Recently while I was on the Ruffner bridge, three female undergraduate students jogged by. Just as they approached the steps with the Z, they repositioned themselves to a vertical formation almost as if someone had thrown a switch. When I reported the incident to my USEM students, chuckling broke out among the females, who informed me about a myth that first-year girls are told by older peers on Grounds. If a first-year female runs over a Z on Grounds, she is certain to become pregnant before the end of that semester. Like most people, she allows belief to shape one or more of her everyday actions.
Myths are a part of the education experience.
While the text provides a foundation for discussion and analysis, the students actual work encourages transformative experiences. In general I assist students to strengthen their capacities for judicious skepticism, regard for objectively reasonable knowledge, and the treatment of information that comes in the form of myth as hypothetical at best. Interviewing each other while being videotaped. When students review their taped conversations they are genuinely surprised by their lack of justification for implicit beliefs. Learning how to research databases that can facilitate their examination of formalized knowledge.