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Postman How can teachers help students develop 'crap-detecting' skills through history

4 min read

Teachers can help students develop “crap-detecting” skills by reorienting the curriculum around the “ascent of humanity,” a narrative that treats every subject not as a set of fixed facts but as a historical struggle of ideas[1][2]. By teaching through a historical lens, educators provide students with a “raised consciousness” that allows them to understand where their ideas, roots, and moral sensibilities come from[3].

The following strategies demonstrate how history can be used to cultivate these skills:

1. Transitioning to “Histories” Teachers

Teachers should move away from presenting history as a mere chronicle of indisputable events, which often serves as a “mirror of the conceits” of the culture that produced it[4]. Instead, they should become “histories teachers,” instructing students that there is no definitive history, only hypotheses and theories about why change occurs[4]. This helps students understand that historical “answers” are actually determined by the specific questions historians choose to ask[4].

2. Teaching Every Subject as History

To avoid reducing knowledge to a mere “consumer product,” teachers must present the history of every subject, including biology, physics, and mathematics[3].

• Scientific Context: Teaching the atom without Democritus or electricity without Faraday denies students access to “The Great Conversation” of human development[3].

• Knowledge as Evolution: Students should be taught that knowledge is a stage in development with a past and a future, rather than a fixed “thing” to be memorized[5]. This historical approach teaches connections and shows that every thinker stands on the shoulders of those who came before[5].

3. Raising the Level of Abstraction

“Crap-detecting” requires students to move beyond the “event” level of history—which Technopoly provides as a “stream of meaningless events”—and into the realm of concepts and theories[6][7]. For example, when studying the Holocaust or the “trail of tears,” students should not just learn the facts but evaluate them through different historical lenses, such as the “maniac” theory or the “banality of evil”[8].

4. Emphasizing the History of Science and Falsifiability

In science education, teachers should focus on the history and philosophy of science rather than just technical procedures[9][10]. A critical part of this is teaching falsifiability: the idea that science is not about recognizing “truth” but about the ability to recognize falsehood[11][12]. This teaches students to be skeptical of any claim that cannot be subjected to a test of disproof[11].

5. Using History to Demystify Symbols

Teachers can help students maintain an epistemological and psychic distance from modern technology by showing that every invention—from the alphabet to the computer—is a product of a specific historical and political context[13]. By understanding the history of technology, students can begin to see it as something strange rather than natural or inevitable, enabling them to scrutinize its agenda[13][14].

6. Integrating Semantics with History

History should be paired with semantics to help students discover the underlying assumptions of the language used to describe the past[15]. This interdisciplinary approach assists students in reflecting on the sense and truth of what they are asked to read, effectively training them to detect when language is being used to distort reality[15].

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