How can skepticism improve learning?
Being open minded is an important skill to have, is it not? Accepting information without any filter, however, can be dangerous and foolish. On the other hand, being too skeptical and cynical about everything we see and read will result in an isolated life of fear and doubt. No one wants that. So how de strike the balance of being open minded and skeptical and why is that important? Perhaps the better question is how do we get students to find that "happy medium" of skepticism? To answer those questions we must anticipate the subsequent inquires that children will have when we tell them they skepticism is a fragile, yet vital tool to have as a learner and personal, in general. Here are a few of the thoughts I have after exploring the reasons that we question/absorb/reflect information and the individual experiences that lead us to those conclusions:
The environment in which we grow up has a tremendous affect on what beliefs and opinions we bring to any given source of information. This component alone sparks all kinds of inquiry and debate, but I want to focus on the individual aspect of assessing information, and even more specifically, information found on the web or through technology. The path I took to reach a "neutral stance" or "intelligent understanding"of a source was a process of determining the meaning of the article. Here is one example:
There was a time when I would read "news" and soak in every bit of information thinking that people could not lie on the internet. That naive mindset slowly faded as I began to understand the author of that "news" had a purpose and a motive behind writing the information. Once I began to ask myself questions pertaining to the motive behind writing, I slowly started to realize that there was a bias laced into most pieces of literature. However vague or obvious, this opinion based information allowed me to see that there were different perspectives that could be had on a certain matter. Furthermore, there wasn't a right and a wrong answer, just an opinion.
The activity today really got me thinking deeply about how and why we question the motives people have to speak their opinion or write their thoughts for many to see. As a student, what reasons do you have to be skeptical towards the teacher? Maybe (s)he is always asking me to answer because he wants to make me look bad and knows that I don't know the answer . I think Mr. X wants us to do this work so he can check his fantasy football results. I feel that Ms. Y is only concerned with our test scores because that is how she gets paid.
I have only begun to imagine the types of skepticism we will all face as teachers. I do know that a certain amount of cynicism is necessary to develop an intelligent understanding of something, but how much is up for debate. I, personally, practice little skepticism in my day unless it is a certain area or content that I know to be predictably bias one way or the other. The questions I will consider moving forward with this thought in mind is how I will inform students of the importance of curiosity/skepticism? As well as how I can use activities like the 20 questions game today to make it engaging, fun, yet thought provoking.
Mr. Wilson
Oh Mr. X, I don't blame you for checking to see if your trade went through. What exactly is a healthy sense of skepticism? I think that striking this balance is one of the most difficult challenges that we face as opinionated beings. Inevitably, 99% of us include our opinions and biases in the things that we have to say, and even that 1% that may be "better" often will let it slip in unconsciously. What complicates the matter even more, is that different situations (in my opinion) often demand different levels of skepticism from a viewer's behalf. All of that to say, it is a really tricky line that we all must walk. I think through understanding the situation and the author, determining how important the content is for you, and trying to figure out the counterpoint to the one presented in the piece, you can begin to address this issue with a healthy amount of skepticism. Without it, you might end up taking trade advice from Taco...and no one wants that.
ReplyDeleteIs "Taco" some notorious fantasy football source?? I guess that's a research topic for another day!
ReplyDeleteThis is a thought-provoking post... I wonder whether it might be helpful to distinguish between cynicism and skepticism. To me, cynicism is biased; it assumes that the author means to deceive or be unreliable. Skepticism is heading toward more neutral doubt. But our tech professors brought up another hot-button term: "inquiry-based learning." Is it possible to teach our students to pose questions that don't make any pre-judgments about the author? Is such neutrality desirable?
With the 20 Questions game, we really had to rely on reasoning and not on intuition to do well. In seeking to find an answer, the process became de-individualized because we were told to ask the "best questions." Would this eventually prevent students from taking passionate stances on issues?
Hope the next class can answer these questions about inquiry-based teaching. Thanks for an interesting post!
Great posting, Evan, as evidenced by the marvelous comments it generated. I think, for example, that Catherine's distinction between reason and intuition is a thoughtful and provocative one. I wonder if these two cognitive processes don't have more in common that might otherwise appear...I feel that intuition might be a kind of internal reflex, based in experience and our processing of same, that has a kind of reasoning process baked into it. It may not be the ideal kind of reasoning that we imagine a scientist or a philosopher engaging in, but I think that it points in that direction. I think that this is why I am drawn to the idea of closely examining our intuition and what it draws upon....it's something that students bring with them that has real value in school, or in any place where the doing of intellectual work is valuable and important. I think that Casey picks out another important thread from your post, Evan, when he talks about the value of helping our students to find and make use of the (my paraphrase) "right amount" of skepticism. I think that pulling apart skepticism is equally valuable to looking more closely at the basis for our intuition...surely the kind of healthy skepticism that you and Casey seek is at the core of the work done by historians, scientists, linguists...thinkers.
ReplyDeleteThe great questions that you're raising seem to me to form part of an agenda for the observations you'll be making and the informal research you'll be undertaking as you begin trying to see what goes on in classrooms with fresh eyes.