Caracas Chronicles

The first morning I entered the classroom in Caracas,* the students were already moving the desks into a circle. Sitting face to face, without a blackboard dictating the rhythm, instantly changed the atmosphere. I explained that there would be no right or wrong answers, only an invitation to think together rather than being lectured. The shift was immediate: the room came alive.

At first, they spoke about the exhausting work of navigating a chaotic reality. For them, “staying informed” is not only an act of resistance but a marker of maturity: stopping being a chamito, a kid, means understanding that being informed was a kind of survival skill. As one student put it, “growing up is realizing you need to stay informed all the time, during recess, before sleeping, and that what you see on regular news is never the real story.”

“Being informed” makes them feel older, as though they are curating their own playlist of sources tailored to their needs. They believe they have learned to identify who is worth listening to, and that this patchwork of content helps them stand a little taller within their families and social circles. In a context where reliable information can mean safety, one student recalled: “I found out before my mom, through a WhatsApp voice note, that everything was going to shut down and school would be canceled because of protests.”

But that certainty created a new vulnerability: the tendency to assume that any alternative source must therefore be closer to the truth.

As the conversations unfold, the students bring up the events that have marked their childhoods. They remembered public service failures, protests, and repression; the crippling gasoline shortage that was later overtaken by the arrival of COVID-19. Each crisis was measured in lost school days, the abrupt switch to online lectures (and the increased amount of homeworks), the migration of siblings and relatives, canceled school events (“when they canceled the school fair”), or sports tournaments suspended because the streets were on fire.

Infodemic meets Venezuelan crisis

These memories are alive, and so is the lesson they drew from them: the official version of events can not be trusted. But that certainty created a new vulnerability: the tendency to assume that any alternative source must therefore be closer to the truth. Examining how they form their opinions feels somehow risky, as if letting go of conspiracy narratives might leave them exposed. 

The World Health Organization defines our moment as an infodemic: an overwhelming abundance of information, much of it misleading, emotionally charged, or deliberately fabricated. Conspiracy theories thrive in such ecosystems, offering simple narratives to explain complex crises. They spread most effectively in environments marked by uncertainty, fear, and institutional collapse.

The voice of one student carried the emotional weight of a generation that lived the pandemic at a painfully early age, inside a country already in crisis.

Few places embody these conditions more intensely than Venezuela. Decades of political conflict, economic implosion, and institutional disintegration have created a society where official narratives often rely on conspiratorial rhetoric, and where young people have never experienced a functioning, independent national press. For them, distinguishing truth from manipulation is not just cognitively demanding. It can be politically risky, too.

Psychological research shows that conspiracy beliefs do not arise from ignorance alone but from cognitive shortcuts, emotional needs, and social experiences. When institutions lie or fail, when the rule of law is absent, and when dissent is punished, conspiracy explanations feel not only plausible but protective. This is especially true in societies marked by corruption, trauma, and deep institutional mistrust—conditions that define Venezuela today.

Our research: Can schools build epistemic resilience?

Despite the broader collapse of the country’s information environment, schools remain one of the few stable spaces where young people can develop tools to resist misinformation. Globally, educators experiment with approaches ranging from media literacy to prebunking to rhetorical analysis. But one method, dialogical philosophical inquiry, has shown promise by focusing not on what students think but on how they think. The Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) brings students into structured dialogue, encouraging them to question assumptions, justify arguments, and reflect on their reasoning. European studies show that CPI strengthens cognitive flexibility, argumentation skills, and intellectual autonomy.

My first study, carried out in Belgium, found that just ten hours of CPI significantly increased critical thinking and decreased conspiracy beliefs among adolescents. This success set the stage for testing the method in a radically different sociopolitical context: Caracas.

Venezuelan teens improved their critical thinking level, but this did not translate into abandoning conspiratorial narratives.

Bringing CPI to Caracas

Study 2 involved 60 students, ages 12 and 13, in a secondary school, during June 2023. Over ten hours of workshops, across five sessions, we analyzed topics closely tied to contemporary misinformation: COVID-19 conspiracies, climate skepticism, gender stereotypes, fake news, and the cognitive mechanisms behind conspiracy thinking. One group participated in CPI workshops; a control group continued regular classes. All students completed standardized measures of open-minded thinking and conspiracy beliefs before and after the intervention.

When COVID-19 entered the discussion, one boy’s face suddenly tightened. Before anyone mentioned a single conspiracy theory, he spoke about fear, about being locked inside his house, about not going to school, about how fragile he felt. About the silence of those months. His voice carried the emotional weight of a generation that lived the pandemic at a painfully early age, inside a country already in crisis

Why conspiracy beliefs persist

The results were both encouraging and sobering. Adolescents who participated in CPI showed a clear and statistically significant increase in open-minded thinking compared to the control group. They became more reflective, more willing to examine assumptions, and more capable of offering reasons for their views. The method worked—at least regarding critical thinking.

But, unlike in Belgium, their conspiracy beliefs did not decline. Levels of endorsement remained the same before and after the intervention. In other words, Venezuelan teens improved their critical thinking level, but this did not translate into abandoning conspiratorial narratives.

The explanation lies not in their minds, but in their environment. Interventions like CPI have almost always been tested in WEIRD societies—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic— where institutions are relatively trustworthy and information is relatively transparent. Belgium fits that profile. Venezuela does not.

Critical thinking is not blind trust; it is calibrated trust, and Venezuela lacks the institutional foundations needed for that calibration.

Here, conditions that fuel conspiracy thinking are not theoretical, they are lived daily. Chronic political instability, systemic corruption, collapsing institutions, censorship, propaganda, economic hardship, and state-sponsored terrorism create a landscape where mistrust is rational.

In the classroom, this mistrust surfaced constantly. Many students said they had seen YouTube videos defending conspiratorial narratives. Others shrugged and said, “nobody really knows what’s happening.” They insisted that non-official versions were more credible. For them, conspiracy was not a fringe belief; it was the informational air they breathed.

When official channels are compromised, when journalists are censored or fired for reporting verifiable facts, and when truth itself becomes politicized, conspiracy narratives feel like self-defense. They offer coherence in a chaos that the state both generates and denies.

In that context, critical thinking can expand, but belief in conspiracies may still function as a survival mechanism.

Bridging critical thinking and democratic commitment

These findings carry an important message. Venezuelan schools can strengthen intellectual autonomy and improve students’ reasoning abilities, even in the midst of a deep crisis. Adolescents respond enthusiastically to dialogue, to questioning, to examining their own assumptions. This is a major source of hope.

Over the sessions, their arguments became sharper. They learned not only to defend ideas they already agreed with but also to construct reasons for positions they initially rejected. Their initial emotional tone—uncertainty and suspicion—gradually gave way to curiosity about identifying information accurately. Afterward, a measured confidence emerged, though conspiratorial narratives still lingered beneath the surface.

But reducing conspiracy beliefs requires something that no classroom can provide: trustworthy institutions and a public sphere where truth can survive. Without transparency, accountability, and a free press, critical thinking alone cannot persuade young people to abandon narratives that help them navigate an environment shaped by fear, opacity, and manipulation. Critical thinking is not blind trust; it is calibrated trust, and Venezuela lacks the institutional foundations needed for that calibration.

Venezuelan teens can and do develop stronger reasoning skills when given the chance. Dialogue, reflection, and collective inquiry remain powerful tools. They open cognitive doors.

The results of Study 2 reveal a fundamental fact: both misinformation and disinformation spread not simply because people fail to think, but because societies fail to create reliable structures within which truth can be recognized and valued. Critical thinking education is essential in Venezuela, but it is inseparable from the country’s democratic struggle. Adolescents are navigating a world where information is contested, where uncertainty is constant, and where mistrust is often justified.

Several students said they preferred “not to know anything” because they struggled to filter what they saw. Others described being hyper-exposed to screens, scrolling for hours, caught in loops of videos that kept them awake late into the night. Some admitted they watched conspiracy content for entertainment. Misinformation was not just political; it was emotional, digital, daily.

Yet the study offers hope. Venezuelan teens can and do develop stronger reasoning skills when given the chance. Dialogue, reflection, and collective inquiry remain powerful tools. They open cognitive doors. But for young Venezuelans to walk through them, the country must rebuild the democratic institutions that make truth something worth trusting.

*The name of the school is withheld to protect its staff and students, as educational institutions in Venezuela operate under a tightly monitored system in which any initiative perceived as diverging from the Bolivarian Educational Model can trigger pressure, retaliation, or administrative sanctions from regional authorities.