OT: language origin and creationism

[Kari Castor]

It may be too late for this to be of use in this particular situation, but
I've spent a couple of days this semester having my freshman comp classes
look at materials that profess to be serious and/or scientific in nature and
asking the students to evaluate those sources based on certain criteria like
the ones in the link provided by Dave.

I used the Open Letter to the Kansas School Board from the Church of the
Flying Spaghetti Monster, and we talked about and evaluated the claims being
made in the letter.  (It also provided an opportunity for a quick lesson on
satire, as many of my students believed that the writer was completely
serious.)  I'm not sure this was as successful as I'd hoped, but I think
I'll continue to use it and tweak the discussion to get greater value out of
it.
http://www.venganza.org/

I also had them evaluate the Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
website, an activity which I found to be quite successful.  Again, many of
my students were completely taken in by this website at first.  I had them
work in groups, and there was a great deal of intragroup discussion to the
tune of, "I think it's real, I think the tree octopus really exists."
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
<http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/>
I've also talked a great deal about bias and credibility with them, and have
been encouraging them to use the tools easily available to them to look up
authors and sources and find out who and what they are, and what their
agendas might be.  I gave them a hypothetical example of a an article
written about gay marriage by an author whose credentials include some
association with Focus on the Family.  Since not one of 42 students was able
to tell me what Focus on the Family was, I had them Google it, and we talked
through looking at the website itself, and then looking at other sources to
learn more.  I know academics are supposed to hate Wikipedia, but it's
really their friend in this (we spend a fair amount of time on the strengths
and weaknesses of Wikipedia, and how to use it well).  I stress that
identifying an author's (or publisher's) agenda is really important to an
evaluation of a source.

In my course, students also have to create an online annotated bibliography
that goes along with their final research paper.  For that annotated bib,
they are required to create some kind of rating system for their sources,
using the evaluative criteria we've been talking about all semester, and
their annotations are to be evaluative as well as summative.  That way they
(hopefully) remain responsible for thinking evaluatively about their
sources.

Whether any of that's of any use to you, I'm not sure, and whether any of it
would help you get through to a student deeply entrenched in a creationist
agenda, I'm also not sure.  This is the first time I've taught this course,
and I'm requiring my classes to research technology issues, so I sidestepped
the big idealogical stuff anyway.

Kari



On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 7:07 PM, Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>
> Subject:      Re: OT: language origin and creationism
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Appearance in a refereed journal is one criterion on which to judge, but
> it's not the only one. An otherwise solid argument that appears on the web
> (or anywhere else) should not be discarded just because it isn't
> peer-reviewed. And conversely, peer-review is no guarantee of the
> correctness. Passing peer review just means that the article has no obvious
> flaws.
>
> This web site has a good list of criteria for evaluating sources:
> http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill26.htm. I'm sure
> there are other good lists elsewhere.
>
> In this case, the following are some objectively considered problems with
> the article:
> --The authors are writing outside their field of expertise (they are not
> linguists)
> --Previous works by the authors have not been about linguistics (mostly
> about the morality of homosexuality)
> --The publisher (Apologetics Press) has a vested interest in one side of
> the
> argument
> --The argument makes extensive use of unsupported arguments from authority
> (in this case biblical)
> --The writing style indicates bias (extensive use of exclamation points,
> among other things)
>
> These are just a few I pulled out from a quick skim of the article. I'm
> sure
> there's a lot more that can be said.
>
> I also did a Google search of the authors. While this has no bearing on the
> (lack of) validity of the article, I did find out that two years after this
> article was written one of the authors was fired by Apologetics Press for
> sexual misconduct with underage boys. Another example of Savage's Law that
> anyone who makes a religious argument against homosexuality is probably
> doing something worse.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of
> Cohen, Gerald Leonard
> Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 3:35 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: OT: language origin and creationism
>
>
> But then on what grounds would the student justify the article as the "best
> source"?  If she wished to say, "Yes, all the  authorities in linguistics
> say such-and-such, but here is my evidence that they're wrong," that would
> be one thing. But unless she does in fact have a scholarly (vs. religious)
> reason to challenge the scholarly communis opinio, I don't see how she can
> say that the article she chose is the best source.
>
> Gerald Cohen
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> American Dialect Society on behalf of Salikoko S. Mufwene, Wed 3/31/2010
> 4:49 PM:
>
>
> <snip>
> >
> SSM: Shame on you! This is an invalid argument of authority. It sounds
> like no sound argument can emerge from obscure sources (and from the
> underdogs in science) and as if authoritative publications have always
> been correct. I don't believe in creationism, but I would consider
> addressing the subject matter from down the pedestal. If authorities
> have always been correct, the books would have been closed on several
> issues today.
> >
>
> <snip>
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