Parent Tips: The Believing & Doubting Games
The first time your child plays the Believing and Doubting Games will be a Big Brain Leap. Note that your child will likely also be excited about the prospect of playing a game; alas, this won’t turn out to be the most fun game they’ve ever played–though we do our best. But that’s OK. These games are incredibly useful tools for learning systematic analysis of the content and form of an argument. It’s how your child will learn to develop an informed opinion on a text. June Writers Academy teaches the games using an exceptionally ridiculous piece of writing because it keeps the practice fun and accessible.
The Believing Game
Some kids may be tempted to skip the Believing Game step of this process, so please make sure that they don’t! Kids might find it tedious, but this skill will not develop naturally, and it’s critical for a functioning, democratic society.
If your kid skips this step, they’ll also miss the opportunity to learn how to analyze the role that a particular chunk of writing plays in the overall text’s form—how do emotion, style, and organization impact the overall text? This is a sophisticated idea that isn’t usually taught until high school or college, if at all. If your child is tempted to write, “this text chunk is the beginning of the letter,” encourage them to go deeper and use the core tools of rhetoric to analyze what the text is doing. Why is it the beginning? Why did the author put it there instead of somewhere else? As the ancients knew, how we say something can be just as important as what we say.
The Doubting Game
Most kids love the Doubting Game because they get to call out the problems they’re often told to ignore and accept without question. Kids love to ask why.
If your kid is of a philosophical bent, they may be inclined to go super deep in this game. How do I know this piece of paper exists? Is the sun real? How do I know I’m not just a piece of code in a simulation? Etc. It can be a lot. So please support their curiosity but also help them figure out where to set the boundaries of their analysis for this practice—for now. (It’s good to question even our deep assumptions.)
Other kids may feel timid about questioning the authority of the author or subject of a text (ethos). Please permit these kids to question authority. Best to get it over with before they hit their teenage years.
