Often it's found in humor
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Monday, November 16, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Gillard's argument is made of straw
About using high stakes tests, such as NAPLAN, Education Minister Julia Gillard says:
She goes on to say:
I think I'll have to post on this (high stakes testing) at some length in the near future. The UK loves it, but as the report linked above suggests, there is, overall, a negative effect on education. New York, which Gillard is enthralled with, is now finding out the same. (Why would Australia model it's educational reforms after places that perform worse than us in international comparisons???) The (seemingly) ill informed rhetoric of our Federal Education Minister is worrying.
"To those who say we aren't measuring the whole of a child's character development, I say I agree. But I don't believe our aim is to have schools full of happy, illiterate, innumerate children."So who exactly is saying this is their aim Julia? Yup, no-one holds this position, but it's an easy straw man to knock down.
She goes on to say:
"Our aim is to have happy, confident children who are getting the skills they need for work and life, like reading, writing and maths."And I'd say it's safe to say everyone agrees. However, Julia, perhaps we should be looking at the consequences of the high stakes testing you advocate?
I think I'll have to post on this (high stakes testing) at some length in the near future. The UK loves it, but as the report linked above suggests, there is, overall, a negative effect on education. New York, which Gillard is enthralled with, is now finding out the same. (Why would Australia model it's educational reforms after places that perform worse than us in international comparisons???) The (seemingly) ill informed rhetoric of our Federal Education Minister is worrying.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Posting to Blogger using Google Wave via Posterous...
Posting to Blogger using Google Wave via Posterous...
I have been lucky enough to get a google wave invite and wanted to test it out as a blogging tool. Unfortunately the Blogger robot "bloggy" isn't working, so I thought I'd try this work around.
Anyone with a wave account who wants to wave me, I'm theojclark@googlewave.com
I have been lucky enough to get a google wave invite and wanted to test it out as a blogging tool. Unfortunately the Blogger robot "bloggy" isn't working, so I thought I'd try this work around.
Anyone with a wave account who wants to wave me, I'm theojclark@googlewave.com
Monday, October 19, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Podcast - Tutorial 34: Psychoanalysing Tool
It’s been a while, but we’re finally back with another, albeit short, episode. Courtesy of Dr Phil - we have a couple of fallacies for you to test yourself on.
Labels:
Dr Phil,
False Analogy,
Hunting Humbug 101,
Podcast,
Special Pleading
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Posts (Atom)
FALLACIES
ad hominem
Ambiguity
Appeal to Authority
Appeal to Celebrity
Appeal to Celebrity.
Argument by Artifice
Argument by Slogan
Argument to Consequences
Bad Faith
Begging the Question
Browbeating
Burden of Proof
Burden of solution
Devil's Advocate
Exaggerated Conflict
Factoid Propagation
False Analogy
False Attribution
False Cause; Correlation Error
False Dichotomy
False dilemma
False Positioning
Gibberish
GIGO.
humbug hunting
Hume's Razor
immunised hypothesis
Impugning Motives
Inversion
LAME
Misuse of Information
Moral Equivalence
Moving the Goalposts
Naturalistic Fallacy
Non-sequitur
Occam's Razor
Perfect Solution
Personal Abuse
Poisoning the Well
Popular Opinion
postdiction
Red Flag Faux Pas
Red Herring
Reductio Ad Absurdum
Sanctimony
Self Defeating Argument
Simple-Minded Certitude
Skeptics of Carlos
Slippery Slope
Socratic Method
Special Pleading
Spinning another hypothesis
Stacking the Deck
Straw Man
Substitution
The Devil's Advocate
Unfounded Generalisation
Weasel Words
Wishful Thinking
WTF? Fallacy
HUMBUG! eBook by Jef Clark and Theo Clark
Direct download of the PDF (4 mb): Humbug! the skeptic's field guide to spotting fallacies in thinking.








