When more is less: culturally constructed ignorance

A Range of Sources.
Your students have been researching current diseases and they come into the classroom with information from these sources. Can you help them determine which could be considered the most reliable? Might you as a teacher have a different opinion than some parents about the validity of information from some sources?

• Center for Disease Control
• Newsweek
• The bestseller The Hot Zone
• Flyers from an insurance company or HMO
• Personal webpage
• Chat room conversation
• Rush Limbaugh’s radio talk show
• National Public Radio’s “Science Friday”
  (from Survival Skills for the Information Jungle, Creative Classroom, August 2001.)

The quote above comprises the core of one of my favorite activities I do in workshops. I ask educators how they would rate the credibility of information about a dread disease if gleaned from each of the sites above.

Most rank CDC and NPR high and Rush Limbaugh, chat rooms and personal web pages low. It's then that I ask - "Do you have parents who would believe just the opposite?" And many teachers admit they do. (And I am guessing I have quite a few teachers who may themselves trust Rush over NPR.)

One of the things of which I am most hopeful is that the new Obama administration will turn away from agnotology: culturally constructed ignorance. Especially in the sciences. While we ought to debate what scientific facts may mean, that we will stop debating whether scientific facts are actually facts.

I learned this new word, agnotology, in Clive Thompson's Wired short article, "How More Info Leads to Less Knowledge." (Thanks to Colet Bartow in Montana for the recommendation.) It's worth a read.

I am not so naive to think that just because we have a new president, the dialog about evolution, abortion, global warming, conservation, or education will become more respectful and less politicized.

But one may hope it becomes less emotional and more rational.

A glimpse into darkness

I know I lead a sheltered life. I know it because every once in a while I get an unwanted peek into quite a different world.

Last Saturday morning, the LWW and I were eating breakfast at the Izaak Walton railroad hotel on the south border of Glacier National Park in Montana, surrounded by mountains clad with gloriously golden tamarack trees interspersed with deep green pines. As peaceful and relaxing a place as one can find.

We were happily munching on huckleberry pancakes in the dining room when a pleasant enough looking middle-aged lady at the next table looked up from her constant prayers spoken in an underbreath to let us know in the space of about 10 minutes:

• She was an investigative journalist getting evidence of the trains full of shackled political prisoners being routed along the Great Northern.
• That the 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis was deliberately caused by Hilary Clinton in order to get more federal transportation funding.
• That Roswell NM is the site of extensive human genetics experimentation by the military.
• And that all the Yellowstone National Park rangers are on the take since the park officials provide prostitutes, meth, and "hard liquor" to important guests to the park. As a result of her learning this, she was "professionally" poisoned by park officials to keep her quiet from which it took her 6 months to recover.

I am probably forgetting some other of her discoveries, all declared with urgent certainty. We ate quickly, remained polite and headed out as soon as possible, her blessings and warnings following us out the door.

Happily, I don't seem to encounter people whose sad, dark minds are filled with wasps and demons very often. But here's the thing: I bet this lady has a website or writes for one. And I bet there are thousands just like her. What are the odds of kids coming across the "facts" she and other conspiracy theorists produce? Pretty good.

This tripe is as or more harmful than pornography IMHO. And I doubt there is a filter in the world that has a "nut-case" setting.

Are we teaching kids to avoid info-porn?

Oh, the lady did begin her little diatribe by telling me that I was a highly intelligent looking man. While I suggested that looks are often deceiving, it just goes to show that nobody is wrong 100% of the time.

Tamaracks of Glacier Park. October 2008

Why we satisfice

Satisficing (a portmanteau of "satisfy" and "suffice") is a decision-making strategy which attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution.Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing>

A common complaint about student researchers is that they "satisfice." They stop after finding the first possible answer to a question. I am guessing there is more to it than just laziness.

Consider this graph:

Is there a direct correlation between importance of the question to the researcher and the depth of research he/she is willing to do?

Maybe, just maybe, if we asked better questions, we'd get better researchers.

Ya think?

Tomorrow, the corollary with filing state reports.