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Finland introduces critical thinking classes to schoolchildren from kindergarten.

By on November 22, 2022

According to Jiji Press, Russia’s information warfare is creating social division and confusion in Europe and the United States, that is also giving rise to anti-immigrant sentiments.

In Italy, an extreme right-wing party that seized power advocated exclusionary policies caused by false information spreading rapidly through Social Networking platforms in Sweden, France, and Denmark.

Finland which leads the pack in Europe in terms of media literacy, is fighting disinformation on a national level by introducing critical thinking in schools from kindergarten.

Third-year junior high school students take a “fact-checking” class at a Finnish public school in Helsinki.

“This is false information,” announced a third-year junior high school student in class reacting to a tweet that a colleague who had been vaccinated with the new coronavirus died.  At a public junior high school in Helsinki, he analyzes various articles, blogs, and tweets in a “fact-checking” class where school children scrutinize the credibility of an information from the source and objective of the content, etc.

Teacher Valentina Witt points out, “In Social Networking platforms, there is no filter between the source and receiver of information, and only the receiver can judge the truth.”

“Parents and teachers can’t keep up with the new media emerging one after another. Children who use them need to acquire information analytical skills,” she emphasizes.

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In Finland, critical thinking is being taught not only in fact-checking classes, but also in all subjects, including mathematics and art.  “Education to analyze information from multiple perspectives starts from the age of 2 or 3 when they learn words, or when they interact with teachers in early childhood education,” said Mina Hermanen, Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Education.

On November 14, a Tweet claiming the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine was returned in kind to the U.S. Democratic Party of the United States via a crypto asset exchange company. In the next 24 hours, the post was retweeted more than 20,000 times and received about 100,000 likes.

According to a research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,  false information via Twitter posts spreads six times faster than the correct information. “Disinformation is eccentric, novel, and tickles people’s desire to quickly convey information that no one knows.”

Russia and China deploy information warfare to exploit such psychology, destabilizing Western countries and manipulating public opinion. Finland, too, has been exposed to a wave of disinformation around the time of Russia’s unilateral “annexation” of Crimea in 2014.

In 2017, the European Union (EU), reacting to the disinformation crisis, established the European Hybrid Threat Countermeasures Center in Helsinki. The Finnish government has put in place a pilot disinformation monitoring team this month ahead of its general elections next spring.

“At the onset of the pandemic, consumers reacting to rumors that toilet paper would run out, flocked to stores,” says Antti Silampa, the monitoring team leader.  “Disinformation can easily wreak havoc in society,” he says.

It goes without saying that adults too need media literacy.  “It is important for the government, private companies/organizations, and citizens to cooperate and raise awareness that each and every one of us is responsible for national security,” said Silampa.

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