Media literacy and critical thinking: a french report

In case you have not seen this or don't speak French, yesterday was released the final report of the "Etats généraux de l'information" in France.

This project, launched on 3 October 2023 is led by an independent steering committee, with the aim to propose a concrete action plan for the world of information in France, based on contributions from professionals, citizens and researchers. And this is it, here comes the report. This is important considering the current situation with the information industry, the raise of fake news, the role of social networks, AI coming, etc., you name it.

The report lists 15 main proposals. I leave you read them but want to highlight ONE in particular which is about EDUCATION. This is the first proposal, and this is probably not by chance.

It reads like this:

"1. Making critical thinking and media education a priority in schools

Everyone forms an opinion on the basis of the information to which they have access, but no-one is immune to being exposed to disinformation or misinformation, especially in a media environment.
As a result, we are proposing to increase the proportion of critical thinking and factual education in the school curricula currently being overhauled. 
We also propose that media and information education should be made more widespread as part of the time allocated to moral and civic education, on the basis of the compulsory projects planned from 5th to 3rd year (secondary school). 
A unit to steer this teaching, with the necessary resources, must be set up within the Directorate General for School Education and an evaluation of the results of this reform carried by 2027 at the latest. We want to give all future citizens access to a varied range of quality professional news media on their personal workspace (ENT). This would include political and general information publications and the youth information press."

Critical thinking.... Aren't all educators likely to fully agree with this but also answer that they are doing this already, thank you for the tip? Or at least trying? So why is this blocked?

Is it not also about allowing the right resources to learn and teach a different way? When learners are actors and concretely learning by doing, and when teachers have the right competences to teach a different way, but also have time to do so and implement a project-based learning and to work as a team? Enhancing this way the competences (Knowledge, but also skills and behaviours) of their students ?

Note that this way of doing things can easily apply to other topics, such as sustainable education. In fact, we are always talking about topics, issues, subjects, but we should first and foremost focus on pedagogy. 

And often, the same pedagogical recipes can be applied to different subjects.

What do you think?

You can access the full report here.