Thursday, February 21, 2013

Skepticism in the classroom


Yesterday, I posted a quote from David Suzuki on my facebook group about science education failing to incorporate skepticism. This was shared widely and approvingly reposed by several highly followed pages.


If you are a science educator yourself, you probably responded to this quote by saying something like "that is easy for you to say. I have tried to teach critical thinking and it is very hard to find material that I could actually use in my classroom."

I take this complaint very seriously. It is difficult to find good critical thinking materials that are both interesting and can actually be applied in the real world. Another reasonable requirement is that these resources need to be very affordable or free. This is because, at least in the United States, good educators get paid just as poorly as bad educators. Even if they are phenomenal science teachers, they simply do not have the extra money available to buy a bunch of stuff. Fortunately for us, many skeptical educators have already anticipated your concerns and have gone through the trouble of creating free skeptical resources for the classroom. These booklets and videos investigate fascinating topics and are tailored for children and young adults who need a dose of critical thinking added to their school curriculum and can can be downloaded with the click of a button.

The first resource that you should check out is a series of short pamphlets/books created by the James Randi Education Foundation. All three of these guides are custom made with certain age groups in mind (one is for elementary, one for late middle school, and one for high school) and are about non-threatening topics like dowsing, ESP, and faeries (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer of Sherlock Holmes believed in them). The JREF has provided both student and teacher editions so that you have all the material you need to lead a class discussion.  

If this sounds interesting, please click here and download them.
 
The second resource that I recommend is Brian Dunning's movie, Here be Dragons. This movie is designed to be watched in one class period (it is 45 minutes) and covers very interesting material like conspiracy theories and homeopathy. Mr. Dunning does an excellent job of outlining logical fallacies and exposing many of the bunk that hucksters without being threatening. He also explains how certain features of science work, why people believe in weird things, and even provides an excellent reading list at the end for students who want to know more. 
 
If Mr. Dunning's movie sounds appealing, you can get it here for free
 
Third, I want you to check out this workshop on instituting skepticism in the classroom. It was conducted at TAM 9 (The Amazing Meeting, which is a skeptical conference held by the JREF each year) and was later posted on the web. It includes lots of goodies including advice for teachers and several activities that can easily be incorporated into a lesson plan. In one of the most interesting of these activities, your students will get to see how astrology fools our brains. This is a valuable because realizing you can be easily fooled is the first step to becoming a skeptic. 
 
If you want to see these resourced, they have been made available here
 
Finally, I want you to check out these lessons created by the Leonore Annenburg Institute for Civics. While the institute's name may not sound skeptical, their lessons are some of the best available. They teach everything from how to examine popular claims to how our biases lead is to distorted conclusions. Given the nature of their material, they could just as easily be included into a civics or history class.
 
If this sounds appealing to you, click here to get these lessons.  

Hopefully these free resources serve you well in your classroom. In my opinion, they are all excellent and (if I had one) I put my seal of approval on them. If you are teaching your child critical thinking at home and feel left out, keep paying attention to my blog because I will be posting a list of affordable children's books that teach skepticism very soon. In the meantime, I recommend you incorporating these lessons at home.
 

6 comments:

  1. Thanks Greg. This is "awesome stuff" (to quote my favorite former podcast host). I'll forward it to a colleague of mine who I am sure will find it useful in his biology classes.

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  2. Hello, Sagredo, I ended up at this site from your twitter page given on your Think Atheist page. The Think Atheist podcast is my favorite skeptic/atheist podcast and I'm trying to find out what happened to it. Is it cancelled? Just on hiatus? Thanks.

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    1. Hello, cj. I had to resign as host because my family, work, and educational commitments. keep an eye out thought, because I have some big plans for the future.

      Also, follow me here:
      http://www.facebook.com/ScienceAndSkepticism

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  3. Thanks for the reply. It is kind of weird that you stopped with no announcement anywhere. You should be proud of the work you did. I listen to several skeptic podcasts, and I've learned the most from yours. Good to see you have future plans. I'll be sure to come back and see what it is.

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    1. I started a Facebook channel that already has almost 7,000 followers. Here is the link if you are interested. :)
      https://www.facebook.com/ScienceAndSkepticism

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