[Editor’s Note: “Your Skeptic Stories” is an ongoing series written by readers like you, people who have, through one means or another, discovered skepticism and critical thinking. These stories remind us that we all started somewhere and some of us are still finding our way as skeptics If you are interested in contributing your own story, please submit your piece of around 1000 words to maria (at) randi.org along with a short 2-3 line bio.
Today’s story comes from Kate.]
My mother was a “psychic”: a tarot reader and crystal ball gazer ... until she discovered I Ching and started to do interesting things with matchsticks instead. If only I’d been old enough to buy my own matchsticks and set fire to her tarot cards!
I knew, at the age of ten, that what she was doing was a con, but I copied her and fooled my school friends into thinking I was psychic too. I always knew I wasn’t, but it didn’t stop me wanting to show off. I wanted to amaze my friends with correct predictions about which boy in the class fancied them – which I already knew because I’d been keeping a close eye on all the boys myself. I would happily advise “Debbie” not to wear green on Tuesdays – Tuesday was swimming class and she looked better in her green cozzie than I did in my blue one. I was so convincing they all believed me! And of course, I thought they were all totally stu-u-u-u-u-pid!
I got away with being a fake psychic for several more years, even at University where my tarot cards were always welcomed at parties. I went on to study astronomy and become a fairly respectable researcher. I still thought most people were stu-u-u-u-pid!
Then when I was thirty-five, I had my first son and I suddenly realised I had to grow up. If I didn’t teach my own progeny how to spot woo-woo, he might come home one day married to an aromatherapist. I would have seriously failed him. And myself.
Happily, I now have three boys and they are all healthy critical thinkers. They adore Carl Sagan, Randi, Michael Shermer, Penn & Teller (though I have to restrict my boys’ access to some of the Bullshit as they are still at the “ewww yuck, she’s no clothes on, that’s gross” stage of pre-puberty). Oh and not forgetting Mythbusters. Since when, Jamie and Adam, has any kid ever taken notice of “Do not try this at home”? I should sue you for burnt kitchen curtains and exploded microwave ovens!
I’m still not sure I’m doing enough, though.
A few months ago, the JREF uploaded a lesson plan involving Zener cards, which I duly printed off. I carefully explained the experiment to the boys, set up the table with screen (two dining chairs with a duvet draped across them) and placed my eldest – I shall call him “James” – trying to identify the cards; and my middle boy – “Phil” – noting the responses. Then I left them to it while I began to make lunch. After thirty-three turns of the cards, “James” had correctly identified twenty-nine of them, and “Phil” was well on the way to believing his brother was doing the impossible. I checked there were no reflections in windows, mirrors, paintings; checked for holes in the duvet; blindfolded “James” with a scarf; and it took me another half dozen cards to work out what was going on. “Phil” was recording the cards in pencil on a wooden table, and “James” was listening carefully, counting the number of pencil strokes as his brother wrote.
“James” may turn out to be even more of a little monster than I was. I can only hope that I’m imparting a sense of fairness alongside the skepticism. By coincidence, eSkeptic’s latest edition arrived in my Inbox this morning, featuring an article by Daniel Loxton about DBAD, Phil Plait’s “Don’t Be A Dick”. Link here: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-06-22/
I used to think it was all right to believe my friends were stu-u-u-u-u-pid just so long as I didn’t tell them what I thought. Now I have to get across to my sons that, as Ben Goldacre says in “Bad Science”, sometimes even clever people believe stupid things. That doesn’t make these people stupid, they just haven’t been given the right “tools” to think for themselves, logically and critically, and sometimes we have to be kind.
It’s not nice to tell five-year-old “Susan” next door that Santa doesn’t exist, but that shouldn’t stop us from asking “Susan’s Mom” why she tells her daughter fibs.
Kate is a home schooling mother from Ashbourne, Co Meath, Ireland with three sons (12,11,9) and they regularly use materials from JREF in their lessons.