It is hard to say which is currently more destructive: the worldwide spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus or the accompanying outbreak of irrational assertions that trigger the “debate” about vaccines, wearing masks, the role of science and the imposition of social restrictions that are generally intended to suppress the spread of the lethal virus.
In fact, it may be time to reassess the role of public education as a much-needed remedy to the “I have a right to my opinion” thinking.
There’s a saying common among experienced educators: Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think.
That idea goes back at least as far as Socrates and is what, today, we call the Socratic method of teaching.
The Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the theories and expressed opinions of those around them.
On the one hand, kids are exposed daily to a constant barrage of emotional thinking that tends to dominate the discussion about every topic of any consequence — vaccination, climate change, freedom, gender confusion, even the role of religion in politics.
On the other hand, critical thinking validates evidence-based truth rather than emotion. That kind of thinking disavows the “it is whatever I want it to be” currently popular brand of magical thinking.
Grades 11 and 12 are not too early for 16- and 17-year-old kids to begin learning how to search for evidence that might even contradict their own first conclusions.
The problem with the “I’m entitled to my opinion” justification for fallacy is that, all too often, it’s used to provide refuge for beliefs that should have been long since abandoned.
It becomes shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like” — and by extension, continuing to argue against a point of view is somehow disrespectful.
That kind of intellectual narcissism is an increasingly destructive feature of our public discourse.
For example, there is the vigorously expressed belief that, as a COVID denier, “my opinion about viral transmission is just as valid as Dr. Bonnie Henry’s” — this despite the fact that Dr. Henry has a legitimately earned international reputation as a leading epidemiologist and I can’t spell anti-inflammatory corticosteroid dexamethasone to save myself — even if I knew what that was.
Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset wrote in his 1930 book The Revolt of the Masses: “The Fascist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who did not care to give reasons or even to be right, but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions. That was the novelty: the right not to be right, not to be reasonable: the reason of unreason.”
Perhaps, but today more than ever teachers in all subject areas owe it to students to teach them how to construct and defend an argument — and to recognize when a belief has become indefensible.
If there is an assertion that should be discouraged in any classroom it is the “I’m entitled to my opinion — I have a right to my opinion” mantra. It is, too often, employed by people who should know better as a thought-terminating cliché.
As philosopher Patrick Stokes has pointed out, the expression is often used to defend factually indefensible positions.
Another philosopher, David Godden, has argued that being entitled to any point of view demands acceptance of certain obligations, such as the obligation to provide reasons for holding that view. Again, to argue otherwise is simply intellectual laziness.
Godden called these the principles of rational entitlement and rational responsibility, and advocated teaching these principles including the notion that the obligation to provide reasons always involve a willingness to be comfortable in risking one’s own opinions against what may be the force of the better reason.
Perhaps a good place to begin with “how to think” in the classroom would be an examination of the more commonly employed “logical fallacies.”
A logical fallacy is a statement that, while at first glance it seems to make sense, turns out to be no more than a sleight of logic. “Ad hominem” attacks, which attack the opponent rather than his/her argument, fall into that category, as do “everyone says” non sequitur (it does not follow) arguments and appeals to common prejudices about immigrant groups, indigenous beliefs — or anybody not like me.
As Ayn Rand, writer and champion of clarity of thought and objectivity stated: “Reason is the only means of acquiring knowledge. The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies.”
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
