Teach them to think?
Wise owl teachers used to suggest that the fundamental purpose of schooling is to teach young people to think. For some reason, that priority never quite made it to the curriculum, at least, not in any classroom I was seated in. Previously I have praised the National Curriculum for bringing a step change in the quality of the educational experience, an opinion I strongly maintain, as it specifies core areas of knowledge and understanding and also attempts a balance between knowledge content and skills acquisition, in Science and other subjects. The first (1990) NC for Science had seventeen attainment targets, the first of which was specifically about the nature and processes of Science. ('Exploration of Science' was its title.) The perhaps inevitable slimming down that followed unfortunately led to not only the distillation of 17 attainment targets into a more manageable programme that respected workload concerns, but also a severe pruning of AT1. The ambitions that had been nurtured in the design of the Science Curriculum were not preserved in the modified version. In particular, the directions to show students how science skills could be demonstrated in connection with historical developments in science, such as our developing understanding of the nature of the solar system, were removed. Such narratives and investigations could perhaps have been reintegrated into other sections of the repackaged curriculum, but textbook writers and exam specification authors generally did not value this priority. I rather wonder how many of them realised how important it was.
In more recent years, the DFE under ministers such as Michael Gove directed a particular refocusing of the delivery of the National Curriculum which had implications for the way the balance of skills and knowledge would be addressed. The EBacc (English Baccalaureate) statistical performance measure became a hoop through which schools, and therefore students, would be forced to jump. Slimming down administration and cost cutting became excuses to remove coursework, and therefore, skills development, from the curriculum. This need not be the case, it could be objected, but this would be naïve. If it isn't going to be examined, then schools won't teach it. The 'National Curriculum' is not the sole basis for shaping the educational journeys that students might undertake. The nature of the final examination syllabus and the assessment regime in which that journey is completed are also key shapers of the wider unwritten curriculum that students experience.
Less admin, more teaching. Quite so. Focus finances on teachers and the classroom and laboratory experience. Absolutely. Avoid burdening 15-16 year old students with punishing exam and coursework schedules. Well indeed. But the management of time, money and bureaucracy are not educationally neutral activities. Are we now better positioned to teach Science and grow new scientists, as well as a generation of students who understand what Science is and its ongoing contribution to society?
Many of us are not convinced that we are. We fear that we have rather gone full circle, and post-Gove's reforms, are back in a distinctly Dickensian situation. In the opening lines of 'Hard Times' (Charles Dickens, 1854) the teacher's manager put it like this:
Critical Thinking
A few years into my career there was a small victory for those wise owl teachers I reminisced about. A one year AS level course (half an A level) was developed that proved popular with sixth forms who wanted to broaden their students' experience without adding to the content burden they faced. It was a requirement in my school for students taking two A levels, and an option for those following three- typical flexibilities in the non-National Curriculum years after GCSE. The course taught students the formal nature of an argument, being the making of a claim with some evidence. Through a sequence of case studies, in which class discussion was the default activity, we would attempt to get better at thinking. Some studies would look at topics that are easy to critique, such as recent product advertising media, while others would engage more challenging topics such as Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda from the late 1930s. Note that the inception of this course predated the common use of the internet by students. The only 'content' required in this curriculum were the criteria for evaluating sources of information and the claims based on them, so-called credibility criteria which might be summed up in mnemonics such as RAVEN or CRAVEN, viz
At times it could be challenging to keep students' minds focused (is it ever thus?!) on the skills being developed rather than the content that was in question at any time, since it would only ever be skills rather than content that would determine their examination outcome. But this rather begs a question. Is good thinking, so-called critical thinking, only about the process of thinking, or does it matter what is being thought about? I will come to this below. But the point in question in the AS course was about the evaluation of sources of so-called evidence, and the basis on which claims are being made. This is a reasonable enough aim, and further resources have been developed to assist students at all levels post GCSE. Here is another mnemonic which brings a different focus to the criteria that could be used to evaluate discrete sources of information. 'CARS' is more tailored to the pitfalls of the internet age, where students can so easily be caught out by web sources of dubious academic reputation (if any!).
The cartoon below is a modified version of one that used to amuse my students tremendously- you can see that there is now a computer featured, which did not appear in the original. As I write, Putin's war against Ukraine is passing into its seventh month; this cartoon offers a deeply cutting analysis of the 'sources' emerging from both sides.
Thinking skills at 11-16
Should we be teaching all students to think about these, or other things? Surely these skills do belong in the KS3 and 4 curriculum, not just as an option for post-GCSE students following an academic learning route? The cautious might reply that we ought not overburden the younger and less able students whose requirement for a basic set of GCSE results is a higher priority. This debate is ongoing, but I will observe here that some younger students are being introduced to critical thinking skills and familiarity with credibility criteria under the heading of 'Gifted and Talented', or 'Higher Ability Pupils' as they are latterly described. Schools are developing bespoke in-house extra-curricular programmes to assist those so identified (and it is entirely up to each school how they do that) to reach their full potential. In principle it is recognised that students who do well in the standard curriculum don't need or appreciate more of the same, but rather something different. So I find myself delivering a speed course to a few 13 year olds on credibility criteria and critical thinking skills. For some reason, they are much amused by this alternative mnemonic, which I've given out at the end of the course as a plenary.
Teaching about the credibility of claims in Science and Religion studies
If you are a teacher or student who is unfamiliar with the resources I have referred to above, then I hope that you will be much helped by this discovery. There is a reference to a full slide deck below on Critical Thinking that will repay further study. Whether offered as a discrete section of the curriculum at any key stage or not, your teaching and learning will certainly benefit from the strategic perspectives deployment of these perspectives, not least at a time when 'fake news' is a phrase that has entered students' everyday vocabulary. However, this is all preamble to my intentions in this blogpost. As I hinted above, there is a bigger question at issue.
The first drafts for Critical Thinking adopted the mnemonic RAVEN, but many took to adding a 'C' for Context (or Circumstantial matters). What may be considered a reasonable and uncontroversial claim in one context is not (necessarily) in another context. Meeting the other RAVEN criteria then becomes insufficient.
The 'C' in CARS stands for credibility, which chiefly refers to the academic credentials of the author(s) in question, and this is an important point to emphasise with students. But this higher level language (tier 3?) perhaps hides that credibility is fundamentally about whether a particular claim, and the person making it, are believable. We are being asked to show faith in the overall claims of the author, based on their training and expertise, speaking as we hope they are on behalf of their wider academic community. 'Facts' are only presented as factual in that field because there is general agreement that such-and-such things are indeed the case, as best as they can tell.
So this also overlaps with the 'A' in CRAVEN; whether the so-called experts, with their prior training and qualifications, are indeed able to see/perceive as would be required to give a valid basis to their claims to adjudicate that certain things are facts.
In CARS, the 'R' is for reasonableness, which is to say, is there discernible bias, or unprofessional motivation, or an important flaw in the consideration of alternate possibilities? It is one thing to examine these matters as they apply within a specific subject area, but quite another when the question is interdisciplinary in nature.
The 'P' for purpose in CRAAP is helpful in this regard. This heading helps us to grapple with the reality that information/ knowledge, or claimed facts, are not necessarily to be considered objective statements that simply exist. They must have a foundation, and this can be very secure for certain purposes (and so treated as factual), but if deployed for other purposes, then this does not apply.
All this is not to argue for some post-modern denial of any kind of objective truth or our ability to know about the world with reliable accuracy, but rather to argue for the necessity for some appreciation of philosophy, especially our philosophy of how we know anything, which is called epistemology. We are thus faced simultaneously with three challenges if we are to apply all this to interdisciplinary questions in science and religion studies.
1. What is religious knowledge? ( I felt like putting that first...)
2. What is scientific knowledge? (Does it even matter what order they go in?)
3. How could we relate 1 and 2 together? (and what about others... ?)
I visited the Natural History Museum in South Kensington recently, and noticed some folk wearing T-shirts adorned with the Neil deGrasse Tyson quote above. It's a good basis to start from, given the enthusiasm for anti-scientific conspiracy theories and COVID denialism that is going around at the moment. I hope to teach my students to place a great deal of trust / faith/ credulity in the claims of Science to show us what the world is like and how we can interact with it appropriately.
But if the purpose behind the pronouncements of a scientist is to wield the valid findings of science as knock-down evidence in a boundary question, or across the border of boundary questions in another discipline where the rules of science cannot apply, then they lose credibility as a reliable and qualified speaker, no longer being an expert, and now only giving an opinion.
It is regrettable that the extensive scientific training most scientists and science teachers have received lacks the philosophical insights that would safeguard them all from making simplistic and invalid generalisations about the powers of Science, without regard for its limitations, as though admitting such limits would undermine Science in any material way. Perhaps it suits those with atheistic and humanistic commitments to have it so.
It is regrettable that too many with proper and respectable commitments to theism in one form or another (but certainly including a significant number of so-called evangelical Christians) lack the philosophical insights that would safeguard them from making simplistic and invalid critiques of Science, suggesting, for example, that the nature of Science being such that it holds even its strongest theories in an open hand, constantly open to review and modification as and when new evidence comes to light, therefore stands as a fundamental flaw to the whole discipline, undermining the whole of Science. 'You admit that you are never totally sure- so you have nothing certain to say!' Perhaps it has suited them to have it so.
What we lack in our society is a general appreciation of what Science and those who are engaged in it are really able to see and perceive. (Elsewhere I have commented on the phenomena which show that the cosmos is both regular and very surprising) An education that facilitated this outcome would ground a proper appreciation of what scientists can properly claim to be facts, both by scientists and the public at large. If such activities were a universal feature of the religious education of all our students, not merely those who opt for a sufficiently advanced qualification as at present, then future generations can be enabled to respect the particular assumptions of believers and non-believers of various sorts, and evaluating which sorts of claims can be considered truth claims because there is some sort of validated evidence to back them up, and which are not, though can perhaps be respected for other reasons. It is proper that we should be teaching students to understand what the purpose is behind all the subject disciplines, therefore giving them a sense of the extent to which balance and the consideration of alternative perspectives is valid, and indeed, vital. Let's be clear, as I give some guidance on (3) above: we should all be affirming that Science is a powerful way of knowing about the cosmos and it offers us much knowledge that we should rightly consider in the category of facts, even if certain matters are subject to revision. Yet there is a great deal that we now know we do not know, and this does indeed include matters on which various people hold what we can respectfully categorise as religious views. Faith of a rather more active sort applies to them, and Science might offer assistance in sorting between those that are more or less reasonable. However, since Science itself now shows us that the cosmos is less predictable and more surprising than was predicted/ expected one hundred or so years ago, Science certainly has no authority to adjudicate on which (religious) beliefs are more or less likely to be true by itself. We may find other grounds for that. {But we might not, which is what is meant by the 'theory laden-ness of facts'} If there is to be better thinking in the future, of a critical and rigorous kind that assesses claims against credibility criteria, then this will be informed by all the subject disciplines, not solely by science. Might Charles Dickens still say that we will likely need to engage in more philosophical exercises with teachers and students, and especially those who direct them?
Notes, links and references
http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/hardtimes/2/
https://slideplayer.com/slide/243756/ Unit 501 'Critical Thinking'
https://lewisuwritingcenter.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/cars-checklist-for-evaluating-sources1.pdf
https://twitter.com/BlissfulBunbun/status/1474833698453278721/photo/1 ALSO at https://9gag.com/gag/abGgQ1B
Similar CC4 source at https://libguides.cwc.edu/bias AND https://www.oercommons.org/authoring/54677-media-bias-handout/view MODIFYING THE ORIGINAL AT https://library.csuchico.edu/sites/default/files/craap-test.pdf OR https://www.facebook.com/UWStoutLibrary/photos/a.10150674191761280/10158515308611280/?type=3
https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/1381197292728942595
https://www.rit.edu/cla/philosophy/quine/theory_ladenness.html
