Fact vs. Opinion

My 9-year-old son recently brought home a routine reading assignment in which he had to read a story and then answer some questions from the story.  He gets these almost every week, but this one caught my eye because the last question on the sheet was about the difference between "fact" and "opinion."  The story was about some animal helping another animal.  I can't remember what they were, but for the purposes of this retelling, we'll call them a squirrel and a frog.  The question was multiple choice and asked the student to pick out the "fact" amongst the "opinions."  The choices were along the lines of "the squirrel was nice to help the frog," "the squirrel shouldn't have helped the frog," and the "squirrel was bigger than the frog."  My son wanted to go with "the squirrel was nice" answer, so we had a discussion about what "facts" are and what "opinions" are.

I was glad this subject was even broached in today's modern third grade classroom, and wish more adults had to do the same kind of training.  It seems like we now live in a society where fact doesn't even really matter as long as you have opinion on your side.

For example, we know that abstinence only "education" is terribly useless, and does pretty much nothing to prevent sexual activity amongst teens, and therefore does not prevent teen pregnancy or the spreading of STI's.  How do we know this?  We've studied it. And yet, many people still insist that it should be taught because they are of the opinion that teen sex is the worst thing that could ever possibly happen.  But it's just not effective.  Fact vs. opinion.

We also know that evolution happened, and that the Earth is not, in fact, 6,000 years old, despite what the bible may have told you.  How do we know this? We've studied it. And yet, many people still hold the opinion that the bible is right, and that there is some sort of "controversy" we should be teaching kids about regarding evolution.

But my biggest problem with the juxtaposition of facts and opinion these days is in the political sphere. "Obama is a communist!" No, he's not.  That's an opinion based on your dislike of his policies, but it doesn't change the definition of communism and the fact that Obama's policy decisions don't support your belief. "Obamacare is a 'government takeover' of healthcare!" No, it's not. A true government takeover of healthcare would be a British-style national health service. But that's not what Obamacare does. You can dislike it all you want, but you can't claim the "government takeover" bit as a fact. Because it's not. End of story. Fact vs. opinion.

I think the political landscape would be very different if people could agree on which things are "facts" and which things simply are not.  We would still disagree on the "right" way to do things, because we would still have our differing "opinions," but maybe our conversations would be a lot less frustrating and more productive if we agreed to rely on actual evidence.