We will support the development of critical thinking in secondary school students with 30,000 euros

The winner of the three-month mentoring-educational programme within Generation 3.0 is the Slovak Debate Association with their Critical Thinking Olympiad project. It focuses on developing critical thinking and media literacy for secondary school students. They learn to search for information, assess its relevance, navigate in the media environment, analyse data, and acquire valuable argumentation skills.

At a time when more than 50% of people in Slovakia are prone to believe claims that contain lies or conspiracies, and only 16% of young people verify information from the media, projects like the Critical Thinking Olympiad are extremely important.

The organisation received a grant of 30,000 euros for the dissemination and development of its project.

Director of the Slovak Debate Association Ondrej Schütz (left) during the acceptance of the award with a member of the evaluation committee Ondrej Smolár, director of Soitron.

The winner was selected by the evaluation committee consisting of: Andrea Basilová (Sensoneo), Miroslava Hapalová (UNICEF), Heliodor Macko (SEAK Energetics), Norbert Maur (Pontis Foundation) and Ondrej Smolár (Soitron).

“The Critical Thinking Olympiad shapes young people’s views of the world. We saw that the project has the potential to grow quickly and expand its activities,” Ondrej Smolár says. “However, for scaling, it is necessary to create software that automates correcting students’ answers in the programme. By providing a grant that the organisation will use to develop this software, we can ensure that critical thinking is not as rare in the future as it is today,” he adds.