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The Inevitable skep/dad Dichotomy

I tend to believe — and more than ever as I work on this blog — that you cannot raise critical thinkers without being somewhat a skeptical parent, and you cannot be a skeptical parent and easily avoid raising critical thinkers.

I’ve realized that my work on this blog can be neatly divided into two categories and I thought it might be useful to define those. Hopefully this will clear things up for new readers. So, if you are a new reader this post is a good post to read because it is going to talk about the difference between these two categories. I’ve simplified them as much as I could and have called them skeptical parenting versus raising critical thinkers — and they are not contradictory ideas. Rather, they compliment each other. And just a few months into this blog are very much at the core of what I’ve been trying to accomplish — and will continue to do.

Skeptical Parenting

This is a mindset. Skeptical parenting is an approach and an outlook, a way of doing the work involved in parenting. I tend to believe — and more than ever as I work on this blog — that you cannot raise critical thinkers without being somewhat a skeptical parent, and you cannot be a skeptical parent and easily avoid raising critical thinkers. Some may argue, but the two are so entwined that it would take devotion above and beyond to accomplish. I suppose this means that at the highest level we the parents are critical thinkers ourselves. Sure, we are not perfect. Yes, we make mistakes. But the efforts we make are based around evidence and logic, decisions founded on rational responses to stories, claims, and ideas. We are role models after all. Our kids will try to emulate us. And so if our decisions about important things, including health (such as vaccines, medical procedures, drugs, fitness, and diets), spirituality (such as morality, religion, community building, and modern mythologies), and education (science, art, language, et cetera), are not made with a skeptical eye then we cannot call ourselves skeptical parents, whatever our goals. Already in this blog I’ve touched upon topics around consumerism, an element of skeptical parenting that I think is going to be revealed as a core aspect of modern element of the same. Modern advertising works hard to bombard us with false or shady claims on countless products — and we want to believe they will make our kids smarter, better, stronger, healthier, and more. As skeptical parents it is our job to evaluate — to filter, in some respect — the onslaught of society but only just enough that we can enable our goal, which is:

Raising Critical Thinkers

This is, for lack of a better word, a goal. It is also in the tag-line of this blog. Why? Because I’ve seen the Internet and there are countless awesome resources to help individuals think clearer and more rationally about their own encounters. And this is great. But when a dad wraps his arms around his innocent little kids and the thought occurs to him: how am I going to teach this little version of myself to be a critical thinker, where does he turn? Of course, this is a problem that cannot easily be solved by indoctrination. I want to make that clear, because if (as skeptical parents) we wanted to teach kids to ‘believe’ something, we would just shove it down their throats until they could recite it as rote. But, then any critical thinker will tell you that indoctrination is nothing more than a hypocritical kind of argument from authority: believe this because “I say so.” And instantly, we are not creating critical thinkers, but rather accomplishing the opposite of our goal. So, raising critical thinkers is a tricky sort of business, and I’ve started the discussion of this (somewhat) in an early post titled An Introduction to the Three Eyes where I outlined that raising critical thinkers has less to do with skepticism (at the outset) and more to do with inspiring a few core traits for worldly interaction: Independence, Integrity, and Imagination.

Thus, the efforts of this blog — a dichotomy of sorts — is summed up in a quote from my earlier article: The question that burned in the back of my mind was this: what are the the key skills that define moral, skeptical, critical thought and how would one go about imparting those skills to a child? Or, how does one accomplish the goal of raising critical thinkers, without simply indoctrinating skepticism, but while simultaneously role modeling a method of parenting that is in itself skeptical?

I hope that clears up a few things.

The SkepDad Blog is meant to casually reflect on questions surrounding parenting and raising kids to become critical thinkers by asking questions and examining parenting ideas with a skeptical eye for facts and science. Each article is one dad's personal opinion, backed (where relevant) by literature and published research, or otherwise based on personal experiences and insights. SkepDad welcomes balanced discussion, comments, and ideas.

January 6, 2008 by Brad
Filed as: Meta-Skepdad, The Three Eyes

Popularity: 21%

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