Kyrie Irving is the center of the NBA offseason right now. All eyes are gravitating to him and the seemingly shocking 180 he pulled on the Cleveland Cavaliers. He turned their world upside down when he told the team he was looking to be traded away from Cleveland He’s apparently preparing for the Cavs to fall off the face of the earth if LeBron James does elect to leave next summer.
But the man who was born halfway across the world is also posing a challenge to one particular middle school teacher thanks to him saying the earth is flat. His comments during 2017 NBA All-Star Weekend sent shockwaves all around the media world. Despite Irving coming out to say he was just trolling people, there are still some who believe the former Duke star.
Following comes from Avi Wolfman-Arent of NPR.
This poses a particular challenge to people like Susan Yoon, who are training the next generation of science teachers. She’s a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.
She tells her students — like Nick Gurol, whose middle-schoolers believe the Earth is flat — that, as hard as they try, science teachers aren’t likely to change a student’s misconceptions just by correcting them.
Gurol says his students got the idea of a flat planet from basketball star Kyrie Irving, who said as much on a podcast.
“And immediately I start to panic. How have I failed these kids so badly they think the Earth is flat just because a basketball player says it?” He says he tried reasoning with the students and showed them a video. Nothing worked.
“They think that I’m part of this larger conspiracy of being a round-Earther. That’s definitely hard for me because it feels like science isn’t real to them.”
