Tool Kit Activity
SLO #: 2 & 3 CourseLevel:PreCore + Suggested Class Time :15 minComplexity Index:Easy
(1, 2, 3, 4 or 5)
(PreCore, 1000, or Soph)
Snapshot: 10 minutes of class, minimal instructor preparation
Easy: 1 day of class, some instructor preparation
Moderate: 1 – 2 weeks of class; some instructor training/preparation
Complex: 1 – 2 months of class or wholly integrated into class,
instructor preparation should start one semester prior to implementing
In CT3, critical thinking is defined as:
…the disciplined and continuous process of asking the right questions and practicing logical thought processes to come to justifiable conclusions.
CT3 SLO statement: Formulate pertinent questions that clarify and focus an issue, and Evaluate quality and relevance of information.
Title
Contributor(s)
Earlobes
Mark Thames, Ph.D.; professor of and coordinator of the
Program in Philosophy and Religion in El Centro College
mthames@dcccd.edu
Objective of Activity:
Objective 1, tied to SLO 2:
To cause students to articulate the reason(s) behind their intuitive sense that asking what (any classification:
race/gender/age) a person is rarely generates a relevant question to finding out whether (any activity) is something they
should do—i.e., spotting irrelevant questions.
Objective 2, tied to SLO 3:
To bring to conscious awareness of the rationales (plus critique them) for using irrelevant criteria in evaluation and
decision-making.
This is designed as a communal event—although there are other, more individualized, implementations possible—and the objective is for a
sudden group realization and spontaneous group debate or uproar over it, which crystallizes, in a Gestalt manner, the two objectives. It’s outrageously
inappropriate and absurdly easy, and the outrageousness and absurdity should not be avoided if the instructor wishes to have maximum impact. Skirting
but staying clear of mere sensationalism or shock entertainment is the temptation to avoid.
Lesson Plan Outline for Activity:
1. On a whiteboard or projection, draw two ears, one with a “free” earlobe and one with an “attached,” or “hanging.”
(Don’t get into “pendulous” with students…) See http://s1.zetaboards.com/anthroscape/topic/2516883/1/.
2. Have the students divide themselves into two groups, with each student joining whichever group to which their “lobes”
belong.
3. At this point, I usually stand on top of my desk, the Lawgiver on the mountain and the two Tribes. The surprise to the
students assists in creating the odd and focused nature of the moment.
4. Ask each group (tribe) to police itself, casting out those who have self-identified “incorrectly.” Reference the Survivor
nonsense from television.
5. Ask the students which group is larger. (Free lobes are the dominant allele, with widely varying distributions of the
phenotypical expression of the recessive trait by ethnicity, etc. See the literature. However, not only will, obviously, one
group be larger, but it will almost always be the free or hanging lobe group.)
6. Assert that America is a democracy, ask what that mains. Steer them to the idea of majority rule.
7. Ask the majority tribe to decide, in tribal caucus, what things the smaller group’s members will have to do in the class
this semester.
8. At this point, discomfort and protest usually erupt; and from here it is not far to get them, by leading questions and
reductiones ad absurdum to the central question:
Why is this the wrong way to make a decision?
9. They won’t reject majority rule, but it is easy to inject John Stuart Mill’s concept of the “tyranny of the majority” and the
need for minority rights to prevent it.
10. They will be dubious about special “rights” or scholarships for PALs (Persons with Attached Lobes). However,
hopefully, they will get away from rights instead to the notion that the attachedness or otherwise of one’s earlobes is
irrelevant to, well, pretty much everything. Here, each instructor, depending on course content and instructor intention,
can draw, or lead the students to draw, the moral of the story. My closing line in PHIL 1301Introductory Philosophy,
PHIL 1304 Major World Religions, PHIL 2306 Ethics, and PHIL 2307 Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy,
where I use this exercise, is some form of:
The differences between us which we can see are neither as
interesting nor as important as the equally real differences between
us which we cannot see.
Web Links for Instructor Preparation for Activity:
I have listed websites with information on earlobes (and other extraneous bodily components) in the bibliographic
section. However, many of us will have Gray’s Anatomy and so forth on our shelves already anyway. Depending on the
outrageousness and ludicrousness of the criterion selected for division into group identity—and again, the more
outrageous and preposterous the better—all sorts of criterion-relevant sources might be used, webbish or worldly.
Gray, Henry. Anatomy of the Human Body. 20th edition. (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1918), X.1.d.1. Accessed July 11, 2012,
at http://www.bartleby.com/107/229.html.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081122094404AAxTu5n.
http://s1.zetaboards.com/anthroscape/topic/2516883/1/.
This activity is grounded in Sir Francis Bacon’s notion of “the idols of the mind,” found in sections 38-68 of Part I of his
Novum Organon (1620), and John Stuart Mill’s notion of the tyranny of the majority, found in his On Liberty, 1869.
Web Links to Access During Activity:
None.
Suggested M.A.T.U.R.E. Measure Technique(s):
DIRECT MEASURE
INDIRECT
MEASURE
Evidence To Be Collected
(Insert space as needed)
One can have a student film the event—having clued
them in beforehand or not, as the instructor thinks
best.
DVD of course section session.
One can have students write one-minute reaction
papers immediately following.
A sample of rubricked papers.
Students can be led—as individuals, in groups, in
pairs, or as a class whole—to come up with two lists,
one of relevant and one of irrelevant criteria for
evaluating people, or for asking about them.
As an enlargement of the exercise, one could have a
premade test with sample job interview questions,
some legitimate and some not. The students would
have to ascertain which is which, and why.
Whiteboard screenshot. Lists on paper.
Instructor-prepared assessment
instrument.
Bibliographic References:
Gray, Henry. Anatomy of the Human Body. 20th edition. (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1918), X.1.d.1. Accessed July 11, 2012, at
http://www.bartleby.com/107/229.html.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081122094404AAxTu5n.
http://s1.zetaboards.com/anthroscape/topic/2516883/1/.
This activity is grounded in Sir Francis Bacon’s notion of “the idols of the mind,” found in sections 38-68 of Part I of his
Novum Organon (1620), and John Stuart Mill’s notion of the tyranny of the majority, found in his On Liberty, 1869.
Other
My experience is that students are annoyed by and love this exercise simultaneously. Extremely negative reactions are just as good
from my point of view as thoughtful ones. There is oftentimes shouting and laughter, some nervous: also good. Sometimes the 2004
Paul Haggis movie Crash is brought up, which is useful.