Calling Bullsh!t on Textbooks: More on Core Knowledge
by
Clay Burell
·
2009-04-14 07:05:00 UTC
Topics:
Great photo of great prof by Daniel Gasienica
I'm having the weirdest time on the Core Knowledge blog. A commenter over there just accused me of not valuing "knowledge" because I insisted it's "mere knowledge" without the more important critical thinking. And so I left the following comment, which I share here because it's as good as anything else I could say today. I'll leave that one for the psychologists.
Here's the dope (and for the record, I think Robert Pondiscio and I are closer on these CK questions than many of his readers are):
I agree that knowledge is foundational. I think it’s “mere” if it leaves students “bookful blockheads,” to quote Sam Johnson, who consider their ability to win at Trivial Pursuit as a sign of high culture or education.
If you teach, what subject do you teach? So much of my own point of view comes from my role as a humanities teacher. And in that role, I can tell you that I’ve seen high school students able to spout off facts (and learn them impressively), without the slightest ability to ask the basic questions that thinkers, not mere knowers, ask about received knowledge, be it from teachers, parents, preachers, politicians, textbooks, the media or the press.
If they’re only taught to know the stuff, and not trained to ask questions about it, then whatever “innate” critical thinking you say they're capable of at birth is still going to wither in schools. (We’re all innately capable of playing the piano, too, but without training we don’t get beyond Chopsticks.)
I’m starting to feel like a broken record on this space by repeating my question: why so much framing here of knowledge and critical thinking (and other skills like writing) as mutually exclusive? In my practice they’re not at all.
And I’ll tell you this: Nothing turns students on to a textbook like a teacher who starts the year by saying, “As we learn the material in this thing, we’re also going to talk back to it, criticize it, ask why it left these facts out while including those, and what sort of person it’s trying to mold you into. We’re going to reward anybody who comes up with a good case for calling bullsh*t on the textbook.”
Calling BS on any authoritatively packaged knowledge is mere slang for “critical thinking.” It keeps students awake, makes the knowledge more interesting, and the future less ripe for demagogues.
A supporting gallery:
Fox "news" image by Davezilla was taken
propaganda of the weak mind by martha madness