by MojaveMike » Sun Feb 21, 2016 9:00 am
dingleberry: wildrose makes a number of excellent points, but I want to concentrate on the second part of the video you posted. The guy who does the whiteboard presentation shares what can best be characterized as a series of strawman arguments. Basically they're false arguments or pseudo-arguments which focus on the wrong aspect of the situation, excluding other elements of the situation which are more pertinent. (Don't get me wrong, I agree that kids are overly medicated, but many of the claims he makes even during that part of the presentation are clearly erroneous. Pause the video several times along the way and think about what he says and you're likely to catch on.) Probably the weakest part of the whiteboard presentation was the part about divergent thinking. He cites some poorly constructed study which supposedly proves that five-year-olds think more divergently than older children and claims that this is due to the effects of the education system. The problem here is that the study does not use a valid definition of divergent thinking. How do I know this? Because I CAN think divergently! In the study, random, stupid ideas generated by Kindergarteners are uncritically all counted as evidence of divergent thinking. Older kids sensor out the stupid ideas and understand the question better and do not offer random, stupid ideas. For instance, if asked "What objects would make good paper weights?" Kindergarteners might list whales, elephants, and bridges, whereas older kids wouldn't list such objects because although they might be heavy enough to hold paper down, they aren't light enough to be moved in a useful way by a human. The researchers in their excitement to prove that divergent thinking diminishes with age, fail to use a proper definition for divergent thinking and reach a completely invalid conclusion. This same type of error is made repeatedly. If you watch the video straight through without pausing it from time to time, you're likely to miss many of these errors unless you're good at spotting this sort of thing.