What Teachers Can Learn from Calling Bullshit
Elena Alvarez projected a chart onto the board that a student had brought in from an article, showing a steep rise in some vague trend he wanted as proof for an essay. The class oohed at the dramatic slope. Elena asked the room to look again, this time at the numbers along the side of the graph, and a few students noticed the axis did not start at zero and barely moved. The student looked briefly embarrassed, then curious, and asked how he was supposed to have caught that on his own. Elena realized her answer mattered more than the correction itself: she was not trying to make him distrust every chart he saw, but to give him a short list of questions he could ask of any of them. That shift became the lesson she taught for the rest of the term.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Turning cherry-picked numbers into a classroom habit
Elena's student had absorbed a chart's conclusion before questioning its construction, the default reaction the book warns against. The habit worth teaching is a short set of questions: where does this number start, what is the percentage really measuring, and does the sample match what the claim says it represents.
Younger students may not yet have the numeracy to evaluate a percentage or sample on their own, so the questions need scaffolding before independence. Practice: have students bring in one chart or claim each week and name, out loud, what question they would ask its author first.
Have students bring in one chart or claim each week and name, out loud, what question they would ask its author first.
Making axis literacy part of visual literacy
A chart that starts its axis well above zero or stretches a narrow range across the whole graph can turn a small, ordinary change into something that looks urgent. Elena's move, asking the class to read the numbers before the shape, gives students a concrete first step for any chart outside the classroom.
Not every truncated axis is dishonest, since some real differences are genuinely small and a full axis would flatten them into invisibility. Practice: assign students to redraw one classroom or online chart twice, once flattering and once honest, and compare what each version implies.
Assign students to redraw one classroom or online chart twice, once flattering and once honest, and compare what each version implies.
Teaching the difference between together and because
Students frequently encounter claims that two trends moved together and assume one caused the other, especially in headlines built for sharing. A useful test is asking whether the claim is specific enough that one counterexample could disprove it, turning a vague causal story into something checkable.
Some causal relationships are real but genuinely hard to prove with classroom-level examples, so not every case will resolve neatly. Practice: have students find one claim online linking two trends and write one sentence describing an alternative explanation for the pattern.
Have students find one claim online linking two trends and write one sentence describing an alternative explanation for the pattern.
Fact-checking as a form of respect for the classroom
Teaching students to check a claim before repeating it is not about making them cynical toward every source they meet, and Elena is careful to say so out loud. She frames it instead as respect: for themselves, for whoever they might later share the claim with, and for the truth of whatever they are actually trying to understand, a habit that will outlast any single lesson she teaches this year.
The sharpest tension in a classroom is between building genuine skepticism and not overwhelming students with doubt about everything they read, since a class taught to distrust every number can become as unhelpfully paralyzed as one trusting every number. Elena manages this by keeping the questions short and reusable rather than exhaustive, so students leave with a habit rather than a checklist too long to remember.
Name one thing, honestly
- Which of your teaching materials would benefit from the same scrutiny you ask of your students? - How do you teach the difference between a claim being popular and a claim being true? - What is the shortest version of these questions a student could actually remember?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Have students find one claim online linking two trends and write one sentence describing an alternative explanation for the pattern.