ACE Series Part III: Good Evidence Must ACE the BS Test—It’s the Law!

Part I of Richard’s “ACE” Series can be read here.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…

Some of my students think that they are Thomas Jefferson. They will write paragraphs with assertions they hold to be self-evident. And while I laud their desire to write revolutionary words, they must first learn that no one, not even the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, can get away with offering evidence-less assertions.

Mock academic politics all you want, but higher education at least claims the democratic notion of fair criticism. It’s a place where anyone should be able to call BS on an unsupported assertion at any time. And its participants should get the opportunity to challenge a point’s validity and qualify it with amendments—the 13^th, 14, 15^th, and 19^th in Mr. Jefferson’s case.

Students have an innate sense of the need for evidence and support. Like all of us, they have undoubtedly tried to justify some vice to themselves or to others. Excuses are a defense mechanism designed to protect us from stepping too deeply in our own BS.

If your students can hone this reflex into a voluntary and disciplined action, I guarantee that you will begin to see some intellectual feats of strength. Doing this boils down to cultivating a healthy dose of skepticism and curiosity among your students. This is best modeled in the course of in-classroom teaching.

The Issue With Evidence

Too often pundits chalk up the issue with evidence to the abundance of technology available to students. But the issue with evidence has very little to do with the pro-con technology debate. Compelling scholarly studies suggest that peer-review and encyclopedia status should not merit any more trust than solid open-source research. The real issue is that million-dollar libraries and mobile computing do no one any good if students aren’t going to seriously use them.

That being said, I try to ask myself the following questions about research, evidence, and my courses’ design:

• By the end of the class will my students be more or less likely to fall for a parody article on an issue we’ve studied?
• Are they more likely to trust, write-off, or contribute to a Wikipedia article on our course topic?
• Could my students hold a learned conversation with the author of an assigned reading?            

In whatever form the publication boom and the digital revolution may continue, students must learn to discern good interpretations from bad. Below are some practices that have become standard in my courses. You can adjust these to classes of various levels and sizes. And by the time major paper assignments come around, your students will be all about evidence because you have made it the law.

Show of Force

When I began teaching, I had a few students call BS on me while I was stressing the importance of sources and citations. I felt like I had a riot on my hands as I read baseless assertion after baseless assertion. But I noticed that when I worked in a setting where other faculty and staff were equally invested in critical thinking, the students got with the program. So try to collaborate with your writing center’s staff, librarians, TAs, RAs, and fellow faculty. Invite them to teach a bit of your class to show that they too practice what you preach.

Call it Like You Read It

When students assert a view in class, follow up with a “what in the reading led you to that conclusion?” If you do this consistently, they will pick up on the importance of evidence. Some teachers, usually those who’ve never tried it, think this stifles the conversation or keeps certain students from participating in class discussions. I’ve found just the opposite. The talkers will take this as a personal challenge and take the initiative to make ACE arguments. The pensive students will appreciate you for holding the talkers accountable. This creates space for the pensive students to join in. Those who did the reading but are less confident in their understanding will ask points of clarification that will actually benefit the larger class. So give this a shot. It may just work.

Right to Smite

Allow your readers to critique an author’s argument. If you’re reading a secondary source, allow your students to judge how ACE it is. Your students might come up with ways to strengthen the argument through reorganization or insights from other readings. This works with primary source materials too. I’ve had students read the Pauline epistles and go back and forth with the apostle’s reasoning. Students get really into sussing out weak arguments.

Cite is Might: Intellectual Property and the Fear of God

Get your students in the habit of citing authors’ names and page numbers in everything they do. If you wait until the big assignments, you’re asking for students to take shortcuts. Try to make citation a justice issue. Ask them what would they do if someone copied their work? Or better yet, tell them what you would do if someone copied your work. Sympathy gets them every time sometimes; fear gets them the rest.

Time Off for Good Behavior

When a question comes up whose answer has yet to be discussed, have the class stop what they are doing and head to the library or go to the computer lab or pull out their cell phones and look for the answer. You can even just ask the class to imagine researching the answer, asking them where would they search in the library or what keywords would they use in Google to get the answer in the fewest search attempts. They just might realize that they can do this on their own.

Next time, we’ll discuss commenting on evidence like an ACE. In the meantime, please let us know how these techniques are working out for you in the comment section. Or if you have others to add to the list, share the wealth. We’re all in this together.

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