Children need tools to evaluate information avalanche

With the internet being less information superhighway and more information avalanche, it becomes increasingly important to incorporate comprehensive critical thinking curricula in schools from the very first day of kindergarten. After all, the information is all there on the ‘net.

We used to say that an informed citizenry was critical to the success of a republic, but it’s increasingly obvious that information isn’t what we’re missing – it’s the tools needed to evaluate it. People who don’t think critically are more easily manipulated by power-hungry cynics.

How else can we explain how a billionaire who’s never worked a day in his life convinced the American electorate that he was for the “working man,” or that despite the fact that he has had multiple bankruptcies and lost almost a billion dollars in just one year, he is a masterful businessman?

Faced with competing streams of information, they just accepted the version that felt better, to the detriment of us all. If this election does nothing else, it demonstrates that it’s quite possible that if we don’t revise the public-school curricula we will fall under the sway of absolutism.

This story was originally published November 26, 2016 at 2:03 PM with the headline "Children need tools to evaluate information avalanche."