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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Get the Facts Right, Even When It Hurts

Posted on October 4, 2012 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of dreamsjung via Creative Commons.

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 “Get the Facts Right Even When It Hurts”:

“I’ve been pondering the more than 400 comments from my last post at Care2.com: “Since other animals are predators, why shouldn’t we eat animals.” Some were supportive; some provided constructive feedback; some were nasty. Many went back and forth with increasing vitriol between those commenting. It was at times disappointing and discouraging, but mostly, it was very disturbing.

Too often commenters bandied about “facts” that weren’t facts at all. For example, some supporting the overall thesis of my essay said that humans are herbivores. Others arguing against the thesis of my essay said that humans require meat. Neither claim is true. Some said that science reveals that plants can suffer and feel just like animals, but there is no science to support such a claim. These false “facts” were flung about, and then argued about, with everyone able to find a website or article to support their view, but actual truth was in short supply. And truth is precious.

 I’m worried about our culture’s relationship with truth. I’m concerned that we’re not educating our children to parse the messages they receive and determine what is true and what is not. When anything can be written and spread on the Internet, then anyone can argue that they hold the truth because they read it on a website. Without the ability to distinguish opinion from fact, and without the capacity to evaluate information critically, we will be at the mercy of whomever does the best job at marketing and at saying what the majority wishes to hear.”

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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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Mike Daisey’s Lies Must Not Make Us Apathetic or Cynical

Posted on March 23, 2012 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of Yutaka Tsutano via Creative Commons.

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 “Mike Daisey’s Lies Must Not Make Us Apathetic or Cynical”:

“On January 18, I wrote “An Eighth Grader’s Letter to Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook.” I had taught a week-long humane education course, and on the first day I had the students listen to “Mike Daisey and the Apple Factory,” a This American Life broadcast of monologuist Mike Daisey about his visit to the Foxconn factories in Shenzhen, China, where he interviewed employees making Apple products.

…this past weekend, I, along with millions of other people, learned that Mike Daisey had fabricated details in his story about his visit to China. This American Life devoted their most recent show to a retraction. I immediately contacted the teacher of the 8th graders to whom I’d offered that class in January. I knew I had to talk to them. But before I heard back from the teacher I received an email from Abbey, the girl whose letter I had published in Care2.

She had seen a Wall Street Journal headline about Mike Daisey’s fabrication and was shocked. She had remembered that I told the class not to believe me, and had generalized this statement as I’d hoped they all would so that she retained a commitment to critical thinking; but it was clear that she wondered who to believe. I feared that she – and others – would begin to become cynical and apathetic, a deadly combination that has the capacity to profoundly disempower us.

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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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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Humane Educators’ Toolbox: 12 Angry Men

Posted on July 18, 2011 by zoeweil

I watched the classic film, 12 Angry Men, recently, and I was struck by the ways in which the film so accurately depicts what social psychology experiments reveal about people’s willingness to suspend their own thinking faculties to go along with the group [in particular, the Asch experiments, in which individuals deny their own senses to agree with the majority, demonstrating the lengths (no pun intended) to which people will go to conform].

In the movie, had one man’s commitment to integrity and reason not prevailed, another man, reasonably likely to have been innocent of the crime he was charged with, would have been electrocuted. It is not a surprise that only one man of twelve was willing to step out on the proverbial limb in a group vote in which he was the only dissenter, nor is it a surprise that some went along with the prevailing view without much thought – easily swayed and influenced.

We all know these characters. We all know people whose beliefs can be too easily altered by new ideas; others whose beliefs are so entrenched that reason and rationality cannot sway them; others who stand out as extremely clear-headed and models of critical thinking; others who don’t care enough to be bothered to think very hard for themselves and will follow the crowd no matter what; others whose deep emotional needs and pain influence their ability to think rationally. And most of us realize that there is a little bit of each of such characters in ourselves.

The challenge for each of us, I believe, is to strive to be like the character played by Henry Fonda, a man committed to truth and aware that truth is often elusive; a man unafraid of speaking his truth even when it differs from others; someone whose heart and mind work together toward a goal of integrity and honesty; a person whose mind is not so open his “brain falls out,” but who exemplifies open-mindedness.

This film is an excellent tool for any critical thinking or criminal justice course, as well as for a course in American History. Though fiction, it offers much food for thought and discussion. As a supplement to the social psychology films at the Heroic Imagination Project website, 12 Angry Men offers humane educators – those who wish to ensure that their students have the knowledge, tools, and motivation to be solutionaries for a just, compassionate world – an excellent opportunity to use film and culture to explore issues of character and choicemaking.

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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When the Truths of Fiction Spark Change

Posted on December 3, 2010 by zoeweil

I just finished Chris Cleave’s novel, Little Bee, a compelling, page-turning, and profound work of fiction about a 16-year-old refugee from Nigeria. I highly recommend it. While Little Bee is not a true story, it tells the truth, just like Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Charles Dickens’ and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels do. And while it’s important to read classic truth-telling fiction writers like Steinbeck and Dickens and Dostoevsky, it’s also important to read our modern novelist truth-tellers.

It’s important, not because their novels should be the source of our information, but because stories open our hearts as they engage our minds. More people are likely to read Hosseini’s novels about sexist life in Afghanistan than they are reporters’ accounts, and more are likely to learn through Little Bee about atrocities perpetrated by the Nigerian military to secure oil fields than they are through the media. If readers stop with these truth-telling novels, that’s a problem. But when such novels awaken readers to realities largely removed from them and spark interest that compels them to learn more, to pursue factual knowledge, and often to take action, that is wonderful.

When I was an English major in college, there were many who thought my field of study was quaint and useless. When I graduated and had few employable skills, I secretly wondered myself. So I went to law school (though I didn’t last past November; it was definitely the wrong career for me), and then the pendulum swung and I went to divinity school to study comparative world religions, another less-than-practical field. But here I am today, having exposed myself to thousands of stories and committed my life to trying to make a difference in the world. Each of those stories has led me here.

As a humane educator, I often encourage my students to read fiction alongside non-fiction accounts of problems in the world. The fiction awakens possibilities in their hearts and speaks a truth that is sometimes obscured by stacks of statistics and facts — a truth that spurs them to take those statistics and facts to heart and become the person and educator they most want to be.

Read away,

Zoe Weil
Author of Claude and Medea, a Moonbeam gold medal award winner for juvenile fiction, which follows the adventures of 12-year-olds trying to right wrongs wherever they find them.

Image courtesy of Piotr Bizior, Bizior Photography.

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A Plea for Critical Thinking

Posted on September 15, 2010 by zoeweil

A couple of months ago, I was watching a film with my colleagues that was largely aligned with our general worldviews, and I tried to the best of my ability to bring the same critical eye to this film as I would to one that was not aligned with my worldview. It took effort, obsessive note-taking, and commitment.

Most of us tend to believe what supports our worldview and disbelieve what does not. To me, this may be one of the most dangerous impediments to positive change and growth, and watching people parrot opinion disguised as fact dashes my hopes again and again that we can truly create a peaceful, sustainable world.

I recently watched a film on YouTube produced by the New Left Media that showed clips of interviews with people attending Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally earlier this month in DC. The perspective of the producer is clear, and we all know how editing can cast interviewees in a negative light, promoting the agenda of the director. A film produced by a “New Right Media” of a left-leaning rally would probably be as equally unflattering to the interviewees as this film was.

Even knowing that the producers had an agenda, there is no way to fully distort the words of the interviewees. Glenn Beck has said on Fox News that Obama is a racist, but at least one person at the rally refused to believe this. Yet this same person readily believed myriad other things that Glenn Beck and others say to him, reinforcing his worldview.  And sadly, don’t most of us do this regardless of our politics and beliefs?

This post is not meant to condemn any ideology or group; rather, it’s meant as a plea to all of us to commit ourselves to the hard work of thinking critically, of believing nothing until we have ascertained its truth, of hearing many perspectives and refusing to accept the “truth” of TV soundbites, especially when they come from opinion pundits rather than reporters and when they simply reinforce our own worldview.

There are many problems in the world, many atrocities happening as I write these words, a planet in the process of warming, species becoming extinct at alarming rates, yet there is nothing that makes me despair as much as a populace that willfully refuses to think critically.

The greatest hope for our future lies with a generation that has been taught critical and creative thinking as the most essential tools for problem-solving. That generation will not come about, however, if we ourselves refuse to embrace these skills and if we continue to deny it the greatest path for a healthy and peaceful future.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and The Power and Promise of Humane Education

Image courtesy of critical thinking asylum via Creative Commons.

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Questioning Assumptions & Searching for Truth

Posted on June 11, 2010 by zoeweil

Over the years, I’ve been surprised by how many people I’ve met believe in various unsubstantiated things, and I’ve written about this subject before here.

The following TED talks provide good examples of how and why I believe that we all ought to question our assumptions and search for truth. I welcome your thoughts and comments after watching these.

James Randi’s fiery takedown of psychic fraud

Michael Shermer on strange beliefs

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

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Belief Versus Truth (Part 3 of Reflections on Truth & Belief)

Posted on October 30, 2009 by zoeweil

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about belief. I believe what I know from my experience – that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, that humans have the capacity for both kindness and cruelty, that pumpkin seeds will turn into pumpkin plants and apple seeds into apple trees, and so on – but I know others believe things that cannot be proven, and this perplexes me.

There are many who believe they will go to heaven when they die because they accept Jesus as their savior. Others believe they will be reincarnated after death. Some believe that the position of the planets determines our personalities at birth and many of our experiences throughout life.

I don’t believe these things. That’s not to say that I know that they are false; rather, I cannot know that they are true because they are not provable or knowable, and because no legitimate scientific studies have demonstrated them to be true. They may be true, but I cannot believe them on faith alone.

I often envy people their faith, but I also want people to be good critical thinkers, and I’ve seen “belief” supersede thinking too often. Belief can shut the door on deeper, more complex, more committed efforts to discover truth and seek not only rational, but also effective solutions to problems. It’s easier to follow the precepts or dogmas of a religion or the latest fad or trend in spirituality (or diet or health modalities) than it is to take a scalpel to the information and beliefs surrounding us and dissect them for truth with commitment and engagement.

We are faced with escalating challenges in our world, including human population growth, global warming, peak oil (at some point, whether past, present or future), alarming rates of species extinction, and so on. Beliefs about contraception, the causes of global warming, and faith in human ingenuity to find more oil (or replace it with new technologies), or in God’s ultimate plan, can actually prevent us from taking wise, courageous, compassionate, creative, and critically aware steps to solve our problems.

When beliefs stand in the way of truth – as they often do – we diminish our capacity to make choices that do the most good and the least harm.

I guess I have at least one belief: that we must challenge our beliefs in pursuit of truth.

~ Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

Image courtesy of jam343 via Creative Commons.

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Faith & Action (Part 2 of Reflections on Truth & Belief)

Posted on October 28, 2009 by zoeweil

This is the opening paragraph of my book, Most Good, Least Harm:

“During my sophomore year in college I embarked upon a quest for inner peace. I yearned for relief from a persistent lack of purpose and meaning in my life. I began to study various philosophies and religions, hoping I would discover within them that elusive inner peace I sought. One evening, I was talking with a rabbi about my struggle to understand and experience faith. He told me not to worry about faith, that it didn’t matter what I believed. ‘What matters,’ he said, ‘is how you live and what you do.’”

Although I appreciate the power and beauty of faith, what matters most to me is what people do, not what they believe. While people’s beliefs influence their actions, it’s not necessary to have faith to do good, just as it’s possible to have faith and do evil.

Some days, I lose faith even in the capacity of my acts to make a difference. In these moments of hopelessness, I could succumb to my desires and allow them to eclipse my values. After all, when I feel despair about the possibilities for creating meaningful change, why bother to do the most good and the least harm? But I’m never really tempted to betray my values in any significant way. Even when I lose hope – or faith, if you will – my acts still represent me, my values, my ideals, my sense of self. To betray these is to betray myself.

But the wonderful thing about acts is that whether or not you have faith, good acts create a MOGO life and contribute to a MOGO world. They bring a similar sense of peace as faith, but they do so in such a concrete manner. I’ve often yearned for the faith that others experience, that allow them to endure the tempests of life with equanimity and peace, but that kind of faith eludes me. Instead I have the power of my choices to do good and bring good and which often serve as a balm against pain because goodness begets a host of positives: joy, gratitude, peacefulness, serenity, laughter, connection, and love.

Whether you are a person of faith or not, what matters most is your acts.

~ Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind


Image courtesy of mariachisamurai via Creative Commons.


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