A critical thinking exercise I like to play in classrooms is role-playing a conversation between someone concerned about climate change and a climate-denying cranky uncle. After introducing the rhetorical techniques and logical fallacies used to distort science, I split the class into groups who role-play a conversation where one person tries to convince the other person of climate change, while the other person responds with denialist rhetorical techniques. This interactive approach is known as active inoculation – become inoculated from being misled by practicing those techniques yourself. It’s also good practice for the person playing the role of climate concerned to try to identify fallacies in real time.
The part I particularly enjoy is demonstrating what the role playing looks like by playing the cranky uncle in a conversation with their professor. In every single instance, regardless of how experienced or knowledgeable the professor is in climate science, they always get a bit nervous beforehand, not knowing how it’s going to go. I have to confess, even though I’m giving arguments I know are logically false, once the conversation begins, I start getting competitive about winning the argument!
Back in March (in other words, a lifetime ago), VICE came to George Mason University to film one of my critical thinking workshops. It included students playing the Cranky Uncle game in class as well as the role-playing exercise. One of the class’s professors, Natalie Burls, agreed to demonstrate role-playing. But to give her an idea of what a role-playing conversation looks like, we did a “practice run” beforehand while having dinner with friends. While it may not have sharpened our critical thinking skills, we both had a few glasses of wine before engaging in our critical thinking exercise. Here’s an excerpt of our Drunk Critical Thinking:
Leave a Reply