Bias

Freedom fighter or terrorist? Passionate or one-eyed? Passive resistance or civil uprising? Illegal arrival or asylum seeker? The words we use and how we interpret images and statistics are an insight into our perspective or bias – our view of the world. All information is biased as it represents the perspective of the author or editor. A bias for the respect for human rights or against violence is a positive way of building a caring and compassionate local and global community. People who are passionate about an issue will be quite overt about their bias, generally acknowledging their perspective and using words and selecting facts and images to support their bias. People who want to manipulate others to a particular point of view will be more subtle in their use of words and images. Global education is about assisting students to recognise the author or editor’s perspectives and how they are built on the experiences, gender, age, class, religion and values of a person. In this information age students are experiencing a wide range of written and visual texts and they need good information literacy and thinking skills to help consider different points of view and make judgements and deal with contentious and complex issues. The following are some activities to help students understand bias: Recognising bias Examine advertising or opinion pieces to see how language and images have been used to influence people: Who is the author or publisher? What does the author think? Why might this item have been published? How have words and images shown what they think? Why might they think this way? Have different groups read descriptions of international events from different newspapers around the world. List the main issues or responses stated in the articles and compare these lists with other groups. How has the perspective been influenced by the source? Ask students to write individual reports of an event they have experienced. Compare their descriptions to show how different perspectives are evident in the use of words and amount of emphasis to different parts of the event. Create a display of photos of issues around the room. Ask students to move around and write their own captions. Use the captions to compare different perspectives. Responding to bias Research the issue to find out about different perspectives Rewrite a biased article or piece of advertising to present an alternative perspective or a more balanced perspective Create a list of criteria for detecting bias