Talking with some high school students would be a good way to test this hypothesis. Do you know of any high schools near you that have an atheist or skeptic club? An organization like that might be a useful way to get into a high school in the first place, since it wouldn’t be during school hours, and there’s less risk of getting in trouble with the school for offending people if it’s an atheist club anyway. (I imagine religion would be the biggest point of contention, if you were coming as a guest speaker and trying to teach ideas from this site. It could probably be avoided if necessary, though.)
If you can’t find actual high school students to talk to, attending meetings of a student club at a community college, or a university that’s not very exclusive, might be the next best thing. I imagine it would be easier to find a contact person for a college club than a high school one, since they post more information online, and some allow non-students to be regular members. Coming in September would make it easier to tell who the freshmen are (since they’re the closest to high schoolers).
For either type of school, I’d imagine you’d probably be coming as a guest speaker if you wanted to see how attempting to teach rationality works, or observing discussions where biases tend to come into play if you want to see how much they already know (which you could still do as a guest speaker, you’d just have to be leading the discussion).
Have you seen polymathwanabe’s posts about his (Muggle Studies class)[http://lesswrong.com/lw/jr3/how_to_teach_to_magical_thinkers/]? I don’t know how old the “students” are, but I know a lot of high schoolers are still into Harry Potter. This is at least a case of trying to teach rationality to the general public, and he seems to be having a hard time.
I actually wonder if teenagers take ideas, or at least some ideas, more seriously than they would as adults. They’re not good at updating on new evidence, because they don’t know that they need to. But, they might be more likely to devote a lot of energy and resources to things that seem important to them at the time, because your current problems and ambitions seem more important when you don’t have as much to compare them to. Being under the control of parents, and having more fear of social stigma than adults, could prevent them from actually doing anything all that drastic most of the time. (This idea is mostly coming from my own experience of starting to take ideas seriously in the middle of high school, though.)
Talking with some high school students would be a good way to test this hypothesis. Do you know of any high schools near you that have an atheist or skeptic club? An organization like that might be a useful way to get into a high school in the first place, since it wouldn’t be during school hours, and there’s less risk of getting in trouble with the school for offending people if it’s an atheist club anyway. (I imagine religion would be the biggest point of contention, if you were coming as a guest speaker and trying to teach ideas from this site. It could probably be avoided if necessary, though.)
If you can’t find actual high school students to talk to, attending meetings of a student club at a community college, or a university that’s not very exclusive, might be the next best thing. I imagine it would be easier to find a contact person for a college club than a high school one, since they post more information online, and some allow non-students to be regular members. Coming in September would make it easier to tell who the freshmen are (since they’re the closest to high schoolers).
For either type of school, I’d imagine you’d probably be coming as a guest speaker if you wanted to see how attempting to teach rationality works, or observing discussions where biases tend to come into play if you want to see how much they already know (which you could still do as a guest speaker, you’d just have to be leading the discussion).
Have you seen polymathwanabe’s posts about his (Muggle Studies class)[http://lesswrong.com/lw/jr3/how_to_teach_to_magical_thinkers/]? I don’t know how old the “students” are, but I know a lot of high schoolers are still into Harry Potter. This is at least a case of trying to teach rationality to the general public, and he seems to be having a hard time.
I actually wonder if teenagers take ideas, or at least some ideas, more seriously than they would as adults. They’re not good at updating on new evidence, because they don’t know that they need to. But, they might be more likely to devote a lot of energy and resources to things that seem important to them at the time, because your current problems and ambitions seem more important when you don’t have as much to compare them to. Being under the control of parents, and having more fear of social stigma than adults, could prevent them from actually doing anything all that drastic most of the time. (This idea is mostly coming from my own experience of starting to take ideas seriously in the middle of high school, though.)
Thanks, there are helpful ideas and give some useful leads. I’ll explore them more and get back to you.