Learning to Think: Beware the Poisonous
Underwater Squirrels!
by Lisa Ann Rodriguez, PhD
When I first started dating
my husband, we were hiking in Wildwood Park and he told me we needed to be
careful of the poisonous underwater squirrels. I was young and gullible, he was
cute and said it with a straight face, so he had me going for a few minutes. It
sounded real. And if it sounds real, it must be real, right!? Then I stopped
and did something I believe people should try to do more often...I thought for
myself.
From
the day we are born we are taught about life and how to live it, first by our
parents and older siblings, later from religious leaders, teachers, friends,
colleagues, and by the media. Instead of being taught to recognize bias and
think critically, we are taught to trust authority figures and do what we are
told. Children are often admonished for questioning what their parents,
priests, or teachers tell them. It's interpreted as a sign of disrespect,
rather than encouraged as a positive step toward independent thought and
healthy inquisitiveness as they construct their own understanding of themselves
and the world.
Parental
Influence
I
was discussing upcoming elections with a colleague, an intelligent young
teacher with a Master’s degree in education. I asked her who she planned to
vote for, and she told me, "I just vote for whoever my parents are voting
for". She was driving the car so, to avoid being dumped on the side of the
road, I didn't voice my inner thoughts: "But what if they are wrong?"
along with, "Why would you relinquish control of your brain to anyone
else. The tendency for people to identify politically with their parents is
typical. Research shows that political attitudes develop early, and that people
adopt their parents' political party approximately 75% of the time (Bunge,
2008). In addition to political loyalty to parents, many people extend this
philosophy to their political party. They don't investigate and evaluate
individual candidates or issues. They simply vote along party lines. Is this
loyalty, ignorance, or just laziness?
I
am not advocating for children to disrespect or defy their parents. Registering
for the political party that opposes ones parents out of rebelliousness is just
as mindless as following along without question. But being a parent does not
automatically make a person right...academically or ethically. Parents teach
their children how to share, to fish, to play board games, to clean their
rooms, to say "Pleased to meet you", and to go to bed at a particular
time. But sometimes they teach things like racism, dishonesty, gossiping, envy,
cruelty, and selfishness. Children must develop the ability to think
independently, evaluate what they are taught, and to apply it conscientiously
to their own lives.
Questioning
Traditional Schooling
I
remember making my way through the educational system, getting good grades and
making no waves. I believed whatever was printed in textbooks. I happily
swallowed the Thanksgiving story: corn, stuffing, and the whole darn turkey. I
learned that the pilgrims and Indians became friends and lived happily ever
after. No one told me how the amicability of the relationship between the
pilgrims and Native Americans led to Europeans claiming the land as their own,
capturing and killing or enslaving people they considered Godless savages. This
led to the Pequot War, "one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought"
(Bates, 2012). That's exciting and interesting stuff! I wonder why they left it
out of the curriculum. In the words of Paul Simon (1973) in his song, Kodachrome,
“When I think back to all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I
can think at all”.
Freire
(1970) described two conflicting forms of education, one with the goal of
maintaining social class differences and protecting the interests of the
dominant class, the other with the goal of liberation for all people. He
explained that the banking form of education was a tool used by members of the
dominant class to oppress other groups and dehumanize people by treating them
as objects (p. 56). In contrast, he described problem-posing education as a
model that values the experiences of students and empowers them by making
education relevant and respecting them as equal human beings (Freire, 1985).
The banking form of education is characterized by students viewed as passive
receivers of knowledge, devoid of significant prior knowledge or experiences,
and dependent on the teacher to “deposit information” into them, similar to the
way money is deposited into a bank (p. 72). There is no reciprocity in the
teacher-student relationship in this form of education, only a one-way transfer
of knowledge.
Consequences
of Acquiescence
An
example of our natural tendency to follow directions rather than defy authority
is the notorious 1963 psychological experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram.
Participants were told to administer electric shocks to people if they
responded incorrectly to questions. Although no actual shocks were being
administered, participants believed they were punishing wrong answers with
increasingly higher levels of electrical voltage. The actors playing the part
of people being shocked screamed, cried, and begged to stop the experiment, but
when directed by the researcher to continue, many of the participants continued
to administer the artificial shocks even when the voltage indicator reached
dangerous to fatal levels (Russell, 2011). This experiment haunts me and makes
me question myself. I wonder what I would have done if I had been a
participant. Would my rebellious streak have overpowered my obedient, rule-following,
good girl streak? What if I had been in Nazi Germany? I hope that I would have
been one of the few strong and brave individuals that hid Jewish people in
their attics, but I'll never know for sure. The best I can do is to try to be
an independent thinker and to teach my own children and students to do the
same.
The
serious consequences of lack of critical thinking and the tendency to follow
the herd was exposed in 1938 when Orson Welles played a little trick on the
American public entitled, War of the Worlds. He interrupted regular
radio programming with a very realistic sounding special bulletin informing
people that explosions had been observed on Mars and that spaceships were
flying toward Earth. Later, programming was interrupted again with reports that
spaceships had landed on Earth and that creatures were crawling out of them.
People ran to churches and gathered their families in panic. In 1944 the radio
broadcast was repeated in Santiago, Chile and caused even more devastating
hysteria. At least one fatal heart attack was blamed on the broadcast (Gosling,
2009).
Hadley
Cantril (1940), a psychologist at Princeton University studied the War of the
Worlds incident and concluded, “Social panics occur when large groups can't
discern reliable sources of advice from unreliable ones". Time Magazine, in describing the hysteria
caused by Orson Welles' radio broadcast about a Martian invasion, states,
"We're too smart these days. We've grown so inured to the often
unbelievable nonsense on television, or the absurd chain emails we gather in
our inboxes, that the idea of a hysteria-inciting radio play is laughable"
(Cruz, 2008). The author then facetiously remarks at the end of the article
that the American public is now far too sophisticated to be duped in this way
again and that we would never "Be fooled by telephone calls suggesting
that John McCain illegitimately fathered a black child; too smart to be fooled
by emails claiming Barack Obama is a secret Muslim" (Cruz, 2008).
Teaching
Tactfully
As
a teacher, I have to be careful not to say things that are disrespectful of
parents when discussing smoking, gangs, racism, and other things that many
parents may be involved in. If I teach students that they should not smoke
cigarettes, and some of them say, "My mom smokes!” it would not be
beneficial or respectful for me to respond, "Well, that’s stupid!"
Parents are, and usually should be, the most important influence in a child's
life. Instead, I tell them that all people make mistakes. I reveal that my mom
smoked, and that I loved her, but I wanted her to quit. I tell them that she
finally did, after my stepfather died from lung cancer caused by smoking. By
relating my personal experiences, I'm not telling them what to think and I'm
not saying derogatory things about their parents. I'm simply encouraging them
to think.
In
regard to racism, I have heard the following statements, and many other similar
ones, from children in elementary grades during the course of my 25 years of
teaching:
·
From a
Hispanic student - "I'm not allowed to go in the pool in our apartment
because black people go in it".
·
From a
Chinese student - "My mom won't let me go trick-or-treating because the
Mexicans will kidnap me".
I
consider teaching racism to one's children a form of psychological child abuse.
It is, to me, a kind of mental poison. Still, as a teacher, I had to choose my
responses carefully. Ask questions....expose them to experiences with people of
different races that contradict these damaging ideas...encourage them to think. The ability to connect students
from all over the world through the Internet can facilitate this strategy.
As
Kraemer stated (2012), the purpose of education is to "Teach children how
to think, not what to think". This statement is the foundation for the new
senate bill SB 1742 that promotes critical thinking and honest discussion of
controversial subjects in school. Kraemer warns supporters of the bill to be
prepared for resistance and ridicule from liberals because the bill encourages open
discussion and debate about evolution and creationism. She says, "They can't afford any
challenge to their broken theory of evolution" (Kraemer, 2012). While I
support her support of this bill, I take exception to her generalization of
liberals and people who believe in evolution. Many liberals are sensible,
inquisitive, open-minded people who enjoy and welcome discussion with those
that disagree with them. The same negative, reactionary, and closed-minded
characterization is often applied to right-wing conservatives, and I oppose
this stereotype just as fiercely.
I
have several friends, both real-time and virtual, whose political and
philosophical views are polar opposites from mine. As long as the discussion
remains courteous and respectful, I enjoy debating issues with them. Why would
I want to waste my time only discussing issues with people who agree with me?!
Discussing controversial issues forces us to explain our own ideas, clarifying
them in our own minds. Also, while we may never succeed in persuading one
another to adopt our point of view, we can learn things from our verbal
sparring partners, and they can learn from us. Parents and teachers can
encourage children to respect and appreciate opposing points of view, and
nurture the ability and willingness to participate in controversial discussions
without becoming either offensive or defensive.
The
Effect of Technology
The
increased use of the Internet in the past two decades has made myriad sources
of information instantly and conveniently available, facilitating research even
at the most elementary level. If a student wants to know what fireflies eat,
all they have to do is Google it. Social media makes it easier and quicker than
ever before to propagate one's message. This is a wonderful phenomenon when the
message is true and beneficial or inspiring. Regular non-celebrities have an
unprecedented ability to express themselves to the world in the form of words,
music, art, and multimedia. But with this empowering opportunity comes
responsibility. If Hitler could turn masses of common people into a murderous
mob by speaking charismatically into a microphone, how much more power might an
evil megalomaniac wield with social networking to multiply the size of the
audience to billions.
With
social media came the phenomenon of cyber-bullying. Bullies have always
existed, but victims did not often commit or attempt suicide as many have done
in the past decade. The difference is that, when bullying was limited to
real-time interactions, the number of bullies and bystanders was limited. Now,
in the age of Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, a few nasty people can multiply
the emotional wounds they inflict a thousand fold, making the victim feel like
they are ostracized by the entire world.
As
with mean-spirited, bullying posts, lies and rumors are also easily spread
through the Internet. A website dedicated to researching and reporting about
the veracity of information propagated on the Internet, or the lack thereof, is
Snopes.com. Whenever I receive an email or a Facebook posting warning me about
a particular food, product, or activity being dangerous; or when I read
something scandalous or derogatory about a person or group of people, I consult
Snopes. Scams and hoaxes are exposed on this website, and some stories that
sound unbelievable are verified; the stories are clearly labeled as
"True", "False" or "Mixed" and provide
explanation. I encourage my students to use this web site to help them evaluate
the things they hear or read on the Internet. I emphasize the critical
importance of checking for truth before passing something along to a
geometrically increasing number of friends and friends of friends.
The
analogy I use to teach elementary school students about Internet responsibility
is that the Internet is like a knife: useful, but dangerous. The privilege of
using the Internet comes with the necessity of learning to use it carefully and
responsibly. Sadly, every day I see evidence that full-grown adults have not
accepted this responsibility in the form of negative posts and photos that
attack people or groups of people by spreading lies or half-truths about them.
For example, I recently saw a poster that was being spread widely on Facebook
of a group of schoolchildren saying the pledge of allegiance, along with the
caption, "We no longer do this for fear of offending someone! Let's see
how many Americans will repost this". Several people responded to this
posting, stating that the pledge is still said daily in their school,
indicating that the practice is not in any danger of extinction. This posting
is alarming and reactionary, and it is being spread to millions at the click of
a button by people who do not take the time or effort to verify its message.
Another
recent development accompanying the rise of the Internet is Wikipedia: an
online encyclopedia that contains information (or misinformation) contributed
by anyone. It is a dynamic, ever-growing body of facts and folk wisdom--an
awesome and valuable resource that should not
be trusted! The administrators of Wikipedia do their best to moderate the
contributions and verify the information added to the gigantic database, but
there are too many contributors and the task is too huge. Because reliability
cannot be guaranteed, Wikipedia and other similar sources are usually not
permitted in universities as references in scholarly papers. Because I concur
with this assessment of its reliability, and because I believe that children
should be taught exemplary writing habits as early as possible, I do not allow
my 4th and 5th grade students to use Wikipedia as a source. I consider
Wikipedia to be a very useful tool, and I use it often myself, but not as a
cited source.
Returning
to the topic of gullibility, the widespread availability of the ideas presented
in Wikipedia to billions of people make it particularly dangerous, especially
if our citizenry is not well-prepared with critical thinking skills and the
courage to use them. A hilarious, albeit disturbing example occurred in 2006 when
the satirical comedian Stephen Colbert encouraged his television viewers to
edit an online article on elephants with false information. Viewers inserted
false information into approximately twenty articles before Wikipedia
administrators caught on and locked the subject, blocking Colbert from editing
Wikipedia. (Spring, 2006). Colbert, who often coins new words, introduced the
word "wikiality", defined as "The reality that exists if you
make something up and enough people agree with you - it becomes reality".
Funny, but disturbing, huh? If you compare Orson Welles' War of the Worlds hoax
with Stephen Colbert's demonstration of wikiality, one significant difference
is the number of people their words reached because of the media they had
available to them. The Internet and tools such as Wikipedia allow for the
possibility of easy and instant manipulation of masses of people, making high
level critical thinking skills more urgently needed than ever before. Children
and adults alike must realize that, just because something is on the Internet,
that doesn't make it true. Websites must be evaluated for credibility,
currency, and bias before the information presented there can be accepted as a
source of valid information.
“Common”
Sense?
In
conclusion, let's think about the phrase "common sense". The phrase
is inherently problematic because most of us have been conditioned to interpret
"common sense" as a positive, acceptable thing; but if we examine it
critically, it implies that what is sensible is what is believed commonly....by
the greatest number of people. However, quantity is not equivalent to quality.
We can argue that credibility is likely if most people agree on an issue, but
the historical examples of mass hysteria or evil contradict this argument.
I propose that sense must be
independent of common, or public opinion. We must teach children to listen to
all sides of an issue and then take the time to think about it in light of
their own perceptions of right and wrong, good and evil, healthy and unhealthy.
We must also take the time and make the effort to do this ourselves. So the
next time you read an alarming or reactionary email or Facebook posting, please
take the time to research the facts and think before you spread it...or just
ignore it, even if you are accused of not loving God or warned that you will be
cursed if you don't repost within five minutes. And, by the way, there is no
such thing as a poisonous underwater squirrel. But don't take my word for it!
References
Bates, S. The real
story of Thanksgiving. Manataka American Indian Council. Retrieved from http://www.manataka.org/page269.html
Bunge, K. (2008).
Party-training: Parents' influence on children's political attitudes is
powerful. GazetteXtra.com. Retrieved from
http://gazettextra.com/news/2008/oct/24/party-training-parents-influence-childrens-politic/.
Cantril, H. (1940).
Anatomy of a panic. Time. 35(16), 60.
Cruz, G. (2008). Orson
Welles' War of the Worlds. Time Entertainment. Retrieved from
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1855120,00.html.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New
York: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Freire, P. (1985). The
politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. Bergin & Garvey
Publishers: South Hadley, MA.
Gosling, J. (2009). War
of the Worlds radio broadcast, Santiago (1944). Retrieved from
http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/war_worlds_santiago.htm
Kraemer, K. (2012).
Purpose of education: Teach children how to think, not what to think. Examiner.
Retrieved from
http://www.examiner.com/article/purpose-of-education-teach-children-how-to-think-not-what-to-think-sb-1742.
Russell, N. (2011).
Milgram's obedience to authority experiments: Origins and early evolution. British
Journal of Social Psychology. 50(1), 140-162.
Simon, P. (1973).
Kodachrome. Warner Brothers.
Spring, C. (2006).
Stephen Colbert causes chaos on Wikipedia, gets blocked from the site.
Newsvine. Retrieved from
http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site.
