Told you so.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/05/oh-humanities.html
A recent study by North Carolina State University researchers finds that teaching critical thinking skills in a humanities course significantly reduces student beliefs in "pseudoscience" that is unsupported by facts.
For this study, the researchers worked with 117 students in three different classes. Fifty-nine students were enrolled in a psychology research methods course, which taught statistics and study design, but did not specifically address critical thinking. The other 58 students were enrolled in one of two courses on historical frauds and mysteries - one of which included honours students, many of whom were majors in science, engineering and mathematics disciplines.
The psychology class served as a control group. The two history courses incorporated instruction explicitly designed to cultivate critical thinking skills. For example, students in the history courses were taught how to identify logical fallacies - statements that violate logical arguments, such as non sequiturs.
Some of the topics in the assessment, such as belief in Atlantis, were later addressed in the "historical frauds" course. Other topics, such as the belief that 9/11 was an "inside job," were never addressed in the course. This allowed the researchers to determine the extent to which changes in student beliefs stemmed from specific facts discussed in class, versus changes in a student's critical thinking skills.
The control group students did not change their beliefs - but students in both history courses had lower beliefs in pseudoscience by the end of the semester. Students in the history course for honours students decreased the most in their pseudoscientific beliefs; on average, student beliefs dropped an entire point on the belief scale for topics covered in class, and by 0.5 points on topics not covered in class. There were similar, but less pronounced, changes in the non-honours course.
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-critical-humanities-belief-pseudoscience.html
There's a window in every child's life, where he's constantly asking Why!? If you ever have kids, yourself, the first time your kid asks Why, that's the moment to start introducing critical thinking. I don't know when people started thinking little kids were idiots, maybe the Edwardians. You don't have to teach the little critters formal logic as such, but answer the Why Question with the questions formal logic would ask. The results are thrilling, I kid you not, watching a small child beginning to wrestle with how to reason:
ReplyDeleteAnd there's this:
amazon.com - An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: Ali Almossawi, Alejandro Giraldo: 9781615192250: Amazon.com: Books