Critical Thinking and Publishing
I shared it because it seemed so ridiculous, then thought about it more, once a few comments had come in. Sound familiar?
My first take on it was to wonder at the editor of this paper. Did he/she realise how ridiculous this was? Maybe not – which is worrying! Did they publish, fully aware that this person (name removed) would be held up to ridicule? And, how was it that he was so poorly informed? Does it come down to effective communication by those in the know, or lack of critical-thinking skills on his part, or a combination? (Note: I am not in any way blaming teachers! I am married to one, and fully aware of the great job they do). It does appear funny, and lets the trolls do their worst, but he seems to be in earnest. So, at the very least, there have been failures of reasoning and communication.
Then, as the conversation continued (I did a little digging and found a better shot of the original article, and what may be this person’s Linked-In profile. The article was published in 2008, so it has been doing the rounds for a while. This shows just how careful you have to be with what you put out there. Somebody searching for him on the web today would come up with the article pretty quickly – I did.
Once it is on the web there is no getting rid of it. So – a cautionary tale