Calling Bullsh!t on Textbooks: More on Core Knowledge

Published April 14, 2009 @ 07:05AM PT

bullsh!t

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:

Faux news

propaganda

Fox "news" image by Davezilla was taken
propaganda of the weak mind by martha madness

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Comments (7)

I had colleagues who were quite upset when I let my students questions things. I felt it was important for them to ask (in an appropriate way) why about things so they could better understand them. I usually expected them to give facts that supported their opinions and statements so why shouldn't I show them the same respect. I think they should read textbooks in the same way. When I was growing up, my teacher was quite upset when I questioned the textbook because the textbook view of US/China relationship was quite different than what my parents were teaching me at home (and they lived there during that time). Great post!

Posted by Pat Hensley on 04/14/2009 @ 08:05AM PT
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Thanks for a very thought-provoking posting.

Of course, Calling bulls**t on a textbook requires you to know more than is in the textbook itself.

Some more thoughts on the 21st-century skills/Core Knowledge debate here: http://tinyurl.com/abjgcu

Posted by Claus von Zastrow on 04/14/2009 @ 12:33PM PT
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True enough, Claus, but don't you think the resources for supplementing textbook knowledge abound now more than ever?

I've already got a unit in mind for Singapore next year that involves students making an online supplement/critique of whatever textbooks we read. Should be fun.

Posted by Clay Burell on 04/14/2009 @ 08:20PM PT
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Hi again, Claus,

I visited your link and it took me to your post, which I'd already read, enjoyed, and bookmarked. You folks do some intersting stuff on your site.

To expand a bit more on your "you have to know more than is in the textbook itself" to criticize it point, I'd just say that:

a) a 21st C Skills response might be that you may, instead of _already_ knowing more, need to know _how to learn more_ through smart search and website evaluation skills; and

b) a critical thinking response might say you can criticize textbooks with no extra knowledge of facts, by simply knowing how to ask critical questions (e.g., "To what degree, and in what ways, are women/minorities/other nations or cultures/working classes, etc covered in this text?" "Are characters and events overwhelmingly painted in positive lights, with little or no acknowledgement of mistakes, shortcomings, weaknesses?").

Know what I mean?

Posted by Clay Burell on 04/15/2009 @ 01:59AM PT
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Now why do you say that?
It is quite possible to disprove one claim in a text without knowing everything else in the book.
You could say that "Calling bulls**t on a textbook requires you to know *better* about at least one item." But knowing *more* has nothing to do with it.

Posted by Alan Cooper on 04/19/2009 @ 10:21PM PT
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Hi, Clay--

Thanks for the kind message. I do agree with you that we can equip students to approach textbooks critically even when they don't have extra knowledge. We should all be sensitive to propaganda--even in areas we know little or nothing about.

You describe a wonderful learning process: Read a textbook for what it is worth; Call bulls**t when it seems facile or exclusionary; Do research online or elsewhere to verify/challenge the textbook's assumptions, or to discover a fuller account. At the end of this process, you know enough about the textbook to render a critique, you know about ideas/facts/perspectives not presented in the textbook, you know a bit more about how and where to find information, and you have a more fully refined bulls**t sensor. And you've broadened your body of knowledge considerably.

This goes well beyond the argument (or perhaps straw man?) that we don't need to know facts because we can look them up online.

Your approach, it seems to me, values both knowledge and skills. Yes, it's a truisim, but neither can survive without the other. The Singapore unit sounds great.

Posted by Claus von Zastrow on 04/15/2009 @ 09:37AM PT
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Clay, I wish you were my teacher.

Posted by Teny Eurdekian on 04/21/2009 @ 02:45PM PT
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Author

Clay is an American high school Humanities teacher, technology coach, and Apple Distinguished Educator who has taught for the last eight years in Asian international schools. According to law, he's married to his wife. According to his wife, he's married to his Mac.