BrianGarst.com

Twenty-five seventh grade students were presented with a website about a fictitious creature, a “tree octopus”, and asked to rate its credibility. All but one found it “very credible”, and none recognized it as a hoax.

The Locker Room comments on the website’s obvious clues:

These kids need a Baloney Detection Kit or something; a little close reading would have revealed several obvious leg pulls, such as:

* “booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch”. . .

* Related links at the end of the page to such things as “Save the Mountain Walrus” and “The Rock Nest Monster” and organizations such as “Greenpeas.org” and “People for the Ethical Treatment of Pumpkins.”

That not one of twenty five seventh graders knew that octopuses don’t live in trees is troubling. I think, however, that the public schooling indoctrination regarding “endangered species” also left the students incapable of properly evaluating information presented in that context. I suspect that more would have caught on to the hoax if the tree octopus had been presented as a possible pet, instead of an endangered species.

If there’s one thing kids learn in school, it’s the importance of buzzwords. And no ritual phrase is uttered more solemnly than “endangered species”. Upon hearing this sacred utterance, students are expected to lower their heads in shame and mutter to themselves about the folly of man. The last thing they are supposed to do is ask critical questions.