Students ask questions during a social studies class on American politics. AP Photo/John MinchilloLightning Jay, Binghamton University, State University of New York Can you tell fact from fiction online? In a digital world, few questions are more important or more challenging. For years, some commentators have called for K-12 teachers to take on fake news, media literacy, or online misinformation by doubling downon critical thinking. This push for schools to do a better job preparing young people to differentiate between low- and high-quality information often focuses on social studies classes. As an education researcher and former high school history teacher, I know that there’s both good and bad news about combating misinformation in the classroom. History class can cultivate critical thinking – but only if teachers and schools understand what critical thinking really means.
Not just a ‘skill’
First, the bad news. When people demand that schools teach critical thinking, it’s not always clear what they mean. Some might consider critical thinking a trait or capacity that teachers can encourage, like creativity or grit. They could believe that critical thinking is a mindset: a habit of being curious, skeptical and reflective. Or they might be referring to specific skills – for instance, that students should learn a set of steps to take to assess information online. Unfortunately, cognitive science research has shown that critical thinking is not an abstract quality or practice that can be developed on its own. Cognitive scientists see critical thinking as a specific kind of reasoning that involves problem-solving and making sound judgments. It can be learned, but it relies on specific content knowledge and does not necessarily transfer between fields. Early studies on chess playersand physicists in the 1970s and ’80s helped show how the kind of flexible and reflective cognition often called critical thinking is really a product of expertise. Chess masters, for instance, do not start out with innate talent. In most cases, they gain expertise by hours of thoughtfully playing the game. This deliberate practice helps them recognize patterns and think in novel ways about chess. Chess masters’ critical thinking is a product of learning, not a precursor.Nurman Alua of Kazakhstan, left, and Lee Alice of the U.S. during the 45th Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary, on Sept. 22, 2024.AP Photo/Denes Erdos Because critical thinking develops in specific contexts, it does not necessarily transfer to other types of problem-solving. For example, chess advocates might hope the game improves players’ intelligence, and studies do suggest learning chess may help elementary students with the kind of pattern recognition they need for early math lessons. However, research has found that being a great chess player does not make people better at other kinds of complex critical thinking.
Historical thinking
Since context is key to critical thinking, learning to analyze information about current events likely requires knowledge about politics and history, as well as practice at scrutinizing sources. Fortunately, that is what social studies classes are for. Social studies researchers often describe this kind of critical thinking as “historical thinking”: a way to evaluate evidence about the past and assess its reliability. My own research has shown that high school students can make relatively quick progress on some of the surface features of historical thinking, such as learning to check a text’s date and author. But the deep questioning involved in true historical thinking is much harder to learn. Social studies classrooms can also build what researchers call “civic online reasoning.” Fact-checking is complex work. It is not enough to tell young people that they should be wary online, or to trust sites that end in “.org” instead of “.com.” Rather than learning general principles about online media, civic online reasoning teaches students specific skills for evaluating information about politics and social issues. Still, learning to think like a historian does not necessarily prepare someone to be a skeptical news consumer. Indeed, a recent study found that professional historians performed worse than professional fact-checkers at identifying online misinformation. The misinformation tasks the historians struggled with focused on issues such as bullying or the minimum wage – areas where they possessed little expertise.
Powerful knowledge
That’s where background knowledge comes in – and the good news is that social studies can build it. All literacy relies on what readers already know. For people wading through political information and news, knowledge about history and civics is like a key in the ignition for their analytical skills. Readers without much historical knowledge may miss clues that something isn’t right – signs that they need to scrutinize the source more closely. Political misinformation often weaponizes historical falsehoods, such as the debunked and recalled Christian nationalist book claiming that Thomas Jefferson did not believe in a separation of church and state, or claims that the nadir of African American life came during Reconstruction, not slavery. Those claims are extreme, but politicians and policymakers repeat them. For someone who knows basic facts about American history, those claims won’t sit right. Background knowledge will trigger their skepticism and kick critical thinking into gear.A teacher in North Carolina conducts a lesson about the D-Day invasion of Normandy in an Advanced Placement class.AP Photo/Gerry Broome
Past, present, future
For this reason, the best approach to media literacy will come through teaching that fosters concrete skills alongside historical knowledge. In short, the new knowledge crisis points to the importance of the traditional social studies classroom. But it’s a tenuous moment for history education. The Bush- and Obama-era emphasis on math and English testing resulted in decreased instructional time in history classes, particularly in elementary and middle schools. In one 2005 study, 27% of schools reported reducing social studies time in favor of subjects on state exams. Now, history teachers are feeling heat from politically motivated culture wars over education that target teaching about racism and LGBTQ+ issues and that ban books from libraries and classrooms. Two-thirds of instructors say that they’ve limited classroom discussions about social and political topics. Attempts to limit students’ knowledge about the past imperil their chances of being able to think critically about new information. These attacks are not just assaults on the history of the country; they are attempts to control its future. Lightning Jay, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership, Binghamton University, State University of New York This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Preparing Students: Automation, AI and societal economic changes are affecting the workforce and making a significant impact on the employment prospects of future generations. Consider this guidance to put students on the path toward greater earning potential and economic mobility in a rapidly changing economy.
(Family Features) Automation, AI and societal economic changes are affecting the workforce and making a significant impact on the employment prospects of future generations. More than one-third of today’s college graduates are “underemployed,” meaning they work jobs that don’t require a college degree and may pay less than a living wage, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. At the same time, a World Economic Forum report explored how advances in AI are threatening to negatively impact access to entry-level and even mid-level jobs for millions of Americans. Looking ahead, research by Georgetown University indicates that by 2031, 70% of jobs will require education or training beyond high school. However, data from the National Center for Education Statistics indicate only one-third of high school graduates go on to complete a college degree with many of those being in fields that are not in high-earning, high-growth professions. These challenges are not lost on today’s students. In a survey by Junior Achievement and Citizens, 57% of teens reported AI has negatively impacted their career outlook, raising concerns about job replacement and the need for new skills. What’s more, a strong majority (87%) expect to earn extra income through side hustles, gig work or social media content creation. “To put students on the path toward greater earning potential and economic mobility in a rapidly changing economy, students need proactive education and exposure to transferable skills and competencies, such as creative and critical thinking, financial literacy, problem-solving, collaboration and career planning,” said Jack Harris, CEO, Junior Achievement. This assertion is consistent with findings from the Camber Collective. This social impact consulting group identified four key life experiences students can consider and explore that positively affect lifetime earnings, including:
Completing secondary education
Graduating with a degree in a high-paying field of study
Receiving mentorship during adolescence
Obtaining a first full-time job with opportunity for advancement
Students aiming to equip themselves with the skills and experience necessary for the future workforce can seek:
Learning opportunities that are designed with the future in mind. For example, learning experiences offered through Junior Achievement reflect the skills and competencies needed to promote economic mobility.
Internships or apprenticeships that provide hands-on experience and exposure to a career field that can’t be found in a textbook.
Volunteer or extracurricular roles that develop communication and leadership skills. Virtually every career field requires these soft skills for growth and greater earning potential.
Relationships that provide insight and connection. Networking with individuals who are already excelling in a chosen field, as well as peers who share similar aspirations, offers perspective from those who are where you wish to be and potentially opens future doors for employment.
Courses that offer introductory insight into a chosen career path. Local trade or technical schools and other training organizations may even offer certifications that align with a student’s area of interest.
To learn more about how students can pursue education for what’s next, visit JA.org. SOURCE:
Children can be systematic problem-solvers at younger ages than psychologists had thought – new research
Child psychologists: Celeste Kidd’s research challenges long-standing ideas from Jean Piaget about children’s problem-solving abilities. Her findings show that children as young as four can independently utilize algorithmic strategies to solve complex tasks, contradicting the belief that systematic logical thinking develops only after age seven. This insight highlights the importance of nurturing algorithmic thinking in early education.
I’m in a coffee shop when a young child dumps out his mother’s bag in search of fruit snacks. The contents spill onto the table, bench and floor. It’s a chaotic – but functional – solution to the problem.
Children have a penchant for unconventional thinking that, at first glance, can look disordered. This kind of apparently chaotic behavior served as the inspiration for developmental psychologist Jean Piaget’s best-known theory: that children construct their knowledge through experience and must pass through four sequential stages, the first two of which lack the ability to use structured logic.
Piaget remains the GOAT of developmental psychology. He fundamentally and forever changed the world’s view of children by showing that kids do not enter the world with the same conceptual building blocks as adults, but must construct them through experience. No one before or since has amassed such a catalog of quirky child behaviors that researchers even today can replicate within individual children.
While Piaget was certainly correct in observing that children engage in a host of unusual behaviors, mylab recently uncovered evidence that upends some long-standing assumptions about the limits of children’s logical capabilities that originated with his work. Our new paper in the journal Nature Human Behaviour describes how young children are capable of finding systematic solutions to complex problems without any instruction. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qb4TPj1pxzQ?wmode=transparent&start=0 Jean Piaget describes how children of different ages tackle a sorting task, with varying success.
Putting things in order
Throughout the 1960s, Piaget observed that young children rely on clunky trial-and-error methods rather than systematic strategies when attempting to order objects according to some continuous quantitative dimension, like length. For instance, a 4-year-old child asked to organize sticks from shortest to longest will move them around randomly and usually not achieve the desired final order.
Psychologists have interpreted young children’s inefficient behavior in this kind of ordering task – what we call a seriation task – as an indicator that kids can’t use systematic strategies in problem-solving until at least age 7.
Somewhat counterintuitively, my colleagues and I found that increasing the difficulty and cognitive demands of the seriation task actually prompted young children to discover and use algorithmic solutions to solve it.
Piaget’s classic study asked children to put some visible items like wooden sticks in order by height. Huiwen Alex Yang, a psychology Ph.D. candidate who works on computational models of learning in my lab, cranked up the difficulty for our version of the task. With advice from our collaborator Bill Thompson, Yang designed a computer game that required children to use feedback clues to infer the height order of items hidden behind a wall, .
The game asked children to order bunnylike creatures from shortest to tallest by clicking on their sneakers to swap their places. The creatures only changed places if they were in the wrong order; otherwise they stayed put. Because they could only see the bunnies’ shoes and not their heights, children had to rely on logical inference rather than direct observation to solve the task. Yang tested 123 children between the ages of 4 and 10. https://www.youtube.com/embed/GlsbcE6nOxk?wmode=transparent&start=0 Researcher Huiwen Alex Yang tests 8-year-old Miro on the bunny sorting task. The bunnies are hidden behind a wall with only their sneakers visible. Miro’s selections exemplify use of selection sort, a classic efficient sorting algorithm from computer science. Kidd Lab at UC Berkeley.
More than half the children we tested demonstrated evidence of structured algorithmic thinking, and at ages as young as 4 years old. While older kids were more likely to use algorithmic strategies, our finding contrasts with Piaget’s belief that children were incapable of this kind of systematic strategizing before 7 years of age. He thought kids needed to reach what he called the concrete operational stage of development first.
Our results suggest that children are actually capable of spontaneous logical strategy discovery much earlier when circumstances require it. In our task, a trial-and-error strategy could not work because the objects to be ordered were not directly observable; children could not rely on perceptual feedback.
Explaining our results requires a more nuanced interpretation of Piaget’s original data. While children may still favor apparently less logical solutions to problems during the first two Piagetian stages, it’s not because they are incapable of doing otherwise if the situation requires it.
A systematic approach to life
Algorithmic thinking is crucial not only in high-level math classes, but also in everyday life. Imagine that you need to bake two dozen cookies, but your go-to recipe yields only one. You could go through all the steps of making the recipe twice, washing the bowl in between, but you’d never do that because you know that would be inefficient. Instead, you’d double the ingredients and perform each step only once. Algorithmic thinking allows you to identify a systematic way of approaching the need for twice as many cookies that improves the efficiency of your baking.
Algorithmic thinking is an important capacity that’s useful to children as they learn to move and operate in the world – and we now know they have access to these abilities far earlier than psychologists had believed.
That children can engage with algorithmic thinking before formal instruction has important implications for STEM – science, technology, engineering and math –education. Caregivers and educators now need to reconsider when and how they give children the opportunity to tackle more abstract problems and concepts. Knowing that children’s minds are ready for structured problems as early as preschool means we can nurture these abilities earlier in support of stronger math and computational skills.
And have some patience next time you encounter children interacting with the world in ways that are perhaps not super convenient. As you pick up your belongings from a café floor, remember that it’s all part of how children construct their knowledge. Those seemingly chaotic kids are on their way to more obviously logical behavior soon.
Dive into “The Knowledge,” where curiosity meets clarity. This playlist, in collaboration with STMDailyNews.com, is designed for viewers who value historical accuracy and insightful learning. Our short videos, ranging from 30 seconds to a minute and a half, make complex subjects easy to grasp in no time. Covering everything from historical events to contemporary processes and entertainment, “The Knowledge” bridges the past with the present. In a world where information is abundant yet often misused, our series aims to guide you through the noise, preserving vital knowledge and truths that shape our lives today. Perfect for curious minds eager to discover the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of everything around us. Subscribe and join in as we explore the facts that matter. https://stmdailynews.com/the-knowledge/
Discord is launching teen-by-default settings globally in early March, adding privacy-forward age assurance, tighter access to age-gated spaces, and new default messaging and content filters.
Discord is rolling out a major shift in how its platform handles teen safety: teen-appropriate settings will become the default experience for all new and existing users worldwide, with age verification required to unlock certain settings and access sensitive or age-gated spaces.
The update is set to begin as a phased global rollout in early March, and Discord says the goal is to strengthen age-appropriate protections while still preserving the privacy, community, and meaningful connection that have made the platform a go-to for gaming and interest-based groups.
Teen-by-default, globally (starting in March)
Discord says the new defaults will apply to all users, not just new signups. In practice, that means accounts will start with a more protective baseline, and verified adults will have more flexibility to adjust settings or access age-restricted content.
Discord is also introducing an age-verification (age assurance) step that may be required to:
Change certain communication settings
Access sensitive content
Enter age-restricted channels, servers, or commands
Use select message request features
“Nowhere is our safety work more important than when it comes to teen users,” said Savannah Badalich, Head of Product Policy at Discord, adding that the company is building on its existing safety architecture with teen safety principles at the core.
Privacy-forward age assurance: how Discord says it will work
A big part of the announcement is Discord’s attempt to thread the needle between safety and privacy.
Users will be able to choose from multiple methods, including:
Facial age estimation (video selfie)
Submitting identification to vendor partners
Discord also says it will implement its age inference model, a background system designed to help determine whether an account belongs to an adult without always requiring users to verify their age. Some users may be asked to use multiple methods if more information is needed to assign an age group.
Discord highlighted several privacy protections in its approach:
On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device.
Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to vendor partners are deleted quickly (in most cases, immediately after age confirmation).
Straightforward verification: In most cases, users complete the process once and their Discord experience adapts to their verified age group.
Private status: A user’s age verification status cannot be seen by other users.
After completing a chosen method, Discord says users will receive confirmation via a direct message from Discord’s official account. A user’s assigned age group can also be viewed in My Account settings, and users can appeal by retrying the process.
Discord also notes it prompts users to age-assure only within Discord and currently does not send emails or text messages about its age assurance process or results.
What’s changing in the default safety settings
Starting in early March, Discord says it will assign new default settings designed to support age-appropriate experiences while keeping privacy front and center. Highlights include:
Content filters: Users must be age-assured as adults to unblur sensitive content or turn the setting off.
Age-gated spaces: Only age-assured adults can access age-restricted channels, servers, and app commands.
Message Request Inbox: DMs from people a user may not know are routed to a separate inbox by default; only age-assured adults can modify this setting.
Friend request alerts: People will receive warning prompts for friend requests from users they may not know.
Stage restrictions: Only age-assured adults may speak on stage in servers.
Discord notes it previously launched a teen-by-default experience in the UK and Australia last year, and says this global rollout builds on that approach to deliver consistent protections worldwide.
Giving teens a seat at the table: Discord Teen Council
Along with the safety updates, Discord also announced recruitment for its inaugural Discord Teen Council, a teen advisory body intended to bring authentic teen perspectives into how Discord shapes their experience.
Discord says the Teen Council will consist of 10–12 teens and will help inform future product features, policies, and educational resources.
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Who can apply: Teens ages 13–17
Apply by: May 1, 2026
The bigger picture
Discord says these updates build on its broader safety ecosystem, including tools and resources such as Family Center, Teen Safety Assist, a Warning System, and more.
Whether you’re a parent, a teen user, or an adult who uses Discord for gaming communities and group chats, the headline is simple: the default experience is becoming more restrictive, and adult access will increasingly depend on age assurance.
Dive into “The Knowledge,” where curiosity meets clarity. This playlist, in collaboration with STMDailyNews.com, is designed for viewers who value historical accuracy and insightful learning. Our short videos, ranging from 30 seconds to a minute and a half, make complex subjects easy to grasp in no time. Covering everything from historical events to contemporary processes and entertainment, “The Knowledge” bridges the past with the present. In a world where information is abundant yet often misused, our series aims to guide you through the noise, preserving vital knowledge and truths that shape our lives today. Perfect for curious minds eager to discover the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of everything around us. Subscribe and join in as we explore the facts that matter. https://stmdailynews.com/the-knowledge/
