Help Your Kids Develop Essential Critical Reasoning Skills While School's Out

June (two-week module): Binge-watch all available episodes of Wild Kratts via PBS Kids

Exercises:

1. Write a classic, five-paragraph essay discussing how Wild Kratts reflects broader unfortunate truths about race, gender, and power in contemporary America. For instance, in essentially every episode the central conflict is self-inflicted by unqualified white male doofuses Martin and Chris, but resolved by Koki and Aviva — brilliant, conscientious, overlooked, and underappreciated women of color. Martin and Chris invariably claim credit, nonetheless. Discuss parallels to modern-day democratic institutions, including publicly traded multinational corporations, academia, and government.
2. Explain what, exactly, Jimmy does.
3. Flash fiction prompt: Create a 300-word biography for Jimmy. In it, hypothesize how he came to be employed by the Kratt brothers and speculate as to why he retains such rock-solid job security.
4. Rank the show’s recurring antagonists (e.g., Gourmand, Zach, Donita, and Paisley) from least to most reprehensible. Articulate your reasoning.

July (two-week module): Binge-watch the Disney+ original series Obi-Wan Kenobi

Exercises:

1. Watch the above video. Present an interpretation of how these lines, “I’ve been waiting for you Obi-Wan. We meet again at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master,” uttered by the immortal James Earl Jones, as Darth Vader, in the original 1977 feature film Star Wars, could mean anything other than: we haven’t seen each other since our fateful final encounter so many moons ago.
2. Seriously. Try to answer number one. I dare you.
3. Storytelling debate: Should viewers emotionally invest in characters whose fates have long since been determined? Why or why not?
4. Discuss the perils and unintended consequences of intellectual property and copyright laws in the United States and European Union vis-à-vis the animated series Star Wars: Rebels and the limited live-action series The Book of Boba Fett.

July (three-week module): Listen to the epic, six-part, twenty-plus hour Hardcore History podcast series Blueprint for Armageddon by Dan Carlin

Exercises:

1. Would you rather:
   1. Be cut down in the legendary carnage of the 1914 Battle of the Frontiers?
   2. Die in a maelstrom of projectiles during a futile charge at the beastly, Mordor-inspired 1916 Battle of the Somme?
   3. Become mincemeat at the apocalyptic, 1916 hellscape of Verdun?
   4. Be swallowed alive in the nightmarish claypits of the 1917 Passchendaele campaign?
2. Write a detailed report analyzing the similarities and differences between the 1904-1919 and 2007-2022 epochs. Focus in particular on era-defining developments such as, but not limited to, technological arms races, geopolitical grandstanding, financial crises, aggressive warmongering, global infectious disease pandemics, highly integrated and interdependent global supply chains, extreme income inequality, inept political leadership, domestic governmental malaise, and institutional rot. Extra credit: watch The King’s Man.
3. Flash fiction prompt: Write a short fantasy story imagining a version of Earth where the 2030s and 2040s aren’t an unmitigated dumpster fire.
4. Philosophy: Are humans capable of learning from history?

August (three-week module): Binge-watch all three seasons of the HBO Max series Succession

Exercises:

1. Discuss: How does a show with no likeable or redeemable characters whatsoever manage to be so imminently watchable and shockingly compelling?
2. Consider Succession’s grip on the cultural zeitgeist — at least among one-percenter neoliberalist NIMBY douchebags — within the broader paradoxical context of entrenched Western geopolitical and macroeconomic hegemony and the concomitant rise of authoritarian, anti-democratic illiberalism. Examine this dichotomy in a 2,000-word essay.
3. Creative expression: Imagine Succession patriarch Logan Roy has created a TikTok account. Create ten viral TikToks envisioning how he’d justify his corporate and familial actions as heroic. Extra credit if your account is shut down by ByteDance via the Chinese Communist Party (hint: Taiwan).
4. Fuck, marry, kill: Kendall, Siobhan, Roman. Justify your reasoning.

August (two-week module): Read the original 1990 classic Jurassic Park by the late, great Michael Crichton

Exercises:

1. Recast the 1993 movie to more accurately reflect the far superior novel. For example, Mel Gibson, pre-cancellation, as Muldoon, with a rocket launcher, directed by David Fincher, with action choreography by Michael Bay.
2. Critical thinking: What will Homo sapiens create first: a theme park filled with genetically resuscitated dinosaurs, or a just and equitable society for all people? Defend your response.
3. That was a trick question. It’s obviously the dinosaur park. Clean up your room.
4. Political science: Imagine a world where dinosaurs, including murderous, rampaging carnivores, are resurrected and kept as pets (#invisiblehand). Imagine said dinosaurs are ubiquitous and readily available at PetSmart. To purchase a dinosaur you need only be 18 years old. Imagine that each year tens of thousands of people are killed in violent dinosaur attacks. Imagine dinosaur attacks are the leading cause of death among children.Suggest viable public policy responses to such a hypothetical societal plague. Examples could include: limiting which types of dinosaurs were available for purchase, conducting detailed background checks on prospective dinosaur buyers, requiring extensive training and licensing before allowing a person to purchase a dinosaur, limiting how many dinosaurs an individual owner can purchase, barring dinosaurs from public spaces, creating and adequately funding a federal agency to centralize oversight of dinosaur purchases and dinosaur trafficking, instituting a value-added dinosaur tax, creating a dinosaur buyback program for regretful buyers, and removing legal statutes preventing research into dinosaurs’ impact on public health, among others. Write a comprehensive draft law detailing how you’d appropriately regulate the consumer dinosaur market, focusing in particular on reducing the negative externalities associated with dinosaur ownership without imposing unnecessary or undue burdens on reasonable dinosaur owners (to the extent reasonable dinosaur owners exist). In your final draft, replace all instances of “dinosaur” with “firearm.” Tweet your proposal at Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, and other bad-faith actors.