We walked through the claims and I explained why those arguments failed. He listened with interest. I was glad he'd come to me. He hadn't made up his mind yet; he was just curious. But this made me wonder if teaching the course content I was teaching was enough.
To be clear: I do think teaching facts is important. For example, when students learn about gravity, physics, and space, they're better prepared to see why flat earth arguments are wrong. The problem is we can't teach facts fast enough to combat the wide variety of misinformation and manipulation kids face on the internet every day.
This is what got me thinking that kids need to learn how to evaluate claims and information across a wide range of topics. While we can't prepare them for every false or misleading claim they might encounter, we can give them tools to assess them.
That eventually led my husband and I to build Critikid, a site for teaching kids and teens. We've been working on it for 3 years now! He does the technical work (design and coding) and I do the educational content creation.
By now, there are 5 interactive courses for ages 5-18 on logical fallacies, media literacy, emotional intelligence, statistical reasoning, and formal logic. There are also worksheets and lesson plans.
I often teach through stories, as stories make abstract critical thinking concepts concrete (and they're fun!)
If you'd like to try it, all of the courses have a free first lesson.
Are there any other topics that you think should be included in kids' critical thinking education that I've missed?