PT Poker

Note: My son, who is studying to be a teacher, invented this game to keep physically fit. He is a Marine Corps cadet, and, like me, knows that physical fitness is a key element of teaching performance.

PT poker is a two-player game. Players bet in pushups. The loser takes the pot. If player A owes 100 pushups and there are 50 pushups in the pot and player A wins the hand, 50 pushups are not subtracted from his total. Player B simply owes 50 pushups.

Since pushups can get tiresome, players may exchange a number of pushups for other exercises. In our version, five pushups are equivalent to one eight-count-body-builder. 100 pushups equals a sprint up a very steep hill. Ab workouts or different types of runs can also be applied.

We keep track of pushups owed on paper. Players are not required to complete all pushups instantly. They may do them at any point during or after the game.

There is an additional penalty if player A does not fold and player B has some rare combination. The penalties we play with are the following: 10 pushups for a straight, 50 pushups for a flush, 100 pushups for a full house, 200 pushups for quads, 500 pushups for a straight flush, and 1000 pushups for a royal flush. So far, nobody has ever owed more than 500 or 600 pushups.

A winner is never declared. If someone wants to quit they can quit, but they must complete all pushups owed at some point during the day.

My Dining Experience and Culture Change

I assumed that my childhood dining experience was the norm everywhere until I served, in my late 20s, as a counseling intern in a poor urban area of California. I co-facilitated a group of teens in a diversion program. Similar in philosophy to traffic school, the attendees avoided a worse alternative—juvenile hall—by attending sixteen sessions of group therapy. Most of the kids wanted to quickly get through the program and get on with their lives, but more than a few enjoyed engaging in macho posturing and making the therapist squirm. One time my partner went on vacation and I was on my own with seventeen teens, many of them well over 200 pounds with a recent history of low impulse control. My boss told me to call 911 if things got out of hand. Boy, that made me feel empowered! The group sensed my discomfort and I heard comments like, “I’d like to tear off, one by one, the fingers off that cop that hassled me.” “Have you ever done crack?” And my favorite, “Man, this group sucks.” Somehow I survived. Teaching high school was easy after these experiences.

One day I asked the group what they talked about at the dinner table. I received back seventeen blank stares. My more astute partner was familiar with inner city life, and asked, “How many of you eat dinner with your family at the same time?” None did. Instead they would grab something out of the refrigerator and eat it, in their room, alone. Taken aback, I realized that the family life of many inner city children was qualitatively different from mine. What glued these families together? Perhaps their family glue was less sticky than mine. My family’s dining experience was the centripetal force that held us together.

For my first seventeen years of my life, from birth to when I moved away to college, my family ate together whenever possible but especially at dinner. If someone was away or sick their presence would be missed. Dinnertime was when we kids told everyone about our day, usually what happened at school. Topics included who in class got in trouble for placing a tack on the “kiss up” girl’s chair; whether plants grow from the top or from the bottom; pi to ten digits; who got the weekly “room 13 citizen of the week” award; and who threw up during running drills in P.E. and who was forced to clean it up. If you weren’t talkative, you were angry at a family member or “something was wrong with you.” Religion and politics were also highly prized topics of discussion, and non-believers and political enemies were described in colorful and draconian terms as barbarians and evil-doers. Specifically, I remember a dinner time discussion that included the Vietnam War, President Nixon, and Eugene McCarthy after some Berkeley radical or reactionary tore off my father’s McCarthy for President bumper sticker. After a Christian missionary came to our door, we discussed a few differences between Christianity and our Judaism. I was a good son that agreed with his parents and as a devout junior Hasmonean and budding politician looked forward to dinnertime, hungry or not.

Indeed, when I started forming opinions of my own, the discussions became more heated. Our dinner table conversation would have made excellent court room training. We all used time-tested rhetorical techniques on each other, especially ad hominem attacks, and sarcastically questioned our opponent’s intelligence. Yet we children also learned that our opinions mattered and were valued and were taught how to think and retort quickly and sometimes cleverly.

Update: 
My pulse quickened when I found a New York Times article, Why Does it Matter that Families Eat Together? Sam Sifton writes that this communal time inoculates family members somewhat from depression, drug use, obesity and teenage pregnancy. The children do better in school. Read the article here.

Does Teacher Tenure Help or Hinder Student Learning?

Plenty of ink has been spilled about whether tenure contributes to better or worse high school instruction. Tenure insulates teachers from education stakeholders, more specifically parents, fellow teachers, and administrators, who may want to remove an unpopular but otherwise good and effective teacher. These successful teachers must contend with political pressures from administrators, parents, or colleagues. A principal may demand that the teacher teach to the test to produce higher test scores or inflate grades to generate higher pass rates. Parents may complain to the principal about the curriculum, the teacher’s political or religious views, or their child’s grade. The school board may object to whistle blowing activities. Fellow teachers may object to the teacher’s activism. Administrators may want to hire those that can be more easily molded to carry out their policies and fire those that get in their way (Brekke, 2001, Koorstra, 2000). Teachers should not be terminated for political reasons, and tenure insulates teachers from these political winds.

However, tenure may be a redundant protection since public school teachers are guaranteed due process by state and federal governments and additionally sheltered by union grievance procedures. Tenure acts as a disincentive for some teachers to give more than a minimum effort (Pound, 2000) and makes it quite expensive and difficult for school boards to fire incompetent, destructive, and dishonest teachers. From 1990 to 1999, “Los Angeles Unified School District—the second largest in the nation—dismissed only one teacher.” Administrators tend to move bad teachers rather than fire them, so they gravitate to schools in low-income areas where supervision tends to be more forgiving (Schwab, 2005) and where, ironically, the best teachers are needed. High school tenure requires no record of published research or long probationary period required at the university level (Stephey, 2009). In California, teacher probation is only two years.

Let’s conduct a mind experiment. What would high school education look like if both teacher protections, unionization and tenure, were removed? We would then be a nation of private schools! My oldest son attended a private high school five years ago. Nine out of thirteen former teachers and the principal have moved on. Not all private schools suffer from the high turnover that plagued this school, but public schools without union and tenure protections would certainly approach the higher turnover rates of the private sector. University of California, Berkeley education researcher Xiaoxia Newton shared with me by email that a national study comparing private and public school churning was conducted by R.Ingersoll in 1995. (Teacher supply, teacher qualifications and teacher turnover. Washington DC: National Center for Education Statistics.) This study showed that small private schools have relatively higher levels of teacher turnover. (See Dr. Newton's work comparing charter and public schools here.) Does higher teacher turnover hurt student performance? According to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, teachers at low-performing schools often leave before they have mastered their craft and created a successful learning culture (Barnes et al., 2007). If all schools suffered from much higher turnover, student learning would suffer. Additionally, private schools often pay less than public schools and fewer good candidates would be attracted to the profession.

What if we kept unionization in place and limited the use of tenure in high school, either requiring a longer probationary period or weakening tenure that shields teachers receiving poor performance reviews? Five years ago California voters discarded these ideas, packaged as a ballot measure, Proposition 74. I see little evidence that changing probation and tenure policies will more than slightly affect the aggregate of teacher performance and therefore, student performance, but it may be worth looking at the probationary period again. Would students be better served if California had a three-year probationary period? I think so. Most California high school teachers are good at what they do, but, anecdotally, I have come across poor-performing teachers who weren’t quite weeded out after two years of probation. One more year of hard scrutiny, adding fifty percent more time to their probationary period, may have convinced them to find ways to improve their skills or seek another line of work. Since these teachers, now mediocre performers at best, cannot be removed and have little interest in improving, student performance suffers. Would beginning teachers be discouraged by a three-year probationary period and one more year of high-stakes performance reviews? I think not. Most states demand a longer probationary period than California.

Alternately, the law could be changed to weaken tenure protections for poor-performing teachers. If a teacher receives inferior performance reviews from administrators AND a board of peers AND state tests scores declined for a majority of students under this teacher, we have a pretty good idea that something is wrong. This teacher should lose tenure protection. Notice that tenure would still protect teachers against overzealous parents, administrators attempting to remake departments to their liking, and faculty objecting to a teacher’s politics. Only truly bad teachers would fail performance reviews run by both administrators and fellow teachers, including subjective examinations of performance and an objective analysis of state test scores. Those teachers could choose to learn necessary skills or leave the profession and student learning would incrementally improve.

Bibliography

G. Barnes, E. Crowe, and B. Schaefer, The Cost of Teacher Turnover in Five School Districts, Executive Summary, National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 2007, http://www.nctaf.org/resources/demonstration_projects/turnover/documents/CTTExecutiveSummaryfinal.pdf

Brekke, Stewart E, Why Teachers Need Tenure, 2001, http://teachers.net/gazette/JAN02/brekke.html

Koorstra, Dirk, Tenure Protects Good Teachers, Too, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, February 10, 2000, http://www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.aspx?id=2696

Pound, Gerald A, Tenure Law is Impediment to School Reform, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, May 12, 2000 http://www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.aspx?id=2874

Schwab, Alexander, Teacher Tenure Protects Jobs Instead of Education, http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/guest_commentary/reform-teacher-tenure.htm

Stephey, M. J., A Brief History of Tenure, Time, Nov. 17, 2008

How Teachers Should Dress

From my manuscript, Mindful Teaching:

When I go to work, I dress up as if I’m attending a corporate board meeting in San Francisco. In other words, I wear slacks and a tie four or five days a week, and if I attend a public event such as Back to School Night or a district board meeting I wear a suit. My outfit radiates professionalism, purposefulness, maturity, wealth, and ambition. Parents mistake me for an administrator or district official and ask me questions, because I look like I am in charge. Students notice this attention, deserved or not.

Would I teach better in jeans and a flannel shirt? My dress does not alter my teaching nor does it change my classroom technique one way or another. However, my outfit does generate more respect from both students and parents than if I wear jeans and a flannel shirt. I feel that as an uber-authority (in the students’ eyes) I will be subject to less acting out than the teacher in jeans and the flannel shirt. I will enjoy less disruptions and more successful lessons. I advise all high school teachers to dress up like business professionals unless they are preparing science labs, art projects, or physical education programs. Unfair as it is, a kid will construct a poor first impression of a teacher that looks like a grounds keeper. He will maintain that impression for a long time, saying to himself, “If he doesn’t have respect for his appearance and his profession, why should I?”

I want a student’s, parent’s and administrator’s first impression and subsequent sentiments to be working for me, not against me. Psychologists state that visual clues are used more than other modalities. Abraham Lincoln bought a new suit so voters would not “judge the peanut by its shell.” You may be subject to some mocking by your teacher peers who dress like fast-food workers. Accept the teasing in good cheer. It’s still worth dressing up.

Motivating Students: Rogers V. Skinner

BF Skinner

Carl Rogers

This is a scholarly piece but worth the effort. Please read on...

The book, Taking Sides (Noll, 2002) states, “Should Behaviorism Shape Educational Practices?” The chapter compares the theories of B.F. Skinner with those of Carl Rogers. These two psychologists see behavior quite differently. Skinner, a determinist, believes that all behavior can be traced to a causal relationship with the environment, or, more technically, to contingency cycles of positive or negative reinforcement or punishment. Rogers, an existentialist, believes that behavior is dependent on human choice and free will. Skinner, a logical positivist, is only interested in overt behaviors that can be measured. Rogers is comfortable talking about internal motivation. Despite opposite approaches and very different terminology, both psychologists have influenced educational theory and, surprisingly, often agree on the best types of learning. An eclectic teacher may want to use techniques derived from both theories.

Skinner (1974) rails against “mentalistic theories.” These involve mental states such as motivation and various idea and emotional conditions. Rather, education, in behavioral terms, is when “a teacher arranges contingencies under which the student acquires behavior which will be useful to him under other contingencies later on” (pp. 202-203). Desirable taught behaviors must be constructed in advance. Skinner‘s imagination runs freely in his utopian novel Walden Two (1948), and he writes how a small society, run by behavioristic principles, would educate children. The novel’s protagonist explains how, using contingency schedules, he would teach self-control.

"We set up a system of gradually increasing annoyances and frustrations against a background of complete serenity. An easy environment is made more and more difficult as the children acquire the capacity to adjust…. But…these potentially unhappy situations are never very annoying. Our schedules make sure of that…. [and] what they get is escape from the petty emotions which eat the heart out of the unprepared. They get the satisfaction of pleasant and profitable social relations…"(pp. 101-102)

The managers of Walden Two control adversity to build strength rather than allow, as in the natural world, adversity to destroy many and select only the strong. Self-control and other aspects of ethical training are completed in Walden Two by the age of six! These children, now fortified with longer attention spans, are rarely taught anything. They prefer to learn by themselves.

"Since our children remain happy, energetic, and curious, we don’t need to teach “subjects” at all. We teach only the techniques of learning and thinking. As for geography, literature, the sciences--we give our children opportunity and guidance, and they learn them for themselves [italics mine]. In that way we dispense with half the teachers required under the old system, and the education is incomparably better. Our children aren’t neglected, but they’re seldom, if ever, taught anything…. And a good share of our education goes on in workshops, laboratories, and fields" (P.110).

Skinner’s techniques of learning and thinking, mentioned above, include logic, statistics, scientific method, psychology, and mathematics. The students, without much supervision, obtain any other college-level information from Walden Two’s library (P.111) or in the field. Notice that Skinner’s students, naturally curious about the world, learn for themselves. Behavioristic learning is not delivered by lecture, but is, to use today’s terminology, child centered. Much learning is project based: “We teach anatomy in the slaughterhouse, botany in the field, genetics in the dairy and poultry house, chemistry in the medical building and in the kitchen and dairy laboratory” (P.112). Skinner is rarely called a progressive educator, but John Dewey himself would probably approve of Skinner’s methods that “emphasized the idea of children being part of a community and of learning by doing” (Provenzo, 2002).

Now compare the typical classroom with Skinner’s Walden Two. Students in California schools, at least until the age of 16, are forced, under threat of punishment, to go to school. They are forced to do the same work everyone else does under threat of punishment. If they act in a disorderly or unruly way they will be punished. Can the constant threat of punishment be a good thing? Skinner (1971) writes “Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment” (P.56). Since punishment induces people not to behave in certain ways, to suppress behavior, but not how to behave, punished “behavior is likely to reappear after the punitive contingencies are withdrawn” (P.58). A boy that is punished for yelling out of turn will very likely resume this behavior once a substitute teacher is in the room. A child that refuses to do school work receives a poor grade and a call home (so the parents can inflict additional punishments). The child resumes doing his schoolwork only to raise his grade. Skinner suggests minimizing punishable behavior “by creating circumstances in which it is not likely to occur” (P.60) or by breaking up the contingencies under which punished behavior is reinforced (P.61). For example, by removing gum from the school, it is less likely to be found in the classroom. Then the teacher no longer has to punish students for chewing it and leaving it under desks. If a teacher ignores a student having a temper tantrum, the behavior is no longer reinforced and often goes away on its own without the use of punishment. “It should be possible to design a world [or a classroom] in which behavior likely to be punished seldom or never occurs” (P.62).

One should not become too enamored with Skinner’s thought without examining the writings of his critics. Perhaps the most forceful, Ayn Rand (1972) shakes the foundations of behaviorism by attacking the circular reasoning of “reinforcement,” the illogic in Skinner’s determinism, Skinner’s semantic dodge in accounting for the phenomenon of language, and his hostility toward the power of the human mind and virtue. Rogers (1983) attacks Skinner’s extremist exogenous view. In contrast, Rogers believes that internal motivators exist.

However, Rogers (1983), like Skinner, wishes to change punitive learning environments. He describes one in an impoverished ghetto area. “It was impossible to tell which student he [the teacher] had just paddled because all the students, black and white, looked equally sullen and angry…. Their whole sullen stance was saying, ‘Just try to make me learn anything’” (P.16). When will students learn, and what is the best learning environment? According to Rogers, children will learn when the curriculum has personal meaning and the learning is significant and experiential (P.19). More precisely, Rogers defines the elements involved in experiential learning. It has a quality of personal involvement. It is self-initiated. It is pervasive. The learner herself evaluates it. Lastly, its essence is meaning (P.20). This type of whole-person learning combines both the intuitive and the logical and uses what he calls both masculine and feminine capacities.

Rogers compares experiential, whole-person learning against an atomized type of learning. Some have distorted behaviorism by writing that Skinner cares only for pigeons pressing levels. Indeed, Skinner often looks at man as a machine as a contrast to Rogers (1965) who prefers to examine the complete human being. However, Skinner also feels that learning should be significant, useful, and self-initiated. Skinner as well as Rogers (1983) could have written the following paragraph:

"When we put together in one scheme such elements as a prescribed curriculum, similar assignments for all students, lecturing as almost the only mode of instruction, standard tests by which all students are externally evaluated, and instructor-chosen grades as the measure of learning, than we can almost guarantee that meaningful learning will be at an absolute minimum" (P.21).

Both Skinner and Rogers wish to arrive at child-centered learning. The road they take, however, is different. Skinner, a pragmatist, values what works. He discards traditional pedagogy because it’s inefficient. A teacher must set up external contingencies to allow learning, which is naturally reinforcing, to take place. Child-centered learning leads to better learning, not because the child is free, but because it is efficient and reinforcing. Freedom does not really exist. Rogers, an existentialist, values meaning. He believes that people are free to chose and if the learning is meaningful, the learned outcomes will, by themselves improve. Rogers (1983) admits that humans can be examined as both (unfree) machines and subjectively free individuals.

"A part of modern living is to face the paradox that, viewed from one perspective, man is a complex machine…. On the other hand, in another significant dimension of his existence, man is subjectively free; his personal choice and responsibility account for the shape of his life…. If in response to this you say, 'These views cannot both be true,' my answer is, 'This is a deep paradox with which we must learn to live'” (pp. 280-281).

Do Rogers’ methods work? Will a classroom where students make most or all the choices of what books to read and how they should be graded be a classroom in which learning takes place? John Steadman Rice, in his article The Therapeutic School (2002), criticizes Rogers and other founders of humanistic psychologists for promoting a therapeutic ethic instead of content learning in the schools. Rice states that, according to the humanists such as Rogers, if society is to work well, people must be set free from cultural and societal repression” (P. 21). Education must become involved in the child’s feelings. Thus, students are taught to think well of themselves, to have high self-esteem. Quoted in Rice’s article, Rita Kramer argues that self-esteem has replaced understanding as the goal of education. Unfortunately, these same students that think their math scores are outstanding rank internationally at the bottom for math.

Under the influence of Rogers, Maslow, Glasser, and their adherents, education has ceased to be about instruction, or the passing on of an accumulated body of knowledge; in essence, it has become group therapy. It is not the case, then, that students did not receive an education; rather, they received an education, but in the vocabulary of emotion and in the practice of self-absorption. Tests designed to tap into those competencies would likely tell a different story than data from, say, the Scholastic Aptitude Test-which continues to measure academic, rather than therapeutic, ability (P. 28).

Despite these criticisms, both Skinner’s behavioristic approach to education and Rogers’ person-centered model of instruction are still popular. I examined my children’s learning software, especially Reader Rabbit’s Kindergarten, Davka’s Ready for Reading (Hebrew), and The Learning Company’s Gizmos and Gadgets (engineering). All three of these software programs use common behavioral techniques such as immediate rewards for the correct answer, sustain infinite patience in eliciting the desired behavior, and avoid punishment. Rogers’ theories have also entered educational technology. Miller and Mazur (2000) developed a person-centered model of instruction for designing Web-based environments.

By emphasizing students’ interests and abilities, courses taught in virtual environments such as certain applications delivered via the internet, can create an atmosphere of mutual participation and allow for accommodations of various skill and ability levels. Students can exercise the freedom to choose, which is encouraged by the user-controlled hypermedia web environment. However, the elements promoting the success of such as approach — user responsibility, ability to be self-assessing and proactive in learning — are the very elements, when lacking, which will result in an instructional experience that is non-productive at best and frustrating at worst (p. 298).

In conclusion, the eclectic educator will find much to use from both theories, the behavioral and the person-centered. Choosing between behavioral and person-centered models, the educator may wish to assess the amount of choice available to the student and the rigidity of the learner outcomes.

Bibliography

Miller, Christopher T. and Mazur, Joan M. (2000). Towards a Person-Centered Model of Instruction: Can an Emphasis on the Personal Enhance Instruction in Cyberspace? Annual Proceedings of Selected Research and Development Papers Presented at the National Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 1-2, 293-299.

Noll, William James (2002). Taking Sides. Clashing Views on Controversial Educational Issues (12th ed.). Guilford, Connecticut: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin.

Provenzo, Eugene F. (2002). Teaching, Learning, and Schooling. A 21st Century Perspective. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Rand, Ayn (1972). Philosophy: Who Needs It. New York: Penguin.

Rice, John Steadman (2002). The Therapeutic School. Society, 39 (2), 19-29.

Rogers, Carl. (1965). Some Thoughts Regarding the Current Philosophy of the Behavioral Sciences, The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, V (2), 182-194.

Rogers, Carl. (1983). Freedom to Learn for the 80’s. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company.

Skinner, B.F. (1948). Walden Two. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, Inc.

Skinner, B.F. (1971). Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Skinner, B.F. (1974). About Behaviorism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Drama as Superior Instruction

Your students are enjoying themselves, visibly happy, engaged and attentive. They are tackling challenging subject matter--the different economic philosophies of two 19^th century Europeans-- and they are focused. They are working together, on a dramatization, and you are standing off to the side, observing the process and assessing for understanding. It’s a memorable day in your history class.

Indeed, when asked to name what I learned as a student in my high school history class, I recall role playing a United States Senator. I can tell you all about that simulation that took place 32 years ago-- the political horse trading with the President, the pressure from the party leaders, and the post mortem analysis after the simulation was complete. I do not remember anything about my textbook or even the term papers I wrote in my 1978 U.S. history class, but I have remembered my role as a senator and the lessons my teacher taught with it. I believe that the mind is hardwired to enact and remember dramatic performance.

Drama and history are a good classroom mix if you enjoy excitement, combining "right side" emoting with "left side" analyzing, student-centered learning, group work, creativity, the study of literacy, and doing what comes naturally.

Students enjoy doing a task that comes naturally to them. And role play is very natural behavior during the teen years, the time for testing and discarding societal roles. Think back to when you were seventeen. How often did you daydream that you were completely self-actualized or someone else, perhaps a famous musician, a star athlete, an adored leader, a gangster, a beautiful sex goddess, a cool, handsome rebel, the life of the party, a rich and successful entrepreneur, or an outstanding scholar? When we use drama to clarify historical ideas, we use an educational technique that melds well with the psychological processes that our students constantly use throughout the day.

Gardner (1993) and others have criticized our classrooms for emphasizing verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical learning over other forms of human expression. Like singing, drama allows heart (emotional expression) to be combined with head (verbalization and linguistic meaning). Learning about the Battle of New Orleans through song or through the histrionic arts (drama) is fun in class, because we rarely learn through heart and head at the same time. Do you have trouble sitting still for 50 minutes? It was very hard for me when I was seventeen, near the peak in my energy level. Drama lets fidgety kids get up and move around.

What should be done with the shy student who dislikes participating in any type of public presentation or performance? These students will learn vicariously from watching others act and will usually be attentive and very interested to see how their “braver” colleagues do. On the other side of the spectrum, the student that is constantly disrupting class, looking to be the center of attention will love performing. You will transform this student’s need for public attention, usually manifested as self-defeating, immature behavior, into commendable, productive performance.

I use historical fiction to outline important historical, political, economic, philosophical, and moral questions. By fictitiously bringing together people of different places and eras I can better clarify and accentuate these historical, political, economic, philosophical, and moral questions. For example, as president, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon had very different backgrounds and political philosophies. They both presided over very controversial administrations. As far as I know they never had a serious conversation. So I created a dialog, trying to be true to their personality and worldview. In this dialog the characters show little liking for each other, sparks fly, and the student and teacher acquire a deeper understanding of Clinton and Nixon as well as an improved awareness of the characters’ differences. The characters boldly try to convince others of the correctness of their views. If that means trying to refute a rival’s opinions, using wit and humor, so be it. I placed together controversial and adversarial characters in these skits, creating as much entertainment value and learning as possible. Secondly, I often placed historical characters in the present. Haydn for example argues with a hip-hop artist and joins my students’ world. You can do this too.

Why teach all viewpoints?

We teachers want to teach the "truth" or reality. What is reality? First, there is a religious reality, which cannot be proven or disproven. I think it exists but I have no means other than argument to convince. The other reality is a logical, scientific reality based on proving a hypothesis. Hypotheses are checked using replicated experimental studies. These can be proven at a certain confidence level, typically 95 percent, meaning that we have a 95 percent certainty that the change in the dependent variable is due to the intervention and not to chance. This is how we know, through experiments, that medical or other interventions do certain things.

We also have correlational studies, but these are less convincing because variables are not controlled, so a third variable could be the cause. Anecdotal evidence is similar. It has emotional weight, and we really believe it when we see it in front of our eyes, but it is not logically convincing because another variable could be the cause. For example, a kid gets sick after a vaccine. It could be the vaccine, but it could also be thousands of other things. Only the scientific method, experiments, will find the truth. So, not all evidence has equal weight or validity. Otherwise, reality would be a matter of opinion and personal choice (as it is in the religious realm).

In psychology, biology, physics, and chemistry classes we test reality through experimentation as described above. As a history teacher, how do I teach reality? We do not perform or cite experimental studies in history. All of the evidence is correlational at best and usually anecdotal. So how do we know if the Democratic party ensures greater prosperity or the Republicans defend the country better? How do we know if Keynesian policies work? We cannot be as sure that past successes or failures were due to this or that policy, though if the same results keep happening I would form biases. Since we don't really know the truth, the only fair way to teach non-scientific controversial issues is to give our students information about all the major viewpoints.