This is one of the joys of home schooling - you can take whatever comes up, and turn it into an opportunity for education. Our topic this week in Biology is viruses and bacteria, and that led my stepson Josh to bring up objections to immunizations, based primarily on his mother's book. This led to a writing assignment - Josh is to present a written argument to support his objections to immunization, aware that he's likely to undergo strong challenges from his stepfather/teacher.

I call myself a "radical moderate," which means I'm cursed with compulsion to see both sides of most issues. This point of view rarely makes anybody happy. I can see points on both sides of the immunization issue - most of the time, immunizations seem beneficial, but there have been some real bloopers amongst the successes. Same with most of life.

While I certainly think people should think twice before injecting things into their bodies, my wife the chiropractor's book is a travesty of sensationalist writing. I want to teach Josh how to recognize such trash so he can spend his time on more reliable sources of information. Amos posted some very helpful "telltale signs" above. And wouldn't you know it, our lesson in the Glencoe World History book today had a section on "detecting bias" in writing. Here are the tips they give:

In detecting bias:
• Identify the writer's or speaker's purpose.
• Watch for emotionally charged language such as exploit, terrorize, and cheat.
• Look for visual images that provoke a strong emotional response.
• Look for overgeneralizations such as unique, honest, and everybody.
• Notice italics, underlining, and punctuation that highlight particular ideas.
• Examine the material to determine whether it presents equal coverage of differing views.

The book used an example from The Communist Manifesto. I was surprised to see that Marx and Engels had used such emotionally-charged language. I thought they were quiet, reasonable philosophers.
It's an interesting debate. And no, Art, I hope it isn't all "faith-based."

But the reason I got all those shots, is that the drill sergeant said I had to. Somehow, though, I doubt that 43% of Vietnam-Era veterans experienced side effects to vaccines, and that 80,000 Vietnam War vets have medical conditions as a result of vaccination. If that were the case, I think I would have noticed. That makes me question the data about Gulf War soldiers.

-Joe Offer-