Education strategies are needed to survive in a volatile, post-truth world
In his book, Educating for the 21st Century: Seven Global Challenges, Conrad Hughes offers ways to overcome major problems facing humanity
This is an exciting, chaotic, fast-moving era with more information circulating than ever before, but how do people discern facts from confirmation bias? There are all kinds of information that can be confirmed on Google — from pyramids on Mars to American presidents who were members of the Illuminati. These are some of the challenges that occupy Dr Conrad Hughes, director of La Grande Boissière: the International School of Geneva in Switzerland, the world’s first international school, established in 1924. He is a South African Wits University PhD graduate living in Geneva since 2005. “People worldwide are creating their own truths, and information is being used to wield power more effectively and manipulatively than ever before. Anything US President Donald Trump doesn’t like, he condemns as fake news,” he says. “This is dangerous as it opens the door to conspiracy theories, which makes it difficult for educators who need to instil the notion that, while there is certainly a vast, ...
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