Only 9% of 15-year-olds can tell when facts are really facts — not opinions
An international study finds the vast majority of 15-year-olds can't tell when they're being manipulated.
07 December, 2019
Image source: mooremedia/Shutterstock
- International reading tests administered in 79 countries find most teens to be gullible when consuming information.
- As learning has moved online, absolutely reliable sources have become scarce.
- Most teens can't detect the validity of supposed "facts" from contextual clues.
<p style="text-align: center;">Teen: <em>Dad! This site has those $159 earbuds I want for just $49.99!</em></p><p style="text-align: center;">Parent: <em>That doesn't sound right.</em></p><p style="text-align: center;">Teen: <em>I know! Isn't it a great deal?</em></p><p style="text-align: center;">Parent: <em>I don't see an actual brand name here.</em></p><p style="text-align: center;">Teen: <em>But they're $49.99!! Less than $50!!</em></p><p style="text-align: center;">Parent: <em>And the seller is halfway across the world. Um…</em></p><p style="text-align: center;">Teen: <em>$49.99!!!</em></p><p>The takeaway from this actual conversation is this: The teen hasn't yet learned that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. A <a href="https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2018-resultshtm.htm" target="_blank">study</a> from the <a href="https://www.oecd.org" target="_blank">OECD</a> Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) says this is by no means a rare phenomenon. It finds that just 9 percent of 15-year-olds can actually tell when facts are really facts and not just opinions. </p><p>In our current climate of rampant disinformation and "fake news," the implications are troubling.</p>
About OECD and the PISA survey
<p>OECD stands for "Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development." It's an international organization that's dedicated to the identification and implementation of policies for tackling the world's social, economic, and environmental challenges. Thirty-six countries are members, and the impact of the group's work is felt in more than 100 countries. The OECD collects data and develops reports, including recommendations, for its worldwide audience.</p><p>The Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA, is one such report. Subtitled, "What Students Know and Can Do," it's the product of reading, mathematics, and science tests administered to 15-year-olds in 79 countries. The focus in the 2018 tests was reading. The tests were given on computer screens in recognition that this is where most of today's teens do most of their reading.</p><p>The very best readers — better than in any other country — come from four provinces in China: Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Though these areas are exceptional within the country, China overall still sits at the top of the list of the world's most advanced readers.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjE0NDU4My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMzc0ODU5NX0.OW2EH4L-OrK96wcRTIUM8HpnWWgJA3YE5RxNK6O106w/img.jpg?width=980" id="22f94" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4c80d197734e9d50c2da7e4128e8b4f3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: boreala/Shutterstock/Big Think
Reading is one thing, understanding is another
<p>The world, as the report notes, has changed. Reading used to be about the straightforward extraction and absorption of information from reliable sources. Not so for today's learners, says the report:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>"Today, they will find hundreds of thousands of answers to their questions online, and it is up to them to figure out what is true and what is false, what is right and what is wrong."</em></p><p>Alarmingly, the PISA research finds that less than 1 in 10 of students tested are "able to distinguish between fact and opinion, based on implicit cues pertaining to the content or source of the information."</p><p>Only in six nations did students do better than 1 in 7 at successfully identifying actual facts — China, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Singapore, and the United States.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjE0NDU4Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MzQ0OTE4N30._1XooNgrARWHPePwl9WvV3u0CxVgn1Xg1CvipDiPS38/img.jpg?width=980" id="2e93b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="523051799ba2e56d5a284e22df75037b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: OECD
Proficiencies
<p>The report summarizes reading proficiency by focusing on two of the six-levels in their reading skill assessment scale.</p><p>At Level 2, "students are able to identify the main idea in a text of moderate length, find information based on explicit, though sometimes complex, criteria, and reflect on the purpose and form of texts when explicitly directed to do so." About 77 percent of students on average achieved Level 2 proficiency.</p><p>The best readers, comprising just 8.7 percent of the tested teens, performed at Levels 5 or 6 where "students are able to comprehend lengthy texts, deal with concepts that are abstract or counterintuitive, and establish distinctions between fact and opinion, based on implicit cues pertaining to the content or source of the information."</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjE0NDU4Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NDQ3MTA1Mn0.ysPishsqiBaNEVyhZK9JqpTmTZWzTcyMGM944f_JWOc/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=83%2C103%2C83%2C103&height=700" id="d353e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="eeda97c189d5085dc4bfc3cbd73ecbfe" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: fizkes/Shutterstock
Hope in AI
<p>The authors of the PISA report see promise in the leveraging of A.I. for helping young people develop a stronger sense of context that would allow them to more accurately assess informational sources.</p><p>They suggest "we need to think harder about how to develop first-class humans, and how we can pair the A.I. of computers with the cognitive, social and emotional skills, and values of people." They do note with caution that A.I. itself is ethically neutral while the humans who program it are typically not. This is one of the concerns being studied for the OECD's upcoming Education 2030 project.</p><p>Overall, the PISA findings serve as clear notice that we need to be smarter about teaching. "That is why education in the future is not just about teaching people, but also about helping them develop a reliable compass to navigate an increasingly complex, ambiguous, and volatile world.</p>
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Fact vs. Fiction: How Facts Are Made, and Who Decides What's True
What information can we trust? Truth isn't black and white, so here are three requirements every fact should meet.
04 May, 2017
The chances are good that you've used Wikipedia to define or discover something in the last week, if not 24 hours. It's currently the 5th most-visited website in the world. The English-language Wikipedia averages 800 new articles per day — but 1,000 articles are deleted per day, the site's own statistics page reports. That fluctuation is probably partly the result of mischievous users, but it is also an important demonstration of Wikipedia's quest for knowledge in motion. "As the world's consensus changes about what is reliable, verifiable information, the information for us will change too," says Katherine Maher, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. Maher is careful to delineate between truth and knowledge. Wikipedia isn't a jury for truth, it's a repository for information that must be three things: neutral, verifiable, and determined with consensus. So how do we know what information to trust, in an age that is flooded with access, data, and breaking news? Through explaining how Wikipedia editors work and the painstaking detail and debate that goes into building an article, Maher offers a guide to separating fiction from fact, which can be applied more broadly to help us assess the quality of information in other forums.
Shooting the Messenger: Why the Media Can No Longer Safeguard Democracy
“We love, as a culture, to attack messengers when the message is something that makes us feel uncomfortable,” says journalist Wesley Lowery.
30 November, 2016
It’s no coincidence, says Wesley Lowery, that freedom of the press was one of the first things that the U.S. founders enshrined in the Constitution. It was people of that time’s ability to report on and openly discuss their situation that sparked the revolution. It became clear then that a free press is the ultimate safeguard for democracy.
<p>So what happens when that press is undermined? The 2016 election was unprecedented in its bending of the truth. The emphasis on fact-checking during the debates, the clear Twitter evidence and past-interview quotes that were exhibited but still denied, and the disregard for accountability of past actions came into direct conflict with what is known to be the truth. The media was delegitimized in a very public way – there are big ramifications to that, says Lowery. He fears we are entering a post-truth age, where fact is no longer objective – one where elected officials can point-blank say their bill will do something it definitely won't, or deny something they are on record saying. The media becomes the villain in the wake of this, accused of bias – a big enough distraction for some to let the official shimmy away without repercussion. </p>
<p>Lowery has first-hand experience in the villainizing of the media – he was one of three journalists arrested in 2014 while covering the Ferguson protests. What the Black Lives Matter movement brings to light for him, besides the core message, is that here is a case of the media being held accountable for the actions of others. "We love, as a society, as a culture, to attack messengers when the message is something that makes us feel uncomfortable," says Lowery. "So reporters who reported on things like police shootings and race and justice became the targets because if only you could discredit them, if you could prove they had some vendetta or some bias that they were really just some liberal operative then you didn’t have to engage at all with what they were saying."</p>
<p>When the public stops believing that reported journalism is the truth, learns to cry "bias" as a knee-jerk reaction to bad news, and is jockeyed into a habit of mistrust and 'blaming the messenger' by elected officials, it guillotines journalism as a democratic protector. </p>
<p>Lowery's book is <i><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316312479">"They Can't Kill Us All": Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement</a></i>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316312479"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODQwODkxMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTUzMDEyN30.ttZVmiX6jTsTLyzkEk0sAusrakiiIVZgRXfbN5YhdIY/img.jpg?width=980" id="3644b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d4a1c99d0b3699433fcf74a0b37cb973" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></a></p>
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