Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

by Hans Rosling

We should be teaching our children the basic up-to-date, fact-based framework—life on the four levels and in the four regions—and training them to use Factfulness rules of thumb—the bullet points from the end of each chapter. This would enable them to put the news from around the world in context and spot when the media, activists, or salespeople are triggering their dramatic instincts with overdramatic stories. These skills are part of the critical thinking that is already taught in many schools. They would protect the next generation from a lot of ignorance. • 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 t...