Re: Moonstruck: fantasy or fact

From: Elizabeth A Wardle (ewardle@iastate.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 22 2001 - 16:27:50 PST


At 09:11 AM 3/22/01 -0700, you wrote:

>what do i get out of believing humans did walk on the moon?
>
>kathie

Or perhaps another question:

What do we give up, as Americans, if we agree to consider the proposition
that the US did not walk on the moon? If we question that, what else must
we question? If we attack the problem as good academics, considering all
the evidence and all aspects of the argument, leaving behind the fact of
the moon landing as part of who we are as Americans, what will happen?

I had one student last year who adamantly believed we did not land on the
moon. The rest of the class laughed him out of the room the first time he
brought it up. But it was an argumentation course, so he brought in
evidence. And more evidence. He provided the class with books, academic
journals, phone numbers of scientists. Other students started writing about
it. Some students called NASA, others called the scientists who had lost
their academic jobs for questioning the moon landing. The anti-moon-landing
scientists all called and wrote back. NASA never did.

By the end of the semester, about half the class was no longer laughing.
One student who had begun the year as an aerospace engineering student
changed his major, disillusioned.

What do you give up when you agree to question something like this that is
so much a part of the fabric our the American culture?

Elizabeth



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