By: Julie Bogart
Back in 1996, when the internet was a baby, I imagined it would become a global piazza that would lead us to mutual understanding and warm caring—the whole kumbaya effect. What I found? Young mothers hurling insults at each other over which well meaning parent was ruining the planet faster—Pampers users or cloth diaper service subscribers. I watched friendly exchanges devolve into jibes over topics like breastfeeding, potty training, and birthing choices. Looks like my generation invented trolling. You’re welcome.
Here’s the thing, though. I wasn’t as interested in figuring out who was right. Rather, I was shocked that everyone thought they were right. Why did they think they held the absolutely “rightest” viewpoint? This one question has dogged me for thirty years. When I scroll through social media, I notice a pattern. Make an assertion, back it up with a link to your favorite authoritative source, and expect everyone to agree. Where else does that happen? You guessed it: on every multiple choice test in school.
One test question, one answer chosen by the teacher, all students. That’s the formula. You can’t be that one kid who says, “But if you think about this answer this other way, my choice makes sense.” Schools teach us to find the answer the teacher expects. As grownups, we hopped online thinking we could simply declare a “fact,” cite the source we trust, and everyone would fall into line, like the thirty kids in 7th grade social studies filling out a Scantron hoping to get all the answers right. To me, there had to be more to the story of thinking than falling into line with an authority’s “right” take.
I wrote Becoming a Critical Thinker for teens. Today, the number of sources of authority they are expected to vet has multiplied like mushrooms on a log in the woods. Social media, cable news, their parents, school teachers, podcasts, chat boards, celebrities, political figures, religious and cult leaders, bots, AI generated news, their best friends, and more are vying for their attention. How are they supposed to sift through the mass of information that zings at them every single minute of every single day?
My workbook helps teens take those first steps toward effective critical thinking. They begin by examining and understanding why they hold the views they currently do. They take time to observe how others think and on what basis. They’re taught how to evaluate data for both its accuracy and usefulness. They’re given specific tools that they can use now in high school, and then in college and beyond to sift through the claims clamoring for their allegiance. In fact, I am bold enough to suggest that this book may even cult-proof our kids.
In today’s world of misinformation and the deliberate dissemination of disinformation, kids need to transcend the temptation to simply hop on board with the noisiest, most dramatic assertions. Instead, my hope is to help them take that academic selfie where they flip the camera lens around on their own minds to understand how they form their biases, to whom they give their intellectual allegiance, and how they can expand to include more viewpoints than the one that is their default setting.
I hope that this workbook will be a way for teachers and parents to get to know how their teens think as well. There’s so much pain and misunderstanding between teens and adults over their values and beliefs. This workbook offers constructive ways to engage those thorny conversations. My wish is that we raise a generation of sharp, insightful thinkers who can offer us meaningful ways to address the most urgent issues of the day while debunking the firehose of baloney aimed at them.
Read an excerpt here
© Daniel Smyth
Julie Bogart is the creator of the award-winning, innovative Brave Writer program, teaching writing and language arts to thousands of families for more than twenty-five years. She’s the founder of Brave Learner Home, a 15,000-member community which supports homeschooling parents through coaching and teaching. Bogart is also the host of the popular Brave Writer podcast. Bogart holds a BA from UCLA and an MA from Xavier University, where she’s taught as an adjunct professor and was awarded the prestigious Madges Award for Outstanding Contribution to Society. She has five adult kids and three grandchildren. Bogart is also the author of The Brave Learner and Raising Critical Thinkers.
