| I'm from Canada and we were taught something similar as early as grade school. But that was back in the 1990s and I'm not sure if it's currently part of the curriculum or if this was taught across the country as education curriculum is mostly a provincial responsibility. It was explained to us in simple terms that everyone's experience with the world is unique. As such, there is no such thing as unbiased sources and we should always consume news critically. They were simpler times. The most political it got was when my teacher brought in the 3 main newspapers in our area and candidly shared with the class how they were stereotyped in their political editorial leanings. For Americans, think of it like sharing this statement: "Fox News leans toward Republican policies. The New York Times leans toward Democrat policies. USA Today is somewhere in between." There wasn't any discussion of whether these newspapers were accurate or inaccurate. Fact checks weren't rattled off to us about each source. Rather, the teacher kindly explained to us that it was impossible to be unbiased and we did exercises to critically interpret news sources and see how the same topic might be covered by multiple sources. I'm going on a bit of an aside for the historical context in which I had these lessons for the next two paragraphs, so feel free to skip to the final paragraph. In some ways while they were simpler times informationally, Canada was going through wilder times politically back then. There's an argument to be made that Canada as a country was more divided in the early 1990s than the US is today. Québec separation was a very real possibility during this time and actively being sought within our political system. This wasn't just the online pissing contests that some Americans have talking about California or Texas separating from the union. Separatist parties were elected both at Québec's provincial level and as the official opposition party in Canada [EDIT: for Americans unfamiliar with this concept, our Prime Minister and the ruling party had to spend the majority of their daily routine responding to attacks from separatists in the House of Commons and every day the news would have this front-and-centre]. For those too young to remember, the political turmoil culminated in a referendum in the province of Québec -- 50.58% to stay in Canada and 49.42% to become an independent country. The Canadian military had to strategically fly its CF-18s out of their Québec base to American ones in case the referendum passed lest they fall into a foreign nation's hands. Our Prime Minister was busy actively seeking the support of President Bill Clinton and shoring up our gold supplies while the would-be leader of an independent Québec had an official visit to France complete with red carpet and television crews to discuss what their relationship would be once Québec separated. What's my point? I suppose just to give Americans who still believe in the core concept of the country, a bit of hope. As divided as things are today, they can quickly change. Furthermore, I believe that it is possible to teach these things so they have real merit and aren't just tools of the current political ruling party even in uncertain and highly divided times. |