Children in Sweden will soon be learning how to spot and identify fake news in the internet. Besides, programming and coding will be added to the new curriculum as well. To protect our children from fake news, we need to help them make up their own mind.
Swedish kids to be educated properly
Daniel Ek is the most influential person in the music industry, the CEO of Spotify, and happens to be swedish, as well. This is how Swedes likes to advertise themselves: as a innovative and technology-driven economy.
Now they strive to educate their youngest children with the newest technology. Minister of education Gustav Fridolin wants Swedish kids to be well prepared for their future carreer.
“This means Sweden is taking the kind of approach we should have. Sweden should be a country where every kid in school is prepared for working life, and knowledge of programming needs to start early,” quoted by The Local.
A renewed curriculum shall be implemented in schools by 2018. But Fridolin wants to clarify here. Programming and Coding will not only be important in a niche industry, almost all jobs will require a certain skill set in the computer language.
Companies all around the world are looking desperately for good programmers, in Sweden the demand is very high, too. And because developing those skills is so important for the future careers of our children, so the minister, we should be developing them from early on.
Spotting fake news in school
Next to computer skills, Swedish kids will learn how to identify and distinguish between fake news and trustworthy news outlets. In the last months this topic earned a lot of media attention. Even king Carl XVI. Gustaf urged everyone to be aware of this current issue.
“There has been some naivety when it comes to the information society. An idea that all knowledge is just a short click away and we don’t need to know as much as we needed to before,” Fridolin explained.
The goal from Fridolin is to update the Swedish education system based on the most important things. We need to learn how to read, write and calculate, yes. But we also should be educated in a critical evaluation of what we see on the internet. To protect our children from fake news, so Fridolin, we need to help them make up their own mind.
