“How Facts Backfire” is the title of a Boston Globe article that I recently received.
Authored by Joe Keohane, it poses one of the insoluble problems of democracy: how much ignorance can democracy survive and how do we know when it’s ignorance vs “another viewpoint.” I think, alas, that we can do a lot better, but… the nature of “facts” makes solving once and for all this conundrum impossible.
“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyland, to explain why “facts…were not curing misinformation.”
It’s certainly easy as this campaign winds down to agree with the author. And it certainly makes “obsessive” democrats like me nervous. Aha, “in the end, truth” may not win out??? I’m stuck as usual with the Churchill quote: “democracy is a flawed idea; until you consider the alternatives.”
Of course, we also need to define some terms: are facts the same as information and is information the same as truth?
But it’s also an article that sets one thinking about how schools can make us more open to the idea that we may be wrong–and willing to explore it for a while, without fear, without quickly answering back! I admire those who do it “by habit”–it goes along with being a good listener. But it’s a habit we can work to develop or one we can toss out if it’s too dangerous. For most schools, teachers and parents I think it may be too dangerous, except on the edges. What would it look and sound like in the average classroom if we wanted to make “being wrong” less threatening??
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Deborah Meier on Education 