Good morning. How are you ? I hope you’re well.
I also hope that you are not suffering at home from this wave of hoaxes and disinformation that was unleashed after DANA. It’s not new, but the floods, deaths, uncertainty and everything that happened around the Valencia disaster have triggered fake news, half-truths, influencers and the communicators (they are not journalists) who try to be the protagonists of attempts to establish “alternative facts”, as a Trump adviser put it at the time. Basically, anything that serves to contaminate public debate.
These hoaxes are very popular with teenagers, who are inclined, for various reasons, to give a lot of credibility to whoever they are. A teacher wrote a few days ago: “This has been my worst week since I started teaching. I had to explain many times that you cannot attack a politician, that thanks to taxes they have free education (even books), that illegal immigrants are not paid, that a ship with antennas Moroccans was not the creator of DANA. “.
And, perhaps this is the case for you, fathers and mothers are wondering what they can do. They don’t quite understand how their children (yes, it’s more masculine) got there and they don’t know how to get them out or, better yet, help them get out of it themselves. It’s a complicated situation: adolescents form their identity, they tend to reject parental figures in a certain way and it is easy for them to live in small bubbles (friend networks) which feed off each other. .
But things can be done, those who know tell us. We spoke with several experts, from psychologists to trainers to teachers, and they gave us a series of tips so that those of you who are interested can work at home with your children. I leave you with some ideas (I can tell you that this requires a certain commitment on your part, it is not a question of giving homework to the child):
- It’s never too early to start. If you have a small child, a solution may be to accompany them in Internet searches when they have to do work and to see with them the results that the search engine returns, locate advertisements, etc.
- Take an interest in their networks. Maybe it’s not your thing, they don’t tell you anything and you don’t understand them, but you have to make the effort. See who they follow, find out who they are. You can even recommend following other profiles of people you trust.
- Ask them questions. But questions remain open, like “How do you think such a thing can be fixed?” » That they must think and argue.
- Do not openly confront each other. If you tell him “that’s a lie,” it will be easy to get exactly the opposite effect from what you were looking for. It may be more productive to say something like “what is the source?” Do you think this influencer knows DANA?
There are more strategies. If you are interested in the topic, I recommend clicking on the link and reading the article. Everything is well explained and argued by the experts themselves.
This week we talked about…
- “Remember how you felt when they told you you could study.” Anna and Mar (pictured) were excellent students, but their personal circumstances meant they had very few opportunities to attend university. Until a group of people cross their path who are basically going to pay for their education just because. The Dádoris Foundation is made up of 25 citizens who, grateful because life is going well for them, want to give this opportunity to those who were going to miss it. They ask nothing in return, only that, if the future smiles on them, they return the gesture. It’s a worthy initiative that can change the lives of people like Anna or Mar, but at the same time it makes you think about what’s happening to a system that doesn’t guarantee that anyone who wants to go to college can do so.
- Spain is full of private universities. The fact that there are people who, like Anna or Mar, cannot study for economic reasons is particularly distressing in a country that does nothing other than open private universities. In a short time, we will have more than just the public. What does this mean? Equality of opportunity disappears. We spoke with Juanlu Sánchez about the effects of this private emergence in this Monday’s podcast.
- Cantabria removes its list of historical figures without women for selectivity. A little story of those we like to introduce. You will remember that last week I told you that the University of Cantabria had included only one woman among the list of historical figures who they enter in Ébau. Well, I called the university, asked for it and posted it and within a few hours I was told that this list was being removed.
- A school will have to pay 40,000 euros to a family to reduce a case of harassment. This is the Hijas de la Caridad Nuestra Señora de Begoña school, a concerted religious school in Santutxu (Bilbao). The school told parents that “physical assaults – pushing, hair pulling, kicking – harassment – touching intimate areas, breaking into toilets – and bullying behavior – breaking objects, coercive behaviors to prevent eating” occur because punishment has been proven. , it was a problem of “coexistence”.
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- Valencia, an opportunity to rethink schools. Obviously, we would all have preferred that this not happen, but, even if it is for the wrong reason, the destruction of schools by DANA offers the opportunity to rethink and improve them, following the idea that learning environment influences the educational process. .
- Schools will learn how to act in the face of natural phenomena. It was announced by the Ministry of Education for all students, from preschool to secondary school. Training will be carried out focusing on the specific risks of each region. The most surprising: you will be required to have successfully completed this training to obtain your driving license.
- The rector of Salamanca, against “Nature”. The president, embroiled in a serious marketing reputation problem with quotes and articles, criticized the magazine for removing some of his articles and threatened to sue “anyone who wants something” and maybe also “anyone who doesn’t want it.” . The cloister went to see it, but they couldn’t do it because it now turns out that it is illegal to broadcast them (before the controversy, no one had thought of this, it seems).
- Moreover, more than a thousand professors from 53 universities signed a manifesto asking the minister to investigate cases of professional misconduct on campuses.
With that I say goodbye, I’m sorry if this newsletter was a little long, we had a lot to say today.
Thanks for being there.
See you next week!
