For all thirteen years of my career teaching high school English, one consistent skill that I’ve sought to impart upon my students is the habit of using concrete evidence in support of opinions formed or conclusions drawn.
The “why” is simple. Responsible citizens must form opinions about complex issues in order to participate fully and productively in not only their work lives but also their personal lives. Those opinions, no matter what they be, ought to be based on a thorough analysis of whatever facts are at hand on an issue.
Seems simple enough, unless there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what a “fact” even is.
Analysis is a cognitively challenging task: presently, my twelfth graders are struggling through their exit-requirement senior research paper, wherein they must identify a critical issue, explore and evaluate in an unbiased way the multiple perspectives on the issue (beyond the reductionist pro v. con), and then from their research, draw a personal conclusion based on the evidence uncovered.
Some of the lessons around this research process involve evaluation of source material for validity and reliability. Our school library has subscriptions to various services such as SIRS and ProQuest that compile print and online newspaper, magazine, journal and web articles, to aid students in sifting through the millions of “hits” a bare Google search might return.
One resource I have designated off-limits for this particular research project is a valuable-in-other-situations database called Polling the Nations, which compiles opinion poll data. Some opinion polls, if the results are properly analyzed, can be useful. However, let’s say for example there is a public perception poll about the Common Core State Standards, and it turns out that the “majority of respondents oppose the standards.”
We could stop thinking right there, and use this “popular position” to form our own. And truthfully, that is where many people stop.
Farleigh Dickinson University conducted a public survey about Common Core and uncovered an important distinction that illustrates why opinion polls are dangerous for my students to use: It turns out that the vast majority of people with opinions seem base these opinions on other people’s opinions, not on actual facts.
FDU’s survey revealed that “a 55 percent majority said the Common Core covers at least two subjects that it does not actually cover…misconceptions were widespread among both supporters and opponents of the program, peaking among those who say they are paying the most attention to the standards.” (Source; emphasis mine.) Further, fewer than one in five could accurately identify what subject areas the standards actually covered, with the rest mis-identifying things such as sex education, evolution, and global warming as content of the Common Core.
My reading of this: Those, regardless of “side,” who claim to know the most (or claim to be paying the most attention) have the greatest degree of misconception. I propose that this misconception may be because people are not actually reading the standards or policies themselves, but are paying attention to “experts” or “authorities” to help them know what to think. To be fair, even the data as presented in the linked article is subject to criticism, as the subgroup of subgroup analysis gets muddy; though the conclusion is worthy of analysis.
Unfortunately, we live in a political and media climate where opinion, spin, and distillation of situations into sound bytes inhibit our ability to form well-founded opinions on objective facts. Worse, we’re trained as a society that changing our minds in light of new concrete evidence is a sign of weakness.
Differentiating fact from opinion used to be one of those fundamental reading skills that seemed so simple. Not so anymore: In a recent lesson with one of my classes, we were reviewing how to select quality information from research sources and classifying the info based on what gave it either validity or influence over a reader (rhetorical triangle). When I asked students to locate “facts” from an informational article about wind energy, some students highlighted quotations from certain experts in the field and identified these as “facts.” When I pushed as to why that qualified the detail as a fact, the reply was troubling: “It is a fact because it is this guy’s expert opinion.”
Looks like I have work left to do.
Glad it helped!
That continuum in your post, Paul, is perfect. I am stealing that for my English classes and am going to share it with my colleagues…great stuff.
Great post, Mark. I’ve struggled with this, too, but I think why I struggled with it so much was because I was having trouble making this fact-opinion dichotomy concrete to my students. It wasn’t until I realized myself that it wasn’t actually a dichotomy, but a continuum of subjectivity, that I was able to help my students grapple with the nuances in fact and opinion, even helping me introduce ideas like theory, hunch, and how bias impacts all of these.
While I did this with fifth-graders, I think you could adjust and foster a discussion with your high school students if you adapt it.
http://thethinkingspecialist.com/2014/04/28/argument-fact-and-opinion-using-student-misconceptions-to-build-lessons/
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I hadn’t seen that site, Jan, thanks! I always try to get the students to recognize that there is always a transaction happening on the internet…someone is always benefitting, even if not financially, from people reading/viewing. Some sites are more transparent, if not noble, in their intentions…others are not. No matter what, there is nothing anywhere on the internet that is completely free of bias. Even the choice of what information to include or exclude telegraphs that bias. Bias is not inherently a bad thing, as long as we are astute enough readers to decode it. I try to get kids to see what is included and excluded and how that influences the ideas presented… and this is developmentally difficult, considering that the ability to discern this only comes with more experience in the world.
I agree wholeheartedly, Mark. I challenge anyone who has actually read the CCSS, to find something wrong with them. and if they do find something wrong, super! Let’s fix it and make it better. We have – literally – a once-in-a-lifetime chance to adopt strong standards nation-wide. Let’s not blow it.
Boy, your comment, “We’re trained as a society that changing our minds in light of new concrete evidence is a sign of weakness” really hit the nail on the head. That–and the idea that compromise is somehow evil–are two forces that have helped lead to the current situation in Congress where “we’re not all paddling in the same direction but beating each other over the heads with our oars” (Derek Kilmer).
Have you found this website to help your kids evaluate web sources? http://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/evaluating-web-resources/