Giving Compass' Take:

• Benjamin Barbour shares four strategies that educators can implement to help students become open to various perspectives and critical of the world around them. 

• How will these strategies help students detect fake news? 

• Read more about how to prevent kids from reading fake news. 

People now immerse themselves in information that reinforces existing viewpoints or entrenches them in an increasingly narrow field of knowledge. The internet allows us to shield ourselves from dissenting or contrary opinions, and we have the ability to read or watch only media that align with our vision of the world.

So how can educators help students be more open to embracing new ideas? I have four strategies for doing this.

  1. Make the stakes known: Embracing a plurality of ideas, seeking out differing news, and grappling with opinions that seem in opposition to our own are key ingredients of a robust participatory democracy.
  2. Make your classroom an intellectual safe space:  Students want a place where they feel safe saying anything. Educators can foster such an environment, allowing for polite discussion of all ideas, even those that some find disagreeable.
  3. Teach students about filter bubbles: Search engines and social media evaluate users’ interests and trap them in feedback loops, presenting them with links that are similar to ones they’ve clicked on in the past.  Help students identify a few “opposition” websites and ask that they visit them periodically.
  4. Encourage skepticism: Teaching students ways of detecting bias in print and electronic media will take on even greater significance in the future, as will preparing young people for a world in which popular web pages hide or parse information.

Read the full article about helping students keep an open mind by Benjamin Barbour at SmartBrief