Replies

The "challenging" stuff tends to be an exercise in finding the BS.

I assigned my own 10th grader the task of winnowing down cell phone providers and family plans, which I was finding overwhelming. Last week he presented me with a choice of Verizon or Cingular, and we decided on Cingular. On the way to the store, we were discussing what we might encounter in the way of sales pitches.

He suggested that if our "BS detectors" started going off that we should make "whoop-whoop-whoop" noises to each other. I was amused by this -- 10th graders do have "BS detectors," it seems.

I can recall being a 10th grader and having an adequate BS detector. In fact I can recall going over most of the philosophical issues we discuss on these threads at age 12. Of course I had a pile of "Made Simple" books to help me along, but they were designed as notes for freshman college courses.

What I did not have at age 12 or in the 10th grade was a background of facts with which to reason about controversies in biology. It is one thing to teach abstract concepts about critical thinking; it is another thing for a school board to disseminate factually incorect statements and require students to memorize them to pass a course. The sample "challenging" statements in this lesson plan are BS dredged from creationist literature. They are at best, misleading, and more often, simply untrue.