Being a college graduate and a citizen will lead to many future opportunities to think critically about matters that affect the quality of life for you and your family. Answers are often not clear-cut but rather can be loaded with ambiguity and contention. Taking a position on behalf of you and your family will require careful, critical thinking.
For instance, what should we do about the growing problem of childhood and adult obesity? Should we tackle this problem as a society because reducing the rates of obesity would benefit society as a whole? How could you approach this public health crisis in your community?
Let’s assume that you and some neighbors decide to petition the school board to place on its next agenda a decision to ban soft drinks in the public schools. In response to your request, you are granted permission to speak at the next school board meeting. Your team collaborates to identify the questions that you need to explore:
You collect data using resources at your town library, and in your search for evidence to support your position, you discover that according to the local health department, obesity rates for adults and children in your community exceed the national average and have gone up dramatically in the past twenty years. Rates of diabetes among young adults are also increasing every year. You also learn that soft-drink machines first appeared in schools in your district fifteen years ago. Other than regular physical education classes, the schools don’t have programs in place to encourage healthy eating. Schools receive money from the soft-drink companies, but you cannot get a clear answer about how much money they receive or how it is being used.
The data about the health of the community and the schoolchildren is powerful. You carefully cite all your sources, and your team believes that it is ready to make its case. You assume that the school board will make an immediate decision to remove soft-drink machines from school grounds based on what you have discovered. You cannot imagine another side to this issue, and you wonder how anyone could possibly object to removing from school a substance that, in your view, clearly harms children.
Little did you know that your position would meet stiff opposition during the board meeting. You were shocked to hear arguments such as the following: