School, ideas and values in the age of tl;dr - An essay – Ježek Zdeněk (2024)

What to believe in a world that offers its inhabitants a flood of information, opinions, and attitudes? Does school education have the tools to help navigate this flood? Does using common sense help in the fight against disinformation? And are the metaphors of flood and battle used in the previous sentences a linguistic device that shifts the meaning of the entire message from rationality towards emotionality? The society of the 21st century must cope with many pitfalls. One of them is information overload, in which an average person has almost no chance to orient themselves – yet everyone is faced not just with the option, but rather the obligation to choose a stance. Therefore, public discourse often leads to simplification, complex topics are reduced to simple theses, and thorough analysis is replaced by the addendum tl;dr. Too long; didn’t read. The essay addresses the question of the relationship between education and values, examining through examples of working with literary texts how to develop understanding, analytical skills, and the willingness to avoid simple explanations of complex topics.