# Critical Reasoning in the USA, Teaching Thereof **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 23, 2023, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961 "2023-06-23T01:38:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/1 "2023-06-23T01:38:40Z")
I was reading [Meteorologist victim of domestic terrorism](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meteorologist-victim-of-domestic-terrorism/985958), and I wondered, “how does someone get to the point where making death threats to a meteorologists seems like it will accomplish anything?” That led me to wonder how critical thinking and reasoning is taught in the USA. When I was in school (CA, 1970s / 80s), I don’t remember specific material on logic or rhetoric. My memory is that all of the critical skills were taught indirectly through the arts and humanities (writing essays on literature and the like). That may not be accurate, though. I think I had a pretty good education, but personally, I don’t think I was very good at the critical skills until the first year of graduate school. I suspect that has more to do with development / maturity than the educational system, but I don’t know. My questions for this thread are: (1) how are critical thinking and reasoning taught in K–12 education? (2) how _should_ these skills be taught: what age, what methods—this is the one I’m most interested in (3) why are we so collectively bad at it? For the sake of argument, I think #2 should be answered as if the whole country had a single policy, which we don’t and won’t, but otherwise it becomes really hard to talk about. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/2 "2023-06-23T02:43:18Z")
Maybe start off with [this article from nearly a year ago?](https://www.forbes.com/sites/helenleebouygues/2022/08/17/critical-skills-not-emphasized-by-most-middle-school-teachers/?sh=6e0fca8a2ee4) The author claims to specialize in this subject. > [@](#): > > A new Reboot paper, [_Teaching Critical Thinking in K-12: When There’s A Will But Not Always A Way_](https://reboot-foundation.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=047689a0f648db5804a2372a7&id=da8cb4bf13&e=7a642c1f73), examines the U.S. Department of Education’s [National Assessment of Educational Progress](https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/)(NAEP) and found that the teaching of critical thinking skills is inconsistent across states and tends to drop as students get older. > > Among some of the key findings from NAEP: > > - While 86 percent of 4th grade teachers said they put “quite a bit” or “a lot of emphasis” on deductive reasoning, that figure fell to only 39 percent of teachers in 8th grade. Deductive reasoning is one of the key skills in critical thinking, as it requires students to take a logical approach to turning general ideas into specific conclusions. > - At the state level, the analysis found that only seven states had at least 50 percent of their 8th grade teachers report that they place “quite a bit or a lot of emphasis” on teaching their students to engage in deductive reasoning. […] > > In 2020, Reboot surveyed teachers and found that many teachers harbored misconceptions about how to best teach critical thinking. The survey found that, among teachers, 42 percent reported that students should learn basic facts first, then engage in critical thinking practice, while an additional 16 percent said that they believed basic facts and critical thinking should be taught separately. This line of thinking is wrong, as research strongly suggests that critical thinking skills are best acquired _in combination_ with the teaching of basic facts in a subject area. > > This commonly-held misconception about when and how to teach critical thinking skills might be a clue as to why deductive reasoning instruction seems to tail off as students get older and take more specialized, content-driven classes. This might be made worse by the fact that eighth grade is a crucial year for many schools to show success under their state accountability measures. > > In many states, students cannot move on to high school if they fail state exams in eighth grade. And things such as teacher pay, school funding and other “high-stakes” accountability measures often hinge on student performance in that grade. This pressure forces schools and teachers to focus on preparing their eighth graders for state exams in lieu of a more well-rounded educational experience. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/3 "2023-06-23T02:47:13Z")
On further examination, [the author of that linked article appears to be something of a single-minded zealot with something of a popular-media monopoly on the subject of critical thinking in K-12 education.](https://paw.princeton.edu/article/helen-lee-bouygues-95-teaching-world-critical-thinking) Of course, none of that necessarily means that her ideas are wrong. > [@](#): > > How can children be taught to think critically about where to get information? And how can adults use the same thought patterns in business, and in life? Both are key focuses for the [Reboot Foundation](https://reboot-foundation.org/), created — and funded — by Bouygues and her husband. > > The three-year-old project is just one way Bouygues has pushed critical thinking. A politics major at Princeton, Bouygues earned an MBA from Harvard in 2000 before going on to leadership roles at a dozen companies and becoming a partner at consulting firm McKinsey. […] > > The foundation has also been making resources available to the public for free online. Many are directed at helping parents grow their children’s critical thinking skills, for which Bouygues recommends three essential steps: Ask children a lot of “why” questions, take time to question your own thinking to catch your own biases, and help children seek opposing views. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/4 "2023-06-23T02:49:49Z")
Thanks. To sum up, they think the skills should be taught grades 8–12 (mostly), and along with factual information; their partial answer to my #3 is that teachers are pressured to concentrate on preparation for high-stakes tests, instead, for eighth grade “in many states.” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/5 "2023-06-23T02:59:26Z")
[Here’s a more narrowly focused, and more adversarial, description from 2017 examining how the NAEP attempts to assess critical thinking skills.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/09/19/the-nations-report-card-says-it-assesses-critical-thinking-in-history-but-naep-gets-an-f-on-that-score/) (Washington Post, not sure about paywall status) > [@](#): > > For example, in history, NAEP claims to test not only names and dates, but critical thinking — what it calls “Historical Analysis and Interpretation.” Such questions require students to “explain points of view,” “weigh and judge different views of the past,” and “develop sound generalizations and defend these generalizations with persuasive arguments.” In college, students demonstrate these skills by writing analytical essays in which they have to put facts into context. NAEP, however, claims it can measure such skills using traditional multiple-choice questions. > > We wanted to test this claim. We administered a set of Historical Analysis and Interpretation questions f[rom NAEP’s 2010 12th-grade exam](https://www.nagb.org/content/nagb/assets/documents/publications/frameworks/history/2010-history-framework.pdf) to high school students who had passed the Advanced Placement (AP) exam in U.S. History (with a score of 3 or above). We tracked students’ thinking by having them verbalize their thoughts as they solved the questions. […] > > In a study that appears in the forthcoming [American Educational Research Journal](http://journals.sagepub.com/home/aer), we show that in 108 cases (27 students answering four different items), there was not a single instance in which students’ thinking resembled anything close to “Historical Analysis and Interpretation.” Instead, drawing on canny test-taking strategies, students typically did an end run around historical content to arrive at their answers. […] > > This year, NAEP will retire the No. 2 pencil and go paperless. Students will soon use 21st-century digital technology to answer multiple-choice questions that, in their basic form, haven’t changed much since Kelly administered the “Kansas Silent Reading Test.” […] > > If they become informed about their world, [our future voters are on their phones](https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/millennials-news/), flipping through their Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter feeds. Never have the critical skills historians associate with “Historical Analysis and Interpretation” been more crucial to teach — and to assess. > > In announcing the move to a paperless NAEP, William Bushaw, executive director of its governing board, [hailed the fact that the test](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/the-nations-report-card-g_b_13634558.html)could be delivered digitally, calling NAEP “the gold standard of student achievement.” But as long as NAEP claims to measure critical thinking using an item format designed to see if kids can tell the difference between a cow and a rat, it’s no gold standard. > > It’s fool’s gold. ---
**Author:** ![B.Serum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.serum/32/14266_2.png) [@B.Serum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.Serum)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/6 "2023-06-23T07:37:15Z")
I’m a big fan of the teaching of critical thinking in whatever data-driven methods are effective at teaching it, because it’s use and applications can benefit so many different facets of our lives. However, the link you shared emphasizes the real social harms caused by a lack of critical thinking in a very specific area: [media literacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_literacy). While [manipulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_manipulation) of attitudes is practically as old as the medium itself, political actors have gotten increasingly savvy with techniques that most of us are unable to notice when we encounter them. Add to that the explosion of channels of manipulated media and more importantly, the algorithms that practically ensure we only encounter the media that affirms our own beliefs. To me, this is the most alarming and pressing subset of critical thinking that we need to be equipping not only children with, _but adults too._ Apart from school curriculum, I would advocate respectable representatives from both the left and right to do a “Don’t Be a Sucker” tour to some of the top respectable cable news shows, talk radio hosts, YouTubers and podcasters. You want well-known reps from across the political spectrum, because we tend to only trust those people who share our beliefs. And by framing it as a set of techniques that help the viewer be smarter and not get tricked “by the other side,” I think you could get a critical mass of viewership, even though some of these channels may be guilty of some of these techniques. After all, we tend to notice these faults in our opponent, but not in ourselves. But by hammering home the idea that we’re all human and all susceptible to them, and that the key is to always be practicing — especially from these shows were most likely to already agree with. And by doing so, we’ll be contributing to a saner and stronger America. ---
**Author:** ![B.Serum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.serum/32/14266_2.png) [@B.Serum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.Serum)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/7 "2023-06-23T07:48:25Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > (3) why are we so collectively bad at it? Daniel Kahneman wrote about our two systems of thought in his seminal _[Thinking, Fast and Slow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking%2C_Fast_and_Slow#Two_systems)_: > **System 1:** Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. > > **System 2:** Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. Critical thinking is squarely in System 2, which takes effort, which requires time and energy. Moreover, we can be easily tricked into thinking our intuitive System 1 process can get the job done — in fact this “go with your gut” process just _feels_ right. ---
**Author:** ![SailorHG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@SailorHG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SailorHG)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/8 "2023-06-23T07:51:51Z")
I was in high school in the 1980s. I remember receiving several lectures in either 9th or 10th grade English class (I had the same teacher both years). I don’t believe it was called Critical Thinking but we did cover many of the logical fallacies and had a section on hierarchy of thought (inference, judgement, and a couple of others I can’t remember). I was in the honours program however; I don’t know if the regular classes taught it as well. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/9 "2023-06-23T14:07:37Z")
I think the problem is less that critical thinking isn’t taught, it’s that for many students’ families/parents, critical thinking is less important than orthodoxy within their church/community. In other words, they’re all for critical thinking right up until it starts leading people to question their church/religion or community norms, at which point it’s considered to be a detrimental thing, not a positive thing. For example, my grandparents were not big critical thinkers. They were dead-set against evolution. So when I brought up that human and chimp DNA were something like 98% the same, the thrust from my grandparents wasn’t something along the lines of that being interesting or anything- it was how scientists are atheistic, how we didn’t evolve from monkeys, and how the world needs more faith, etc… The implication was very clearly that thinking too much leads you away from good, solid faith and belief in things that were _known_ to be true, like creationism, etc… I suspect that stuff like climate change denial has got folded into that category of things that are “known to be true”, for this sort of people, even though there’s not a religious component to it whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/10 "2023-06-23T14:18:49Z")
> [@B.Serum](#): > > I would advocate respectable representatives from both the left and right to do a “Don’t Be a Sucker” tour to some of the top respectable cable news shows, talk radio hosts, YouTubers and podcasters. You want well-known reps from across the political spectrum, because we tend to only trust those people who share our beliefs. And where, exactly, would you find a Republican who would publicly support the teaching of critical thinking? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/11 "2023-06-23T14:23:10Z")
Personally, I try to incorporate critical thinking into everything I teach (high school math). And most of my colleagues, in any subject, would say the same. It’s not that we’re not trying. It’s just really, really difficult. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/12 "2023-06-23T14:49:53Z")
The best class I ever took was called “Lost Tribes and Sunken Continents”, except it wasn’t until college. It was a freshman archeology elective on pseudoscience. It definitely taught me critical thinking, as it provided an important lesson on judging the veracity of things (I remember reading about epistemology- the study of how we know what we know). From it, I took a basic rubric that I think can easily be taught to younger students. For any given information, you judge it against 4 metrics: 1. **How extraordinary is the claim?** This is the idea that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Your standard of credulity should be different if you are told it’s raining outside versus being told that aliens just landed. 2. **How credible is the source?**. Here, the idea is that some resources are more reliable than others. Broadly speaking, a reporter is more apt to be accurate than a crank ranting on a street corner. Of course, that’s not to say that even reliable and sincere sources can’t get it wrong (or that formal sources can’t be issuing propaganda). 3. **How widespread is the reporting?** If multiple independent sources are all confirming the same facts, that’s more reliable that if it’s just an outlier opinion (that’s why, when you see an Alien Autopsy on one tv show, which purports to be real, you can be pretty sure it’s a hoax when nobody else is talking about it) 4. **How consistent is the information?** The less information tends to vary, the more reliable is the information. Again, it’s not a fail safe, as people are regularly mistaken, but if a story is constantly changing it’s probably less accurate than if it always stays the same. The idea was that none of these standards, in and of itself, is definitive, but your _confidence_ in a story can be enhanced by judging it according to these criteria. The problem, as I see it, is most people only know things because somebody else told them so. And the only standard they use to judge that information is whether they consider the source to be trustworthy. Obviously, that leads to a host of problems - even the most trustworthy source can be mistaken, and of course con artists who might seem trustworthy really aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/13 "2023-06-23T15:08:15Z")
I think the scientific method could do with being taught better. A lot of people think of science as bunsen burners and test tubes of brightly colored liquid, and think of this as something wholly separate from climatology, say, which to them is just arbitrary proclamations. I will say though that 99% of the problem is cultural. Which makes it much harder to solve. America has always had an anti-intellectual vein, and it’s ground zero for wacky conspiracy theories. The difference is that the internet has created a new meme ecosystem which allows attractive CTs and ideas to grow and fester, and gain support. Incidentally, though my google fu is failing me right now, I read a news story recently about a political party’s\* attempts to silence fact-checking and debunking sites. So at least one half of the political spectrum’s fortunes depend upon a credulous and misinformed public. \* I won’t say _which_ party, because obviously we don’t want this to turn into a politics rant. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/14 "2023-06-23T15:30:15Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > It’s not that we’re not trying. It’s just really, really difficult. I assumed that teachers were trying! This is part of why it puzzles me so. I suppose if I compare critical thinking skills in the general populace with their math skills, there is also some shocking lack of ability. And high school students spend a couple of years learning French or Spanish, mostly to leave with zero skills. So maybe it’s more about education in general than about this subject (and I’m not inclined to blame teachers, since I teach at the college level myself: plenty of blame to spread around societal attitudes, administration, cultural values, etc.). ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/15 "2023-06-23T15:49:01Z")
> [@](#): > > …research strongly suggests that critical thinking skills are best acquired _in combination_ with the teaching of basic facts in a subject area. Yes. And if you wait until 8th grade to start teaching these skills, it’s too late. Start as early as 3d-4th grade for best results. > [@Kimstu](#): > > …the author of that linked article appears to be something of a single-minded zealot with something of a popular-media monopoly on the subject of critical thinking in K-12 education. You say that like it’s a bad thing. To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, zealotry in the defense of critical thinking is no vice. 🙂 > [@](#): > > …our future voters are on their phones, flipping through their Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter feeds. That’s what our present voters are doing, and it’s scary as hell. A preponderance of Twitter users have rotting fish meal where their critical thinking centers should be. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/16 "2023-06-23T16:00:47Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > And if you wait until 8th grade to start teaching these skills, it’s too late. Start as early as 3d-4th grade for best results. I dunno, I believed all kinds of crap into my mid-teens, then learned the scientific method and never looked back. I guess, yeah, better younger, I’m not saying wait…but there’s already a lot of competing pressures on teaching time, and I don’t think this is one of those that is so critical to be targeted at the young. In fact, adult education would work too, but unfortunately, there’s not really a way to deploy that. The kind of people that would volunteer for such education are already 90% of the way out of indoctrination. I do wonder though what happens to jailed terrorists / insurrectionists. Are they ever confronted on their views? Do they become misinformation preachers while in prison? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/17 "2023-06-23T16:03:13Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I think the scientific method could do with being taught better. That along with critical reasoning are part of the broader concept of thinking. That’s the problem we face. Beyond learning the basics needed to learn from information and interact with other an education should concentrate on improving our ability to think, to learn, to analyze, to diagnose, to create, to organize, and I don’t know how many other thinking skills largely ignored in education. Our efforts seem to be based on memorization of data, something that clearly fails most of the time. At the same time society is bombarded with the anti-thinking messages, from all sides really, but some more dedicated to preventing education based on thinking instead of specific data chosen to support particular ideologies. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/18 "2023-06-23T16:22:04Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > And where, exactly, would you find a Republican who would publicly support the teaching of critical thinking? I imagine we could get Liz Cheney on board with this plan, but that just highlights a problem: Anyone from “their” side who promotes actual critical thinking on any topic is immediately denounced as a traitor, and they stop trusting them. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/19 "2023-06-23T16:25:15Z")
I don’t know what the Republican message overall is, but certain prominent Republicans (e.g. DeSantis) have started an “us” vs “them” scenario, where the heart of the “them” is the Teachers’ Union. I don’t know if this is primarily an anti-education or an anti-union message, but certainly we’ve had the narrative arise that Parents are “us” and Teachers are “them.” This can’t be helping. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961/20 "2023-06-23T16:28:51Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > **How credible is the source?**. And part of that is, what is the _actual_ source? Many years ago, there were lists of “quotes” going around that alleged to “prove” that lots of people in government actually admitted to common conspiracy theories, like the New World Order. I started trying to trace these “quotes” to their original source, and it was always a mess. Every one I tracked ended up either being completely fake, misattributed, taken entirely out of context, or was so obscure that no original source could be found at all. These lists just kind of grew out of a piecemeal, crowd-sourced process of forgery, and then became “legitimate” via being endlessly quoted by hundreds of bloggers and websites. Giving the kids a bunch of such quotes, and asking them to track down the original source, can be a good exercise. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-reasoning-in-the-usa-teaching-thereof/985961.md?page=2)