In a time when fake news\u00a0has become \u201ca game of Whack-a-Mole,\u201d popping up on a variety of media platforms\u00a0while\u00a0duping audiences of all\u00a0political affiliations,\u00a0teaching young people to discern the difference between what is or isn\u2019t reliable information has become\u00a0an unusually difficult, and urgent, challenge. Fortunately, a\u00a0new study published in the journal Science and Education has brought renewed hope to a classic skillset: critical thinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the study, it isn\u2019t that critical thinking has been abandoned in the education system. Instead, it\u2019s that we\u2019ve relegated this crucial ability to the realm of the humanities. Lead study author Anne Collins McLaughlin, an associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University, believes that this kind of\u00a0limited view is a mistake, given how much critical thinking has in common with the scientific method. (In case\u00a0you need a refresher, Frank Wolfs, a physics\u00a0professor at Rochester University offers this\u00a0concise\u00a0definition to\u00a0his undergrad students: \u201cthe process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talk about the scientific method in school,\u201d McLaughlin says,\u00a0\u201cbut how often do students practice it outside of their science class?\u201d\u00a0From her perspective, not many. After she and her co-author noticed \u201ca high amount of non-critical thinking in our communities and our students,\u201d they decided to find out if a multidisciplinary attack on pseudo-science \u2014 a close cousin of fake news \u2014\u00a0might boost critical thinking skills.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unvaccinated children die, savings are spent on psychics and in the first month of 2014 two children died during an \u2018exorcism.\u2019<\/p>\n
So the team designed a semester-long course called \u201cFrauds and Mysteries in History,\u201d taking on\u00a0science-adjacent beliefs \u201cfor which there is no or can be no empirical evidence\u201d \u2014 from psychic powers and alternative medicine to Atlantis or Bigfoot. While beliefs in such phenomena\u00a0may seem harmless, the authors contended that their harm \u201cis real: unvaccinated children die, savings are spent on psychics and in the first month of 2014\u00a0two children died during an \u2018exorcism.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
McLaughlin\u2019s sample wasn\u2019t exactly huge: 41\u00a0males and 78 females participated in the undergraduate course.\u00a0The students were taught how to use tools and methods for ensuring critical thinking, such as Carl Sagan\u2019s \u201cBaloney Detection Kit,\u201d<\/em> which suggests logical fallacies to watch out for, and a text called \u201cThe Book of Bad Arguments.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cArmed with these tools, they had a number of different class activities and homework that got them to apply these tools to investigating some of the famous frauds and mysteries of history, like the Piltdown man and the building of the great pyramids,\u201d McLaughlin says.<\/p>\n Students\u2019 beliefs were measured pre- and post-semester, and all students experienced a reduction in pseudoscientific beliefs by end of the course. What McLaughlin found most compelling was that not only did they have less belief\u00a0in topics discussed in class, but they also showed a drop in belief for topics that were never talked about.<\/p>\n \u201cThis suggests to me that they were applying their new skills beyond the classroom,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n While these were college students, McLaughlin feels that young children would benefit as well. \u201cThe earlier and more often [they practice these skills], the better. Critical thinking is a skill like playing the piano. Just knowing how to read notes doesn\u2019t make one a piano player,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The classroom-turned-scientific study is just one example of educators finding new ways to instill critical thinking skills.\u00a0Sacramento, California, high school English teacher\u00a0Lynn Marie Rominger\u00a0is\u00a0another teacher who\u2019s\u00a0seen how vital\u00a0critical thinking can be in helping a young person distinguish fact from fiction. She teaches a critical thinking curriculum called English Reading and Writing Curriculum (ERWC). This curriculum was implemented because research found that students entering college did not have critical thinking skills particularly as it pertained to their ability to read and write critically.<\/p>\n \u201cThe students who go through this curriculum tend to do astoundingly better on their entry writing tests and university level and achieve better at college level,\u201d Rominger says.<\/p>\n Children from a young age should be able to critically discern things, from being fearful of inappropriate strangers\u00a0to understanding who is credible.<\/p>\n She teaches her students the key methods of persuasion, strong pillars of critical thinking: ethos, pathos, and logos.\u00a0\u201cWe go through articles and talk about why is it strong info. Is it using pathos, which appeals to a reader on an emotional level? Is it using logos, logical sound reasoning. Or ethos \u2014 [assessing] the credibility of the writer or speaker?\u201d Once they analyze these criteria, they have to apply them to their own writing and support their claims using all three aspects. She doesn\u2019t edit the students\u2019 work for them\u00a0but grades them on their next paper by looking to see if they made improvement on suggestions.<\/p>\n She wishes that this kind of critical-thinking-based reading and writing analysis was taught to even younger students. \u201cYou want to teach children from a young age to critically discern things,\u201d she says, \u201cfrom learning to be fearful of inappropriate strangers\u00a0to understanding who they think are credible people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe focus on discussion and inquiry-based learning,\u201d says Elyssa Keller, a kindergarten teacher at a New York City public school, who puts her students\u00a0\u201cin the driving seat of their own learning.\u201d The younger they are, she believes, the earlier\u00a0healthy skepticism can take hold.<\/p>\n Share image and top image by Yegor Aleyev\\TASS via Getty Images.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a time when fake news\u00a0has become \u201ca game of Whack-a-Mole,\u201d popping up on a variety of media platforms\u00a0while\u00a0duping audiences of all\u00a0political affiliations,\u00a0teaching young people to discern the difference between what is or isn\u2019t reliable information has become\u00a0an unusually difficult, and urgent, challenge. Fortunately, a\u00a0new study published in the journal Science and Education has brought…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}