Often characterised by divisive and hateful rhetoric, research shows that young people these days are being exposed earlier than ever before, and so it is imperative that educators in schools are helping prepare their students by fostering critical thinking, and encouraging stimulating conversations among their peers.
All Together Now’s Agent C project, funded by Multicultural NSW since 2021, is evidence-based and tailored specifically to help equip teachers to empower young people with the tools to navigate and critically assess the information they encounter.
Established in 2010, All Together Now is an NGO that focuses on enhancing racial equity by designing innovative programs and projects that enhance racial equity and raise awareness about racism in Australia.
CEO Stijn Denayer says Agent C emerged as a response to concerning post-COVID developments.
“We [as an organisation] often focus on areas or emerging issues where we identify that there is a gap,” Denayer says.
“So when we designed Agent C in 2021, it followed the emergence of fake news online and conspiracy theories in the context of COVID and the lockdowns, where we saw a rise in engagement with these conspiracy theories, including hateful conspiracy theories.
“[This period] really created opportunities, particularly for far right extremists, to recruit young people and for racism to flourish online.”
Previously available only to young people in NSW aged 14-21, thanks to substantial private backing from Deutsche Bank, the program is now expanding beyond state borders and is including a younger 12-13-year-old audience, with the content and language made more appropriate for that age demographic.
“We noticed while we were doing Agent C, the interest that was expressed by students and teachers really was overwhelming,” Denayer says.
“We didn’t expect that. So the end result was that almost all sessions have been delivered via schools [as opposed to individuals on their own time]."
The expansion for Years 7 and 8 will be a two-hour workshop, which can be delivered either in a single session or split over two school periods.
While a range of programs are also available for teachers from All Together Now on a fee-for-service basis, Denaver says a lack of time, confidence and capacity mean the workshops are far more popular.
Delivered live by a facilitator, not pre-recorded, there are different workshop formats offered, depending on the needs and requirements of the school.
“So ideally, young people are on their own devices in the school, and the training is delivered via zoom or another platform, and we always have at least two facilitators present, so young people can easily follow the workshop,” Denaver says.
“It’s activity focused as well, so they go into online breakout rooms in little groups or in pairs and take part in a range of activities.”
While grateful for generous funding from backers such as Multicultural NSW and Deutsche Bank, All Together Now CEO Stijn Denayer, pictured above, says with education department funding, projects such as Agent C can be expanded and their full potential realised.
Denaver says participants can chat with facilitators in the online chat if they have extra questions.
“So it’s very interactive,” he says.
“With some schools who don’t have that capacity, they follow the training on one big screen in the classroom, for instance, and we work around that as well.”
Teachers and students say engagement with the ‘spectrum of misinformation’ across a broad range of areas can cause numerous issues for students.
“So it can lead to bullying, both perpetrating and experiencing bullying, it can lead to disengagement with mainstream media, questioning certain resources that the teachers put forward,” Denaver says.
It can also precipitate disengagement from school and various forms of mental health issues as well.
“It can lead to a range of things, and especially when young people engage with forms of hateful misinformation, and they do this unconsciously as well, because there are many groups out there, as well as influencers, who deliberately spread hateful misinformation, and it can be quite subtle,” Denaver explains.
“So it’s not always overtly racist or, let’s say neo-Nazi propaganda or similar.
“It can be quite subtle and include casual forms of racism, for instance; so just trying to sew division in the community, and that can include many forms of hate, including racism, but also misogyny, for instance, or anti LGBTQI (views), plus hate as well.”
Denayer has been at the organisation since 2016, taking over as CEO in 2021, and for more than 15 years has worked in human rights in Belgium at the Human Rights institution, as well as in South Asia and the Middle East for local and international human rights organisations.
He says while private funding has enabled All Together Now to continue its important work, he’s always looking for ways to scale up the project.
Denaver says he’s hoping to have conversations with departments of education around the country to roll it out further, because the problem hasn’t gone away at all.
“In fact, it has just only increased, especially with the emergence of AI-fuelled forms of misinformation,” he says.
“And the developments are so rapid in that space that it’s very concerning, and even scary, including for any frontline worker or even experts.
“If you’re a parent, teacher or carer, it’s very hard to follow what’s possible now in terms of just designing fake news and the platforms that are emerging in the channels and so this kind of training is needed more now than ever.”
Bonnie Zuidland, a teacher at Ballarat High School, says the project provided new ways ways of challenging poor thinking.
“[I was impressed by the] new strategies for identifying fake news and getting students to consider the nature of conspiracy theories,” Zuidland says in a testimonial.
Julie Wilcox, an educator in the ACT, says the project provided a good overview of the topic with some useful strategies.
“I was aware of much of the content presented, but enjoyed thinking about how to employ the knowledge in practice,” she says.
“It works very well as a half-day course. The presenters were very knowledgeable.”
For more information on Agent C and how you can host a workshop at your school, click here.
For more about the All Together Now training or tailored programs available for your team, click here.
