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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Education fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about education. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

1,862 published reviews in this topic

El Detector / Univision NoticiasEducation

El Grupo de Puebla, el Foro de Sao Paulo y la ONU, con su Agenda 2030, son los ideólogos de los libros de texto escolar que se distribuyen gratuitamente en México.

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerned the free textbooks distributed by Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) for the 2023–2024 school year. It alleged that the Grupo de Puebla, the Foro de Sao Paulo and the UN’s Agenda 2030 were their ideological authors. The review’s conclusion was that none of the three had participated in developing those books: “ni la Agenda 2030 de las Naciones Unidas, ni el Foro de Sao Paulo, ni el Grupo de Puebla, intervinieron en la concepción de los libros de texto distribuidos para la educación pública en México.” To examine who prepared the books, the review consulted the SEP’s Educational Materials Directorate and examined information published on Mexican government pages. The directorate said that defining the content was the responsibility of its staff and specialist teachers, and described the work as involving teachers and specialists: “la selección, construcción y definición de los nuevos contenidos estuvieron a cargo de”. The review also reported that the Grupo de Puebla said it had not participated in writing or developing the texts: “El Grupo de Puebla aseguró también a elDetector que no ha participado en la redacción ni el desarrollo de esos textos”. The review separately compared the stated aims of the other two organizations with the allegation. It reported that the Foro de Sao Paulo’s principles made no reference to intervening in schoolbook content, and that the Agenda 2030’s education goal concerned inclusive, equitable, quality education—not prescribing textbook content. It also described a keyword search that found no link between the three initiatives and the textbooks. These findings address the allegation of their involvement; they do not establish that the books were free of ideological content or errors.

YouturnEducation

தூக்கு மேடை எனக்கு பஞ்சு மெத்தை. நீட் தடை செய்யவில்லை என்றால் அனிதா போன்று தற்கொலை செய்யவும் நான் தயார் என் உயிர் போனால் தான் நீட் தடை என்றால் அதற்க்கும் தயார் – மாவீரன் வீரமணி

Publisher’s rating: Fake

PolitiFactEducation

"Parents who show up at school board meetings, they’re called, under this DOJ, they’re called domestic terrorists."

Publisher’s rating: False

Related reporting in S6 connects the allegation to a Justice Department memo issued by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. The article says the memo called for law-enforcement resources to address violent threats at local school-board meetings during the coronavirus pandemic; it does not describe the memo as labeling parents who attended meetings domestic terrorists. S6 reports that a later agreement establishing an anti-weaponization fund falsely characterized the Biden administration as having engaged in “wrongful labeling of certain parents as domestic terrorists.” The article identifies the Garland memo as the basis for that characterization and distinguishes the memo’s stated focus—violent threats—from the claim that meeting-attending parents were labeled terrorists. The supplied excerpt does not include the memo itself or the full agreement, so it supports this distinction but does not provide their complete text.

dpa-factcheckingEducation

Illustration einer Schwangerschaft bei einer Person mit Penis ist Unterrichtsmaterial in Deutschland.

Publisher’s rating: Es handelt sich nicht um Schulmaterial. Die Illustration wurde im Zusammenhang mit der Angabe «Biologieunterricht» beziehungsweise «Schulbuch» zuvor als Satire verbreitet, etwa von einem Parodie-Account, der den Bundesgesundheitsminister imitiert hat.

The review investigated a social-media claim that an illustration of a pregnant person with male sex characteristics was being used in biology lessons to explain pregnancy. It concluded that the image was not school material. The claim connected the illustration to biology teaching or a schoolbook, but the review found it had previously circulated as satire in that context, including through an account parodying Germany’s health minister. The review describes two checks that bear directly on the image’s provenance. A reverse-image search showed that the picture had circulated for years in multiple countries. It also traced a German-language post from May 2023 that presented the image as an update to schoolbooks. An internet archive showed that the post originally appeared under the username “@Karl_Laulerbach,” a parody of Health Minister Karl Lauterbach. The review says the post did not come from Lauterbach’s actual profile and that the parody account explicitly identified its content as satire. Together, those findings undermine the claim that the illustration was genuine teaching material: the schoolbook framing came from a satirical account, not from the minister or a documented educational source. The review does not identify a real school, textbook, or classroom using the illustration.

El Detector / Univision NoticiasEducation

Video muestra protesta contra el contenido comunista de libros escolares en México.

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerns a video presented as showing a protest against supposedly communist content in Mexican schoolbooks. The original investigation says the video instead shows teachers demonstrating in Toluca, capital of the State of Mexico, on June 30, 2023. It reports that their stated demands concerned retroactive payment of a promised salary increase and economic bonuses, not the books: the article says the images are from a “manifestación de docentes el 30 de junio de 2023 en Toluca” and that it was “para que se hiciera efectivo el pago retroactivo del aumento salarial prometido por el gobierno, así como de una serie de bonos económicos.” The investigation describes checking the video’s provenance and comparing it with other material. A reverse-image search led to the same clip posted on TikTok on June 30; according to the review, the text there says only “Se cierran escuelas Estado de México,” without mentioning books or their ideology. Searches for reporting about school closures and the SMSEM protests led the investigators to coverage of the teachers’ demonstration. The review says a video accompanying a DigitalMex article shows two people also visible in the circulating clip, and that matching landmarks—including the Toluca Cathedral’s twin towers and a large Mexican flag—place the protest outside the State Government Palace. The review acknowledges that complaints about the content of new free textbooks existed, but says this particular video was unrelated to them. Its conclusion rests on identifying the footage with the June 30 teachers’ protest and on the contrast between the video’s original overlay and the later claim attached to it.