My 3rd-grade daughter had some interesting social science homework this week. Classify each of the following statements as either a fact or an opinion. (The first two are easy warm-ups.)
- As footwear, moccasins are better than sneakers.
- There are Iroquois living in New York State today.
- Many Native Americans were expert craftsmen.
- The Native American diet was more nutritious than our own.
- Europeans had no right to settle in North America.
- Native Americans should be treated with great respect.
The answers are after the jump. This is a public school. Still, be careful with your expectations about political correctness (and reverse political correctness.)
1. opinion, 2. fact, 3. fact, 4. opinion, 5. opinion!, 6. opinion
Cheap Talk 
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December 4, 2009 at 8:28 am
David
I am most surprised by the answers to #3 and #4. While the moral questions of who can and can’t settle where and how people should be treated are strongly agreed upon, they ultimately do boil down to matters of opinion.
However, nutrition is not the realm of opinion. We know what foods are most nutritious and can compare diets systematically. I don’t know that the Native American diet is necessarily better than any given diet, but I could easily compare them and come to a factual conclusion.
Finally, I think that #3 has to be considered an opinion because my definition of “expert craftsman” could vary greatly from anyone else’s. What metric determines the expertise of a craftsman?
December 4, 2009 at 8:55 am
Alex
I’m with David on both counts.
December 4, 2009 at 9:46 am
Matt
I agree
December 4, 2009 at 9:56 am
Noah Yetter
#3 could definitely be an opinion for the reasons stated.
#4 is factual, but could be false, not enough information is supplied.
Are these your answers or the teacher’s answers?
December 4, 2009 at 10:23 am
jeff
These are the teachers’ answers (or whoever wrote the homework, probably not the teacher.) But our answers were the same except possibly the one about nutrition where we were not sure what the “right” answer was.
I thought the expert craftsmen one was subtle but clear upon reflection. The one about rights was less clear.
The most surprising thing to me was that at third grade kids are comfortable with these slippery concepts of fact and opinion.
December 4, 2009 at 10:55 am
Ross Parker
#4 assumes that there is one Native American diet. I know nothing about this, but it would strike me as strange if the Navajo and Iroqouis ate the same things.
December 4, 2009 at 12:07 pm
bulldogvintage
Exactly! Is/was the diet of the Inuits more “nutritious” than that of Pequots?
Also, I don’t think we could get everyone to agree on what “nutritious” means, therefore it is a matter of opinion.
December 4, 2009 at 4:58 pm
J
I take the problem as being whether the statement can be judged based on objective criteria (in which case its a fact) or is only evaluated based on subjective criteria (in which case its an opinion). The difficulty lies in the fact (ha) that some statements could be judged by either subjective or objective criteria.
3 and 4 are real doozies. I see 3 as opinion, because determining “expertise” seems inherently subjective. 4, on the other hand, seems to be a fact – nutrition is objectively defined (though the definition may vary, and whether 4 is a “true” fact is a separate question, right?).
And 5 is even worse! No right based on what? I could imagine either objective or subjective criteria.
December 8, 2009 at 3:28 am
Marcus Linder
I agree with J. Couldn’t have said it better myself.