I think that today, many students feel the same way that McCain feels about this study. They want their hypothesis to be true, they are not willing to accept that they are incorrect about something. So, if they want to find proof that the teacher does not care about them, they may just find it, even if that is not the case and the teacher is trying very hard to show it.
So, the question is, how can I, as a teacher (I should rename my blog this, because I use it in almost every post), teach students to accept information that they do not like. I think that one of the only ways of doing that is by teaching about the past and how people from the past have used incorrect knowledge and hypotheses that they have "proven" to prove that, for example, African American's are less than Caucasians because phrenology proves that they have smaller brains. They also have less veins than Caucasians (Which was only one body that was brought before the doctor who said this). Phrenology, we now know, is quite a load of lies that was created to keep African American's below Caucasians. But now, we typically, recognize that they are equal to us.
However, I think that it is a really good idea to critically think about these things. But, don't make a big deal about something if you haven't seen or read it, like what McCain is doing here. Critically read it when it comes out, and don't have pre-biases before even reading it, or else you are most likely going to find a reason to not like it.
Like this, I, as a teacher, cannot go into a classroom with pre-concieved notions about my students or else I will be hurting them quite intensely. By not giving them a clean slate in my classroom, they are going to continually think that they are their behaviors and nothing else defines them. And that is no okay to teach students either directly or indirectly.
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