Does Our Short Attention Span Prevent Us From Deep Thinking?

Posted on April 1, 2013 by zoeweil

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent essay I wrote for Care2.com, an online community for people passionate about creating a better world. Here’s an excerpt from “Does Our Short Attention Span Prevent Us From Deep Thinking?”:

“In his recent essay in Harvard Business Review, Umair Haque critiques “TED thinking,” which he writes, serves “as a shorthand for the way we’ve come to think about ideas and how we share them, whether it’s through an 18-minute talk, an 800-word blog post, or the latest business ‘best-seller’…. ‘TED thinking’ is just a symptom: and the underlying syndrome is our broken relationship with Great Ideas.” 

 While Haque brings up some important and good points in his essay, the construct he presents creates a false dichotomy between “TED thinking” and deep thinking; between solutions-oriented thinking and theorizing; between application and analysis; between idea generation and Great Ideas. These either/ors are both unnecessary and unhelpful.”

Read the complete essay.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm; Above All, Be Kind; and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

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The “Truth” About MLK, Jr.: Why We Must Teach Our Children to Think Critically

Posted on January 21, 2013 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of minasi.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve heard the injunction “Don’t believe everything you read.” This has been a warning that’s been difficult for me to heed. By nature I’m very trusting. I expect that others will tell the truth just as I endeavor to tell the truth. But years of study, research, graduate school, and the influence of my scientist husband, who’s the best critical thinker I know, have honed my own critical thinking skills, and I’m pretty good about not believing everything I read.

It’s even more important in today’s world – with “facts” at our fingertips through our various electronic devices – to be vigilant about assessing the truthfulness, accuracy, and bias of the sources to which we are quickly led when we seek information.

Let’s say that you are a high school student asked to do a report on Martin Luther King, Jr. And let’s say that you Google “Martin Luther King,” as I just did. The first URL that came up was Wikipedia. The second was his biography on the Nobel Prize website. The third was http://www.martinlutherking dot org, presumably a non-profit (.orgs are usually not-for-profits) dedicated to King and his work.

If you were a student you’d likely eschew Wikipedia, because you’ve been told to by your teachers, even though Wikipedia is often far more accurate than other sites, crowdsourced as it is. You might skip over the Nobel Prize site because it represents just one award in his life (albeit a great one). And there’s a good chance you’d land at the third site.

It turns out that martinlutherking dot org is a front for a white supremacy group, but you’d have to dig into the site to find this out. Clicking on a link for “The Creativity Movement,” that’s found on a PDF document, (or clicking on the small “Hosted by Stormfront” link at the very bottom) leads you to websites for an explicitly white supremacist movement. It’s likely that many students wouldn’t get that far, instead taking the pop quiz on the home page and “learning” all sorts of things about Martin Luther King, Jr., brought to you by a white supremacist.

It’s always been too easy to be misinformed, manipulated, and misled, but in today’s world it is even easier. Which is why teaching our children how to think critically, to research, to identify sources, to corroborate information, and to be truth-finders, not simply truth-seekers, is paramount. Without these skills, they will too easily be swayed by those sources that tell them what they want to know – of which there will be many.

This is another reason I always tell my students: Don’t believe a word I say.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

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Reach and Teach: Media Literacy

Posted on November 8, 2012 by zoeweil
Image copyright Institute for Humane Education.

I was excited when Reach and Teach, a peace and social justice learning company, shared my new TEDx talk, Educating for Freedom, taking the ideas in the talk about media literacy and analyzing ads a step further. Here’s a brief excerpt:

“When you see an advertisement for a store that’s offering the VERY LOWEST PRICES, for example, taking some time to think about how that store manages to get things at such low prices could provide a great lesson in suffering, cruelty, and destruction.

Lower prices might make you happy, but what damage do they do to get those low prices? Child labor? Slave labor? Bankrupting suppliers by making them sell the store products at a price lower than it costs to produce? ”

Read the complete post.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

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Ethics Without Indoctrination

Posted on June 11, 2012 by zoeweil

Note: Zoe is on vacation, so please enjoy this repost from 12/22/10..

In an essay entitled “Ethics Without Indoctrination,” from a now 20-year-old issue of Educational Leadership, Richard W. Paul writes:

“If we bring ethics into the curriculum – and we should – we must take pains to ensure that we do so in a morally unobjectionable manner. This requires us to distinguish clearly between espousing the universal, general principles of morality shared by people of good will everywhere, and the very different manner of defending any particular application of these principles to actual life situations as conceived from a particular standpoint (liberal, conservative, radical, theistic, nontheistic, American, Russian, and the like.”

This is such an important point, whether written 1,000 years ago, 20 years ago, or 20 years hence, and it represents such a fine line to walk as an educator. Every one of us has a bias. Even if our bias lands us squarely in the mainstream and is perceived as moderate, it is still a bias. None of us is immune to the culture that shapes us, the opinions we hold dear, and the particular ideologies that embody our values in day to day life. It may appear that we have no bias if we find ourselves in the proverbial middle, but this is false. This is why Richard Paul’s quote above is so well-articulated, and so important for educators in general, and for humane educators who teach about the interconnected issues of human rights, animal protection, and environmental preservation in particular.

The universal principles of morality that Paul mentions would include such values as generosity, kindness, compassion, integrity, honesty, courage, perseverance, and wisdom and would exclude such things as cruelty, corruption, exploitation and abuse of others, deception, and so on. But what one person considers cruel may be different from what another considers cruel; and one person’s perception of exploitation may be another person’s perception of opportunity. How can the humane educator – whose goal it is to explore ethical issues, invite positive change, and encourage innovative ideas for a healthy world – balance her own vision of what that world looks like with what a particular student’s differing vision might be? How can the humane educator teach about ethical issues while painstakingly avoiding indoctrination?

Here are some ideas:

  • Choose one of these two approaches: Either be honest about your biases and explain their origin and your thinking OR choose to remain utterly impartial in discussions and encourage students to think critically, whether they are articulating your own position or one that you do not share. My personal approach is to be up front about my biases. The truth is that I am choosing texts that provide a point of view, and not choosing other texts. I may try to “balance” the reading, but there is a bias in my choices. Invite your students to critique you and your choices.
  • Be stalwart in your commitment to require those who share your views to be vigilant in supporting their perspective. And be open, receptive, and ready to learn from good critical thinking that leads to different positions. Further, be willing to being persuaded. Be as ready to change and grow from what you learn from your students as you hope they will be open to changing and growing because of you.
  • Agree on fundamentals. Invite students to generate a list of humanity’s best qualities and narrow these down until your class is in agreement that these are indeed fundamentals. Bring back all discussions about systems to whether and how they uphold these fundamental values. Be prepared for complexity and apparent contradictions. Remember physicist Niels Bohr’s statement that the opposite of a great truth is often a great truth.

All education has the potential to veer into indoctrination, not simply education about ethics. Be vigilant. Our world needs more critical and creative thinkers, not more believers.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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Coincidences and Beliefs (Part 2)

Posted on May 30, 2012 by zoeweil

I’ve written about coincidences before and about how important it is not to assign illegitimate meaning to chance events. But sometimes it’s hard not to believe in supernatural forces in the face of truly amazing coincidences.

One such coincidence happened recently to my husband, Edwin. A wasp got into our house. It was a big wasp. It buzzed around the ceiling and then disappeared. Edwin doesn’t like bees and wasps, probably because his father was allergic, and he himself has huge reactions to them when he’s stung. The next morning we were planning to take the dogs on a long hike a couple of hours from home. We’d be gone for 12 hours, leaving our cat at home alone. With the wasp.

I hadn’t given the wasp any thought at all, but Edwin had. In fact he’d gone to sleep worrying about leaving the cat in the house with the wasp, and had awakened in the middle of the night, fretting about the cat if he didn’t find the wasp. In the morning, he couldn’t find the wasp. As he went to put on his boots, he found himself wondering if the wasp was in his right boot. He put it on, and then put on the left boot, and then stood up and felt something under his right arch. He took off the boot, and there was the wasp, dead. Even my scientist husband couldn’t shake the strangeness of that coincidence. Why on earth had the wasp wound up in his boot? But even more perplexing, why had he wondered if it was there? He hadn’t wondered if it was in his slippers when he put those on as he got out of bed.

And so we crafted a story. Our cat, not wanting him to worry, caught the wasp in the night and deposited it in his shoe to reassure him. A selfless act from an otherwise self-centered creature. Edwin liked the story.

I’m in the midst of reading an excellent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel prize winner in economics. The book describes the differences between our two modes of thinking – fast: intuitive, emotional, making causal connections that may not be valid; slow: deliberate and logical. As a scientist, Edwin is very deliberative and careful not to indulge in rash and emotional thinking. He’s not very susceptible to superstition and doesn’t normally jump to invalid conclusions, but the wasp threw him off. And so we’re enjoying the image of our cat, risking himself to catch a wasp and deposit it just where it needed to be to reassure Edwin. It’s a good story, even if it’s not true.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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Occam’s Razor and Animal Cognition and Emotion

Posted on May 28, 2012 by zoeweil
I’m sometimes startled by the lengths to which some scientists will go in insisting that nonhuman animals cannot feel, think, plan ahead, mourn, etc. In a recent Wired Science essay, “Stone-throwing Chimp Thinks Ahead,” author Michael Balter cites psychologist Sara Shettleworth’s article denying that the chimp in question actually planned ahead when he gathered stones to throw at visitors. The actual language Balter uses is whether “some humanlike animal behaviors might have simpler explanations.”

Occam’s Razor, the principle of accepting the simpler theory or hypothesis over a more complex or convoluted one, is normally accepted as a worthwhile guiding approach to adopting explanations; yet when it comes to animals, scientists often go out of their way to refute the simplest explanation, which is that many other animals are able to think, feel, plan ahead, mourn, and so on.

Anthropomorphism can be dangerous and misleading, and readers of my blog know how much I appreciate the scientific method for determining what is true and what is not; yet it’s ironic that Occam’s Razor is so quickly abandoned when it comes to anything related to animal cognition and feeling.

Isn’t is simpler to assume that other mammals evolved to learn from experience, plan ahead (what else are squirrels doing when they store nuts for winter), and to feel? Descartes’ belief that a dog’s yelp was akin to a robotic program rather than an expression of feeling is preposterous to anyone who’s ever spent any time with a canine, yet such outdated opinions about animal emotions are still normative among many scientists. It seems both silly and unscientific to believe that humans are unique in our capacity to feel and think, as if we didn’t evolve, along with other mammals, to have these capacities for a purpose. Such assumptions seem more the purview of those who deny the reality of evolution than those who embrace science.

But things are changing. Jane Goodall, who was once excoriated for naming the chimpanzees she studied in Gombe, is now a widely respected ethologist. Other ethologists, like Marc Bekoff who wrote the wonderful book, The Emotional Lives of Animals, are published regularly in respected journals. And stories about chimps thinking ahead make sense to most of us, even as the citations of those who deny this ability seem odd, old-fashioned, and unscientific.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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In Praise of Wonder, Uncertainty, and Possibility

Posted on April 20, 2012 by zoeweil

Neuroscientist David Eagleman gives a powerful and provocative TEDx talk about the importance of relinquishing dogma in favor of celebrating possibility. Watch it here:


By inviting us to ponder all that we don’t know, Dr. Eagleman reminds us that the best possible response to the mysteries that surround us is a combination of awe, wonder, curiosity, and a thoughtful search for understanding, rather than the dogmatism that pervades so much of society.

What I love most about this talk is its implicit message for education. If we cultivate the innate curiosity of our children and foster their creative and critical thinking capacities, while nurturing their wonder and reverence, we will be laying the groundwork for their open and eager search for new and better ideas that will lead us toward greater understanding, connection, collaboration, and truth-seeking.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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Normalizing Violence for Pleasure: Why a Political Scientist Stopped Eating Meat

Posted on March 21, 2012 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of
Watershed Post via Creative Commons.

For my blog today, I wanted to share Mark Bittman’s recent essay in The New York Times.

Bittman quotes political science doctoral candidate, Timothy Pachirat, who took a job in a slaughterhouse and worked there for five months: “’I didn’t get into this to focus on animal issues,’ he told me, ‘but my own relationship to eating meat has been transformed, and I now forgo it altogether. It’s just not worth the pleasure when you know the system.’”

I especially appreciate Pachirat’s use of the word “pleasure.” Words matter. With that simple word choice, Pachirat reminds us that we eat animals to please our tastebuds, not because we have to.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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I’m An Educator, So Don’t Believe Me

Posted on February 20, 2012 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of Flickr.

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent post I wrote for Care2.com, an online community for people passionate about creating a better world. Here’s an excerpt from “I’m An Educator, So Don’t Believe Me”:

“When I teach, I often begin my classes by telling the students not to believe me. They’re usually shocked by this. It’s uncommon for teachers to discourage their students from believing what they say. What would be the point of school if teachers weren’t worth believing?

It’s not that I want my students to distrust me. Rather, I want my students to be able to distinguish fact from opinion and to be ready and willing to ascertain the validity of any statements or statistics they hear, see, or read. This is no easy task. How can any of us know whether the information we read and hear is accurate?”

Read the complete post.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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iSweatshop? Listen to “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory”

Posted on January 11, 2012 by zoeweil
Last weekend, I listened to Mike Daisey’s riveting monologue on the radio show This American Life about his trip to Shenzhen, China, to visit the factories where his electronics — specifically his Apple products — are made. I urge readers of this blog to listen to this episode, which includes not only Mike Daisey’s account, but the fact-checking efforts of the reporters at This American Life.

This was a profound example of humane education: providing information, fostering our curiosity and demanding our critical thinking, eliciting our reverence, respect, and sense of responsibility, and leaving us with a serious question: whether we’re willing to work to change systems so that our electronics are produced humanely and justly. Please listen.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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