VIDEO: How French schoolchildren are learning to spot fake news

Fake news and disinformation is a rampant global phenomenon in the age of the internet. France is fighting back by teaching schoolchildren how to spot it.

Published: 6 April 2022 10:32 CEST

Children in France are taught how to spot fake news online. (Photo by Miguel SCHINCARIOL / AFP)

France is no stranger to fake news and even has a word for it – infox (although the English term ‘fake news’ is very widely used, doubtless to the fury of the Academie française).

This was particularly evident during the Covid-19 pandemic where conspiracy theories were rife.

In a bid to push back against disinformation, the French government funds media education courses to help schoolchildren learn how to spot disinformation.

The children learn how to cross reference articles and videos that they see online and check where the information is coming from.

During the sessions, middle school pupils are asked to assess the credibility of a dozen articles and explain their reasoning.

Last year some four million children took part in these courses.

“They [children] read emotional and sensational things all the time and they share it to have the biggest numbers of likes and clicks,” said Alexandrine Lopez-Follin, a teacher in Seine-Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris. “They become recipients and senders of fake news without realising it.”

She said that children are “very receptive” to the courses.

“We see that when they come out, they understand the mechanism [of fake news operators] and they say to themselves ‘I’ve fallen for it once, I won’t fall for it again.'”

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France has in recent weeks been shaken by a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particularly the fatal beating earlier this month of Shemseddine, 15, outside Paris.

The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party has accused Attal of not doing enough on security as the anti-immigration party soars ahead of the government coalition in polls for the June 9th election.

Speaking in Viry-Chatillon, the town where Shemseddine was killed, Attal condemned the “addiction of some of our adolescents to violence”, calling for “a real surge of authority… to curb violence”.

“There are twice as many adolescents involved in assault cases, four times more in drug trafficking, and seven times more in armed robberies than in the general population,” he said.

Measures will include expanding compulsory school attendance to all the days of the week from 8am to 6pm for children of collège age (11 to 15).

“In the day the place to be is at school, to work and to learn,” said Attal, who was also marking 100 days in office since being appointed in January by President Emmanuel Macron to turn round the government’s fortunes.

Parents needed to take more responsibility, said Attal, warning that particularly disruptive children would have sanctions marked on their final grades.

OPINION: No, France is not suffering an unprecedented wave of violence

Promoting an old-fashioned back-to-basics approach to school authority, he said “You break something – you repair it. You make a mess – you clear it up. And if you disobey – we teach you respect.”

Attal also floated the possibility of children in exceptional cases being denied the right to special treatment on account of their minority in legal cases.

Thus 16-year-olds could be forced to immediately appear in court after violations “like adults”, he said. In France, the age of majority is 18, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Macron and Attal face an uphill struggle to reverse the tide ahead of the European elections. Current polls point to the risk of a major debacle that would overshadow the rest of the president’s second mandate up to 2027.

A poll this week by Ifop-Fiducial showed the RN on 32.5 percent with the government coalition way behind on 18 percent.