Snow

I teach various levels of high school biology. After running into several years worth of honors students that reported that one of their middle school science teachers vehemently believed that the Moon landing was a hoax (remember that Fox special)... and also after reading many of their research papers where they were just as likely to point to questionable internet sites, consipiracies, and avidly watching anything that was "mysterious" on tv, I decided to try something different with next year's bunch.

I dont want them to lose their sense of wonder... but they need to learn to be a bit more skeptical.

As a summer assignment, my upcoming 9th grade biology I honors students are reading the first 12 chapters of Dr. Sagan's "Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark". They will have read stopped with the chapter on the "balony detection kit". They are keeping a journal as they read the book, where they comment on self-selected quotes within each chapter.

When they return I want to do some kind of project with them based on this material. I thought perhaps I'd put them in groups... give them some nutty article from a tabloid and let them go at it, using what they've learned.

Any other ideas?

Mageth

Sounds like a plan. Another good book is Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things."

Shadowy Man

Welcome to the forum Snow!

It is an excellent book and even if you get through to only one student you will have done a great service to the community.

Ab_Normal

no ideas, just great big hugs for teaching actual thinking skills... if I have to, i'll move heaven and earth to get a teacher like you for my spawn.

(edited) looking at the other topics in this forum, I think you should turn them loose on the Sci-Fi channel.

Craig

Instead of something obviously a hoax, as in a tabloid, why not let them find something on their own that's in a "reputable" publication?

I'm thinking of an ad for alternative/herbal remedies, articles in the newspaper about various religions ("God saved our church from the hurricane"), "news" shows about psychics, stuff like that.

It would be more of a real world test of what they learned.

Bugs

Get them to try their new skeptical skills on any number of pseudo-scientific or otherwise dubious claims, such as:

Homeopathy
Acupuncture
Mediums
Psychics
Astrology
Creationism and/or intelligent design

Get them to compare and contrast with some claims that are backed by evidence, such as:

Evidence based medicine
Evolution

Roland98

You could always try some of the articles on AIG or ICR. That way, you're killing two birds with one stone.

Azathoth

Maybe you can use the mythological creation accounts of mostly dead religions,to make your point.I'm sure that your students would be able to apply it to the more predominant ones,as well.

Some religious people are more than willing to look for the flaws in someone else's unverifiable supernatural beliefs,while carefully avoiding looking at their own.

If you have any religious fundy-type students in the class,pointing out the logical problems of their belief system,directly,might only serve to alienate them.

Snow

Thanks for the reminder about Michael Shermer. Scientific American was kind enough to donate a classroom set of one of their issues last year and it just happened to be the one with his editorial that contained a condensed version of the book. We did read it as a class and discuss it. I need to bring it back out.

Good points about using some of the more common pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo that assaults us every day. Perhaps as an exercise on how I want them to do the project, we'll do an example from one of the tabs with an obvious bit of nonsense... like the bat boy. Then for their actual project they can go after some of the more disguised issues like medicinal fakery.... diet quacks, etc.

I'll probably save the creationism/evolution debate stuff when we actually do the evolution unit.... though I only make a point of discussing it on the first day as I dont like to taint the rest of the information. However year before last I did have a student write his research paper on ID... which was a test of both our patience. *lol* Turns out I'm going to have that student again this year as he'll be in Biology II... so I may have him revisit it again as he still had a lot of issues to work out.

sakrilege

My high school physics teacher suggested I read Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision which I did. I'm not sure if I was meant to be able to debunk it or if the teacher believed it (my impression is the former) but I did take it at face value. There was no followup and I didn't understand it was crap until later. I did end up getting a degree in physics so I wasn't ruined but critical thinking is a skill that needs to be taught IMO. In my case critical thinking didn't just happen, I had to learn it over time. Reading Sagan's Broca's Brain was one of the keys for me.


I think your approach with Sagan's book is excellent and wished I had had such training.