Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to our lesson today, my name is Mr. Miskell, and I'll be your citizenship teacher for today's lesson.

Now, before we do start our lesson today, what I'd like you to do is make sure that you have got a pen, make sure that you've got a sheet of paper by your side, and that you're in a quiet space so that you can take part in our lesson today.

Now, if you don't have any of those three things ready, then it's a good idea to pause our lesson and restart it when you've got everything sorted today.

So let's get started with our lesson, now today's lesson is part of a series of lessons, and the overarching question that we're trying to consider in the series of lessons is how has COVID-19 as a global pandemic impacted our human minds? And we're specifically looking at children's rights, when we talk about that.

Now today's lesson is going to be part of our series and we are going to be considering one aspect of that.

We're going to be looking at whether you, as young people, aren't getting your rights to reliable information.

Now, in order to do that we are going to personalise this a little bit, and we're going to have a look at this chap here, and this chap here is called Zac, I'm going to be thinking a little bit about whether the Zac is getting his right to the liable and accurate information.

Now, towards the end of the lesson, we're going to revisit Zac again, and we're going to consider that question, and we're going to think a little bit about also why it's so important, particularly during a global pandemic, like COVID-19, why it's so important that it does get access to reliable and accurate information.

Now, just to give you a bit of an overview of how our lesson is going to be running today, we're going to recap on the convention of the mix of the child.

Now, this is something that we've done in previous lessons, but today we're going to give a brief overview of it.

Now attached to this lesson as a worksheet is a copy of all the different conventions of the lives of the child obstacles, individual right, and you can have a little look in more detail at those yourself by the pausing the lesson or at the end of it as well.

And we're going to think about why access to information is so important, we're going to be considering why that is so crucial, particularly during a pandemic, like COVID-19, where information is so crucial.

And we're going to be thinking a little bit about whether children need their own media.

So we're going to be trying to consider whatever, if information is so important, where the children need their own bespoke, their own specialist media, to get information to them.

And then we're going to have a little look at not simply what the vital information is like in the United Kingdom, but also the might to information is like over around the world in different countries as well.

So let's get going with our lesson today, now the first part of what we're going to be doing is, thinking about the comprehension of the rights of the child.

Now this is a United Nations Convention, and United Nations agreement between countries there's legally binding, which basically means that countries that sign up to it have to stick to it.

Now there are 42 rights, and each one of those rights is called an article.

Now I'm going to run you through a small number of those today and summarise them, but of course, attached to this lesson is a worksheet with every one of those 42 rights, and thus so that you can have a little look at them.

For example, article 12 says that you have the right to respect for your views as a child, and that's one of those that we going to be making a lot of reference to today, and that's why it's in green and highlighted in green on your screen.

Article 17 is that you have the right to access information, and of course that's another big focus of our lesson today, when we're thinking about, your right to be able to access reliable and accurate information.

There's also a variety of other things as well in that document, all the conventions of rights of the child, we know the article 24, talks about your rights to healthcare, particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it's something that in this series of lessons we've covered as well, but also article 28, which is about your right to education, which is something that in the series of lessons, we've also covered as well.

So that's the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child.

Now in more detail, these are the specific rights that we are going to be looking at today.

And article 12 is about the respect for the views of the child, and that says that every child has the right to express their views, feelings and wishes in all matters that are affecting them, and to have their views considered and taken seriously.

Article 17, which is about access to information from the media, says that every child has the right to reliable information from a variety of different sources and that the government should encourage the media to provide information that children can understand, governments, protect children for materials that could cause them harm.

Now, the source of this is UNICEF, which is the United Nations Children's Fund.

Now, when we talk about article chapter 12 in particular, and it's talking about having your views considered and taken seriously, it's important to know that it also gives us some examples, this particular right, and it also talks about things that are really important.

So say for example, it was an immigration proceeding and your parents, and your family may be being deported, sent from one country to another, then actually your views should be taken into consideration.

For example, in housing matters as well, where you live, but also in your everyday lives, and I guess the practical application for that will be in schools and things like school councils, for example, and making sure that schools listens to you as well.

Now, in order to really consider about your right to information, then what I'm going to ask that you do is that you do a little task now.

And the little task is basically about where you get your information from, so what I want you to make sure that you have in front of you is a sheet of paper and a pen, if you don't have that at the moment, you should pause the video and we've started when you do.

Now, the first question I'd like you to jot down an answer to is, where do you find out what your friends and family aren't doing? And the second the second question that I'd like you to jot down some ideas to is, where do you find out about what is happening in the world around you? Now you can just say one thing, but you can also give multiple examples as well there.

Now what I'll do is I'll make this much bigger on the screen so that you can pause the video now, and consider what you're going to write down as your answer.

So well done that forgiving that activity your best go.

Now what you are trying to do by doing that, as you're trying to really think about where you get your information from, and you were trying to think about where you get your information from, in terms of what your friends and family are doing, and news about their lives, but also about what's happening around you in the world, and that sort of thing.

And that question about where young people get their news about what's happening around them in the world has been something that's concerned and being the subject of lots of research by lots of different people and organisations over the years.

And what now we're going to do is I'm going to share with you some of that research, and this research is from Ofcom.

Now, before we look in a little bit more detail, I probably should explain to you what we mean by Ofcom, and who Ofcom are.

Now Ofcom is the UK is media regulator, that means that they obviously TV, radio and video on demand services and our country, and the graph that's in front of us, as you can see from the very top of it actually measures the top 20 sources of news amongst children that are aged between 12 and 15 years old.

So people who are in your age bracket.

Now, before we look at the graph in more detail, there's probably something that's really important to know.

Now, the data that we can see in the graph is from 2019, and I don't doubt that that data's in 2019, but what I do think is that there was a bit, perhaps a bit of a lag in that data getting to Ofcom.

Why do I think that? Well, I think that because actually the tasks that you did and my knowledge of a teacher is that it shows that perhaps your people have moved away and switched away from platforms like Facebook, and now much more on things like Snapchat and TikTok.

And I don't necessarily think that the graph in front of us necessarily reflects this, if we were to look in a few years time, perhaps the graph might reflect even more.

Now, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to take my picture off the screen so that you can zoom into this graph in much more detail.

Now what you should be able to see, and what you should focus on here, the dark grey or black colours on the graph, and also the light grey colours.

Now, the dark grey colours measure, whether something is the most important source of news for young people.

So say for example you can see that in the graph that 7% of young people for 7% of young people, Instagram is the most important that the prime source of news for young people, whereas the light grey that you can see is a measure of not necessarily whether something is the most important or prime source of news for young people, but whether it is something that is used by children to follow new stories.

And what we mean by that is it might be something that children might dip into on a weekly, a daily or even yearly basis, in order to kind of follow a story that they might be particularly interested in.

Now, what we can see from this, and what is really obvious is that the mainstream media and what we mean by the mainstream media, is things like the BBC, and here you can see at the very top of the graph that the BBC one and BBC two, are mentioned specifically there, is still big forums and news for children.

But as we imagine, and as you probably picked up for doing tasks one while you're thinking about your own media usage, your own ideas about why your own information comes from these are becoming perhaps a less popular form of news for many children.

And we've also seen that social media in particular is seeing a real big boom in young people, using it in order to access the news.

Having said that actually the report does state in it, and this is kind of the tax that goes alongside this particular graph.

The TV remains most used and most trusted source of news, and come say that our news consumption survey reveals that overall TV remains the most used source of news and with 12 to 15 year olds, and that 64% of children that were surveyed, followed by talking with family, which represents 60%, social media and talking with friends, which are both 55%.

So that gives it a little bit more of an idea, but I guess once we we've looked at that graph and when we've considered some of that data, we've got to ask ourselves this question, and we've got to ask ourselves this question, why is it important that children have access to accurate and reliable information? So, what effectively, why is this so key and why are we going into this, in such detail? Now in order to do that, we probably have to just stop one second, and we have to stop, and we have to consider what we mean by accurate and reliable information.

So what I'd like you to do, is I'd like you to get a pen and a paper, and I'd like you to write down your own definition of accurate and reliable information.

And in order to do that, I'd like you to think about sources and the author of information to where it comes from, any evidence, can you put evidence into your answer, and what about fact versus opinion when you're thinking about that as well? So I'm going to put this full screen, and you should take this opportunity to pause the lesson and have a go at the task.

Well done that for really trying very hard with that particular task, and writing it down your own definition of accurate and reliable information.

Now we said, didn't we? That you should be really thinking about your source and author, and the things to consider when were asking ourselves about accurate and reliable information, things like have you heard of the source author before? Is it someone that you've encountered before? Because that might give us a little bit more of an information, and a little bit more of a hint about whether something might be accurate or reliable, is not the only thing to consider, but it's something to consider.

It's also important to think about evidence, are these claims that are made in the information supported with facts.

And on top of that, we were thinking about facts versus opinion, and by that we were really thinking about is the information based on facts or is it actually Dustin opinion piece that someone has written? Can it be actually be backed up with facts? Now, the definition that I'm going to share with you, of accurate, is accurate information contains the correct facts and statistics.

And reliable, we're saying here is information which could be fact checked, that it can be found elsewhere, and there is from a trusted source, for example.

So that's our definition of what we mean by accurate and reliable information.

Now we know that for young people, the TV news is still a really popular source of information, but we know that a real growing source of information is social media.

We can't say that all social media is bad because it brings a wealth of things to our lives and information, and we all use it in lots and lots of different ways, but we have to be mindful and aware of it, when we're considering our rights to reliable and accurate information.

Now, when we're thinking about our vital, accurate, and reliable, information about social media, then we are saying, well, what about social media? And the slide in front of us says, most of us get our news from social media, which is very true.

Many of us do get our news from social media, what we see on our social media is decided by a computer programme called an algorithm.

Now this shows us things that we're most likely to enjoy.

This means that the news that you'll see, will always align with your particular views.

Now, why is that a particular problem for us? When we're considering access to reliable information? Well, that's particularly a problem because of what it sees in the slide here, and now, if we only ever read news, that confirms our point of view, that's been given to us by that algorithm on social media, then you won't have a balanced understanding of events of what different people think about it.

And if you don't have the full picture, it can be hard to know what's actually happening in the world or with a particular news story that be looking at.

So we have to be really mindful about the information that's delivered to us by algorithms on social media, and we as adults, as well as you guys, as children have to be really mindful of that as well.

Now, what can we do in order to avoid that while we can read articles, and look at a range of information from a variety of different sources to get a balanced viewpoint.

And we've got to be aware of things like bias when we read, and what we mean by that is bias, that might be your own and that up the new source as well.

Now when we think about, and when we're thinking about where we get information from, we're thinking that many of us get access to information through social media, but we also get access to it through mainstream media, like a BBC one and BBC two, as well as newspapers.

Sometimes that can be quite difficult to access and be quite difficult to fact, to access for many young people.

And that leads us into a question, and the question here is, do children need that own form of media in order to be able to get access to their rights, to reliable and accurate information.

Now, when we're thinking about this, other people have done the thinking before was, and what I want to do is I want to share with you, a model and this model is from someone called Niovi Vavoula, who is professor of international children's rights to the school of education at Queen Mary University in Belfast, and she's thought a little bit about why we might need accurate and reliable information particularly for young people.

She's broken it down into four particular categories, and she said, the first one is about space.

And she said, "Okay, children must be given space, inclusive opportunities to form and express their views, and that's really helping us to look into whether children need Devo or media, whether they need their own space in order to be able to have an inclusive space in order to be able to express and form their own views.

Now, once you've got that, once you've been given those inclusive opportunities to express and form your views, then children need to be given a voice.

And Niovi Vavoula says that children must be facilitated to express their viewpoint, and by facilitated, that means helped to be able to express that viewpoint from information that they've gathered, and that's why it's so important, isn't it? Because actually it's not simply about gathering information for the sake of it, it's actually gathering it for a purpose so that you can make your voice stronger and more powerful.

Now, in order to make your voice more powerful, stronger.

well, Niovi Vavoula says, well, there's a duty, there's a real role on those people who make decisions to be able to listen to you, and that's about the audience.

Yeah, so once you've been able to kind of form your views and once you've been able to voice your views, then decision makers in our schools, in our towns and cities, in our country, need to be able to listen to you as well, and she'll be listening to you as well.

And of course there needs to be some influence that because actually those decision makers have to listen to your views, and actually have to act on them as appropriate as well.

So that gives you a bit of an idea on why children might need access to accurate and reliable information.

It's actually for a purpose, and it's to make your voice stronger.

It's to be able to hopefully give you an audience, and give you influence as well.

But having said that, we do know, don't we? That actually some young people still don't access information by watching the news and looking at Caleb Apple created content or content, this created dust for or exclusively for adults.

And this is from someone called Shaneeka, who's age 14, and Shaneeka says, "I don't really watch the news," she says, and this was an extract from OFCAM the media regulator, so Shaneeka, doesn't really watch the news, which begs the question here, in order for you to be able to form your voice and make your voice heard, and really kind of think about things in an inclusive way.

Then actually, do you need your own form of media? And in order to be thinking about that, then what we're going to try and do it, you're going to really think about what barriers children might face in using adult focused media.

What we mean by other focus media, as things like the BBC, BBC News think about Channel 4 News, think about Sky News, thinking about things that are focused towards adults, that children and young people might watch, but primarily around or focused around the adults.

And what I've asked you to do in this task is to get a sheet of paper and a pen, and ideally draw around your hand, like I'm doing at the moment, but with a pen, and I'd like you to write down five barriers that may prevent that means stop children from using adult focused media, like mainstream television and news programmes and newspapers.

So you're looking at barrier one, barrier two, barrier three, barrier four and five as well.

Yeah, so five different barriers there.

So now is the time I'm going to make this much bigger on your screen, now is the time to pause the lesson, draw around your hands and lighten a barrier into your four fingers and one thumb as well.

Best of luck.

So well done there for drawing around your hand and hopefully you've come out with lots and lots of wonderful and creative answers.

Now what I'm going to do is, I'm going to share with you what you'll people often tell me, when I do a task like this, and young people often tell me the barriers in terms of mainstream news programme that are adults focused, that are specifically made for adults and not for young people exclusively are these sorts of things.

They see the stories often focus on adults, they say that journalists don't always look at the impact of decisions on children, they say that stories aren't always explained in child-friendly ways.

They also say that very few presenters or journalists or young people themselves, and they comment on the fact that the style of presentation often suits adults some may be dull, perhaps a little bit less diplomatic in putting that than I've put out there.

And the last point that young people often share with me, is this the cost of purchasing newspapers can be expensive for many children, it's a barrier for many children to be able to access that kind of mainstream adult focused media.

Now, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to share with you this.

Now this is from someone called Nicky Cox, and Nicky Cox is the founder of First News, and what she did was she set up a newspaper specifically for children.

Now, what I'd like you to do is watch this very short extract, from when she spoke at the association for citizenship teachings conference in 2018, about why she created a newspaper specifically for children, you don't have to necessarily write anything down, what I'd like you to do, is watch this in a lot of detail.

And made sure that all of us and young people in particular developed skills, critical thinking skills that they learned to question what they're hearing and that they questioned the sources.

And it isn't a human rights of the child that young people should have access to reliable, trustworthy information, about the world that they're growing up in.

So Nicky, that did something that was quite brave, she created her own newspaper, and it was her own newspaper that was specifically for children.

And she did that because she thought it was really important that young people have access to reliable and accurate information in a form that they could understand, and that was appealing to them, and that that allowed them to generate a voice, and it meant that they could be heard by an audience and be listened to by an audience of decision makers.

And that's the sort of thing that we do in citizenship.

It's about empowering you to be able to have your own voice, and be listened to by decision makers.

Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to share with you two newspapers.

These two newspapers are going to be used as case studies on our next slide.

And what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to get a pen and I'd like you to get a sheet of paper because in a second, you're going to pause our lesson, when it comes to the next slide, and I'm going to ask you to look really deeply at these two newspaper papers.

Now I'm not particularly worried about you're looking at the text into great detail, because some of it is really, really small.

I want you to look at how it's laid out in terms of how appealing it might be to young people, and how young people might be to access in this information.

The two questions I'd like you to consider are, to try and identify what makes one of these newspapers, more user friendly for young people, and number two, I'd like you to note down what you particularly think.

So I'm going to do now is, I'm going to put on the screen, the two newspaper headlines, now the two newspapers, and one is from First News, and as you can see, it is a wonderful story about COVID-19 and dogs, that you may well have spotted in the news yourself, and your job is to want to make it full screen is to look into it and a little bit more detail and consider the questions that were on the last slide.

So well done there for having a little look in much more detail about those two newspapers, obviously you have one of the First News and you had one from the Observer, they were both talking about the same stories that about a dog related COVID-19 story.

You can see that the one that was on the left First News, this newspaper that's created specifically for young people, has articles that are written by young people.

They are often reported directly by children in the newspaper and written about, and that perhaps makes it, even more appealing for young people, because you can obviously see that it relates to other young people it's written by all the young people.

It covers children's issues, now it's important here to not be patronised about this, because we know that all issues are children's issues, but it shows the cover issue there, and it covers issues that are from a children's perspective as a really engaging presentation.

And it keeps children's attention, now, the, the article from the Observer, there was in an awful lot of detail, but it wasn't necessarily engaging in terms of its presentation for young people.

It was a very, very long, paragraph after paragraph story about the same thing, but it wasn't necessarily an engaging presentation for young people.

And also it was difficult to read in a lot of detail because obviously it was just on your screen, but actually what you saw was that the First News, that child, family media, that was actually it gave child family explanations, what we mean by that is that, children obviously know lots of things but it doesn't presume a particular knowledge, whereas the observer does presume a certain type of knowledge that people might have developed over years and years of living, whereas First News doesn't presume that children necessarily have that knowledge.

So this is an example of children focused media that allows young people to be able to get access to right, to reliable and accurate information.

Now, when we're talking about children focused media, it's important to recognise that is not just First News here, but there are lots of other different forms of children focused media, there a lots of different sources of information that can help you make sense of the world.

And that's a particular challenge at the moment with COVID-19, isn't it? Making sense of the world.

Now we know that First News that I shared with you that from page is, an example of an award winning national newspaper for children.

Now it's 2.

2 million readers each week, and its target audience is seven to 14 years old.

Another example is The Day, now that's an online news service for children that you can have a look at, and it focuses on explaining the news or what they say is currently taking a good look at two or three of the most significant happenings in the world on every given day, and going into a lot of detail, and a lot of analysis to make it accessible for young people so that you can get access to your right of a liable and accurate information.

And the last thing is probably something much more from my childhood, but of course it's still available on things like CBBC, but that is Newsround, now Newsround was a broadcast first by the BBC in 1972, and it was what we call, the first television news magazine show, that was aimed specifically at children.

It was really quite revolutionary in 1972, but it now does regular news bulletins on BBC.

So all of those things are something that you can go and check out in order for you to be able to get access to your right as a child to accurate and reliable information, which we know is so important during COVID-19, but it's also important during in normal times as well.

Now, when we think about our rights to accurate and reliable information, we know that there are many sources that we can use in the United Kingdom, and we've shared with you some of those different sources in the last slide, but actually we've got to consider whether young people, where their children are getting their right to reliable and accurate information around the world.

Now it's a challenge for young people in the UK, but what we're going to do, is we're going to try and compare the UK with other places around the world like China, for example, like China is very different to the UK in terms of how it operates.

Now in the UK, we can see that there's been a decline in children watching television news, but we do know that actually things like social media are being used and accessed by young people in lots of different ways.

We know that lots of young people are still watching television news, as well as as their source of information.

We know that this specialist news media for young people and that exists in the UK, things like Newsround, but also lots and lots of other different different kinds of providers, like First News and the day as well, and that allows you to get access to your right to accurate and reliable information.

We also know that the information is freely available and he's not censored by the government or media organisations in the UK.

Now, what we mean by censored is this idea that there'd be some other organisation like the government, or maybe the media were doing it themselves, that would kind of stop stories from going to people, stopped stories from being published, and in some parts of the world that happens, governments do that, or media organisations do that themselves.

We call that censorship, and it means that you won't necessarily get access to reliable or accurate information.

It doesn't happen in the UK, it doesn't happen in the UK.

Now in China, there's a little bit of a difference, now, young people are moving online for that information in a similar way to the United Kingdom.

But we know that there's a limited news media for young people, that are so news media for young people, but it is limited for young people.

And we also know that information is not freely available and it is frequently censored by the government or media organisations.

So if you're a young person in China, it is very difficult for you to be able to get access to the liable and accurate information.

And that is in the main, because actually information is frequently censored by the government or by media organisations themselves.

And it means that young people can't get access to that accurate and reliable information, it just does not reach them on the internet or it doesn't reach them in newspapers or news programmes as well.

And that helps us to consider some of those issues about access to reliable information and accurate information around the world.

Now, the very start of today's lesson, I asked you to consider whether Zac, this character on screen is getting his right to reliable information.

Now I would like you to get a pen and a piece of paper, and I'd like you to get ready to be able to answer some of these questions based upon what we've talked about during today's lesson.

Now I'd like you to answer the questions below, like it say's, to help you demonstrate your knowledge from today's lesson.

Now, the first question I'd like you to look at is unlikely to list three sources of child focused media, the available to Zac.

And this is in the United Kingdom, really.

So what three sources of child focused media are available for Zac? Question two is how might access to reliable information help Zac that express himself make his voice heard, and the third question is how many Zach access, reliable information, and how may it be different in other countries? Like for example, China, that we've talked about.

So I'm going to make this full screen, now I'd like you to spend a few minutes, how many go at answering those three different questions now, and we'll feed back about it in a short while.

Good luck.

So well done for giving those three different questions a try, and trying to recap on different knowledge that we've developed throughout the course of this lesson.

Now, no doubt you've come up with some absolutely wonderful answers.

What I'm going to try and do is, I'm going to share with you some of the answers that young people often give me.

And we know in response to the first question, lists three sorts of child focused media that are available to Zac.

Well, you could have chosen BBC news round, First News or the day.

There might have also been a number of others that you could have added that as well.

The second question asks you to consider was how might access to reliable information, help Zach to express himself and make his voice heard.

Now, what I would say is the access to reliable information may help Zach better understand the world around him, so that he can have a say on issues that affect him and make informed decisions.

Now that's particularly important, isn't it? During COVID-19, because it allows us to make informed decisions about our own health, for example, and also the health of our family and community as well.

Now question three says, how may Zach's access to reliable information be different in other countries, i.

e China? Well, we know that in some countries, children may have less access to news media, and in China, for example information is not freely available and is frequently censored by the government or media organisations.

So well done for having to go all of those three different questions there.

Now at the very start of the lesson, we said, didn't we? That we were going to focus on the question of whether you were getting your mind to reliable information.

And we tried to personalise that in terms of Zac, hopefully you can apply that to yourself as well as someone who's living in the United Kingdom.

We recapped the convention of the rights of the child, and we said that you have many rights that are protected and the convention invites your child.

And we know that some of those rights are your rights to reliable and accurate information.

We've considered, and we've thought very much about why access to reliable and accurate information is so important, and we said, haven't we? That that allows you to make informed decisions.

It allows you, like we've talked about in that model from I think it was the model, wasn't it? When we were thinking about why it's so empowering, to access reliable information? Well, it allows you to make your voice heard, it allows you to develop your voice, and allows you to make informed about your actions and the actions of those around you.

We've considered if that might is so important where the children might need that own media, because we've looked at and we thought very much about what barriers your people might face in accessing mainstream adult focused media, and we talked about those barriers, and we've considered them.

And we've also looked at different forms of child focused media around the UK, for example, Newsround, The Day and First News.

And then we compared the UK and your right to reliable information across the world, but how that is in the UK, and we with places in other parts of the world, for example, China as well.

So I hope that you have enjoyed our lesson today, we've covered lots of, lots of different material and we've considered a very important question.

And that very important question was, whether you, again, access to reliable information.

Well, thank you very much for taking part in our lesson today, and I hope that you have a good day.

Bye bye.