Excerpts from the book “Factfulness”

Teaching kids critical thinking skills:

• We should be teaching our children that there are countries on all different levels of health and income and that most are in the middle.
• We should be teaching them about their own country’s socioeconomic position in relation to the rest of the world, and how that is changing.
• We should be teaching them how their own country progressed through the income levels to get to where it is now, and how to use that knowledge to understand what life is like in other countries today.
• We should be teaching them that people are moving up the income levels and most things are improving for them.
• We should be teaching them what life was really like in the past so that they do not mistakenly think that no progress has been made.
• We should be teaching them how to hold the two ideas at the same time: that bad things are going on in the world, but that many things are getting better.
• We should be teaching them that cultural and religious stereotypes are useless for understanding the world.
• We should be teaching them how to consume the news and spot the drama without becoming stressed or hopeless.
• We should be teaching them the common ways that people will try to trick them with numbers.
• We should be teaching them that the world will keep changing and they will have to update their knowledge and worldview throughout their lives.
• Most important of all, we should be teaching our children humility and curiosity.

Factfulness rules of thumb:

1. Gap. The irresistible temptation we have to divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups, with an imagined gap—a huge chasm of injustice—in between. Solution: Look for the majority.
2. Negativity. Our tendency to notice the bad more than the good. Solution: Expect bad news.
3. Straight line. The false idea that the populations are just increasing in a straight line. Solution: Lines might bend.
4. Fear. Calculate the risks.
5. Size. Get things in proportion.
6. Generalization. Question your categories.
7. Destiny. Slow change is still change.
8. Single. The preference for single causes and single solutions. Solution: Get a toolbox.
9. Blame. Resist pointing your finger.
10. Urgency. Taking immediate action in the face of a perceived imminent danger. Solution: Take small steps.

Source: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things are Better Than You Think (2018) by Hans Roslin.