Instead we should try our best to provide these tools for our children so they can encounter their problems with greater knowledge and reasonable understanding.
Perhaps what needs to happen first and foremost is that we instill a greater sense of trust in the scientific community. How can public opinion be divided as much as 50 percent on the issue of climate change when more than 95 percent of the scientific community finds that climate change is influenced by human activity? It is not simply the streams of misinformation coming from news outlets, it also stems from a misunderstanding of what scientists do. This is why research is such an important thing for students to learn. We need to focus on teaching students what scientific data really looks like and how to read it. It should not be a skill only available to scientists in the same field. Once a student knows how to get information, then they can begin to doubt.
What would a class like this look like? The truth is that varieties of it exist in nearly all of our classes. Be it science, math, English or art, there’s always a need to question what we thought we knew and discover what is actually the case. There’s just no central hub that only focuses on these skills. It could look like a science class, a philosophy class or a politics class.
The ability to doubt does not mean to simply distrust everything you hear. Doubt is the ability to recognize rhetoric, realize when a source is questionable and know what credible information looks like. It also comes with a great deal of self-awareness. We are never as placated as when we hear something we agree with. We’re creating imaginary associations all the time, even if we do it subconsciously. This is what fuels stereotypes. We simplify our views on people, food, economics, and everything else because it’s easier that way. Doubt is all about combating what we think we know.