Check it out

Check it out(Ⅰ)

The expression‘crap-detecting’comes from a classic book by Postman and Weingartner called Teaching as a Subversive Activity.One of the central tenets of these authors is that our job as teachers is,among other things,to develop our students’ability to‘crap-detect’:to take nothing on trust just because an‘authority’says it is so,but to look at‘authority’says it is so,but to look at‘authoritative’statements critically and sceptically,using all the rational thinking skills and sources of knowledge at our disposal to check it out for‘crap’.I suppose we'd call this today‘developing critical thinking skill’.But I like the expression‘crapdetecting’better:it may be a crude metaphor,but it conveys what it means a lot more clearly.