a first line of defense

Finland is mobilized against Russian misinformation and sharing a long border and a long face-to-face history with that rogue state has made defense of their democracy of vital importance. In the US we are just learning how Facebook was weaponized in the last election. Finland's schools have become active in countering purposeful misinformation and that sets an example for us, too. https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/europe/finland-fake-news-intl/

In Finland they regard the Kindergarten classroom as their "first line of defense" as children in school begin to learn to discern that which is true from that which is purposefully distorted to gain advantage.

But how can Kindergarten students learn to discern truth from misinformation? It helps when they are doing real things and engaged directly in the real world. Kindergarten woodworking can play a role in that.

When I was at the University of Helsinki for a conference, I wandered off during a boring presentation and discovered the wood shop where Kindergarten teachers were being taught to teach woodworking to their pupils. How wonderful is that? It's nice when kids read at an early age, but without a foundation of experience, reading leaves them vulnerable to malicious manipulation.

One good measure that I'll suggest for our own use of social media. If a post is kind, it has a greater likelihood of truth. Facebook was invented as way of sharing among friends, and even its founders were unprepared for the ugliness that would ensue when malicious forces gained access to their platform. We can watch the angry tweets and political temper tantrums and know something is amiss as evil forces try to manipulate us through the use of anger, resentment, divisiveness and fear. We watched these things play out to our great loss in the last election and will see it again in the next.

Just as we can look to Finland for a better model of public education, we can look there for the means of killing misinformation before it wrecks our democracy.  They are training their populace to discern truth from malicious misinformation. Latvia is another nation threatened by renewed Russian hegemony. They have a prime-time Sunday night television program, "The lies the Russians told this week." And in Estonia they have an army of volunteer online protectors to counter Russian influence and fake news. It's important to them because they know what it means to live under the thumb of the Russian state. It is important to us, too. We just didn't know it quite so well yet.

Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Stateline Woodturners held at ESSA and watched as our ESSA director learned to turn wood on the lathe for the first time. I also tested my gun drill that's used for drilling long holes accurately through cylinders of wood. It is hooked up to a compressor that forces air through the tip, keeping it cool and expelling wood chips before they build up in the hole. It drills perfectly straight.

Make, fix, create, and assist others in learning likewise.