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The Doubletalk Game: Score Your Candidates!
It's The Rhetoric, Stupid Americans are going to be stuck listening to political speeches and debates all year. The candidates are all trying to sell you something and make their opponents look foolish. But there are so many ways to do it that don't involve stating one's own opinions, or proving ones point! Can you tell when someone's making an ad hominem argument?
Or pulling the old "experts agree that..." trick?
Or even begging the question? The Critical Thinking Crisis These days, thanks to the "No Child Left Behind" policies of George Bush, who as we all know is the most intelligent and well-educated man in America, clearly more qualified than teachers to judge how best to educate our children* -- these days, teachers are required to spend most of the year teaching children to memorize lists of answers, so that they can pass standardized tests at the end of the year. If the kids don't pass the tests, the school loses funding. So a teacher can't waste valuable class time on in-depth explorations of subjects like history or what's happening in the world, let alone teach critical thinking. I sometimes wonder if Bush is as stupid as we think he is. It's a lot easy for certain groups to seize power and hold it if the electorate doesn't have any critical thinking skills. Fallacious Argument Scorecard, Election 2008 So here's a fun exercise to do with your kids -- or good practice for yourself, since salesmen and all kinds of people use these same techniques on you every day! Take a look at this List of Fallacious Arguments, which is a great page covering all kinds of spurious debate, false argument, verbal trickery, and doubletalk. 1. Select ten or so types of false argument (argument ad hominem, changing the subject, etc) from the list. Write them down on the lefthand side of a piece of paper. 2. Tune into a political debate. YAWN! 3. Write the candidates' initials across the top, and draw lines to make columns. 4. Now listen carefully! Put a check under a candidate's initials for each verbal trick or fallacious argument. 5. Score! Who's got the slipperiest tongue? Who's actually (good grief) saying what he or she means and stands for, and probably getting reamed for it? ________ *Pop Quiz: Which particular fallacious argument technique did I use in that paragraph? |
A List of Fallacious Arguments
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