I just did a fairly ruthless attack on Senator Hays for putting the Senate Bill 0096 ahead of busing, and I stand by it, but let me qualify it. Here is an interview with him: youtu.be/6cAlU07Nryw Now, let me explain why this bill is not promoting critical thought and is indeed political propaganda aimed at indoctrination (and being required by the state actually justifies the comparison to Nazi Germany). I have taught critical reasoning, argumentation, and basic logic in various colleges around the country. I have viewed and used Michael Moores videos in my class, so I am the person he is referring too. You dont throw up a video and then say, hey lets chat about it. That is propaganda, and nothing more. It is meant to reinforce on side of the political spectrum without providing the tools to dissect it. The reason I use Michael Moore Videos is that up until recently (he now has the money to hire people to help him with them) he was notoriously sloppy in how he structured arguments. So, you take about two weeks talking about, and trying to get students to understand fallacies (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies) and then, you put on a politically charged movie (and I would use the film he wants people to see just as easily as any other, except it wouldnt work.. Ill explain in a sec), and you have students copying down the fallacies as they hear them, and then spend the next class tearing the arguments in the movie apart. So, the use of the movie is not really doing a lot of credit for the movie itself, and showing it has nothing to do with the actual movie, but instead, with practicing the use of critical reasoning. The next move is to watch some of the better presidential debates (great class during an election year), or sometimes court proceedings, and sometimes newspaper clippings. The truth is, the more you do it, the better you get, and the easier it is to spot the bad arguments. Now, why would this one movie fail? It is pretty simple, it is dealing in the make believe world of what if. What if America wasnt here. What if Obama wasnt President. Well, I could say that if America wasnt here, X,Y,Z may indeed be true, and the only response one can give is.....well, maybe... Its not an argument, it is what we in philosophy call a Thought Experiment, and yes this may be valid for a person who has gone through the K-12 education system as a reflection provoking movie and discussion starter about how education or the selections of history taught is influenced by political and social movements. But when you give it to an 8th grader, just before they start learning about American History, the only thing you do is to create a situation where a person who has strong political beliefs toward Anti-Liberal and Pro-Conservative ideals, and teach them that the criteria for truth is nothing more than a coherence to their political agenda. See, when experts teach this, we have no loyalty towards any political slant, and regardless of if we are liberal, conservative, or in the middle, the lessons are all almost the same. 2+2=4, and if you commits an Appeal to ignorance, its an Appeal to Ignorance, regardless of who says it. I would have students ask me my position on an issue, and I would tell them. They wanted to see if this was really true, and write arguments against my positions. The truth is, they knew they were attacking a position I held, and they would work hard to do it well. Those were always the top grades in the class, because they took the time to formulate great arguments. Showing this to 8th graders who have had no critical thought coursework, no idea on what to look for that can be a valid argument or an invalid one, who have not yet experienced many of the history topics the movie refers to, is NOT critical reasoning or something that will promote discussion or debate, and therefore. It has absolutely no educational value at all. To introduce that bill before one that would reduce the walking distance for 5 year olds or require that our children have safe pedestrian walk ways to walk to school is an insult on common sense and crosses the threshold from reckless to borderline insanity. For someone like me who has had formalized training in argumentation at one of the nations leading Masters Only programs (we didnt have a PhD program) in Philosophy with a huge emphasis on critical analysis, this is flat out frighting. And by the way, NOT even the most liberal states, like California have ever made a serious attempt to require students to watch Michael Moore, and if so, would deserve the same response. Sure, some classes may teach critical reasoning, and if so, they may watch movies, but that is left to the discretion of the professional not some politician with an agenda! I still cannot believe that this whole thing that spun around about it this summer wasnt a joke, and he actually filled the bill, and will never get over the fact he did it before the busing bill our children so desperately needed. And no, I will NOT be removing this post over some mad phone call. This is a predictable and well earned consequence to put political grand standing before the safety and security of our children!
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 14:21:14 +0000
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