Critical thinking topples popular, mainstream, insecure systems and that's not good. You want obedience and the lazy, traditional education systems ensure they put out order-following, capable workforce, not adaptive, ever-changing ones.
Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
21–30 of 328 posts
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#2290% of college "critical thinking" will result in same conclusion. 9% will change their conclusions to match with the majority. 1% will be shamed.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#23Not having read TFA due to paywall I've noticed that a hell of a lot of people deriding critical thinking really mean something like: "So many people disagree with me about the environment/healthcare/religion/liberty/whatever and I just know they're wrong so they must be unable to think critically."
They, them, over there. There are whole courses run on "Why other people are so unfathomably wrong." [1]
Maybe the TFA says so, but maybe we should actually look at our own thinking. What facts we'd actually not bet on yet find it ok to use as opinion foundations. How many ways could we be wrong in what we think. It doesn't seem to be popular (or I'm missing the point, am not up to date with the zeitgeist, or thinking is totally overrated anyway or ...)
[1] one example. Maybe it's excellent, for all I know. https://www.edx.org/course/making-sense-climate-science-deni...!
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#24I've taught college. This study is wildly unsurprising. I've written about this in various places (e.g. https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz... ), but most colleges have evolved majors and paths that are designed to move students through the system, collect their tuition money, and graduate them. In re-reading the previous sentence, I think I sound opposed to this. I am a little bit, maybe, bu…
"What was powering and pushing up prices in 2007 and ’08 were loans to borrowers with No Income, No Jobs, and No Assets.
...
Now we only have one kind of NINJA left, and those are students. Student loans have been the most rapidly growing loans in the country.
...
The whole student loan scandal is a corrupt. It shows the degree to which the universities and the government loan system have been taken over by banks writing the loans to give themselves a free ride at public expense."
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/25/another-housing-bubb...
Just read the above the other day, and I know it's slightly off-topic, but it meshes nicely with some of the points you made.
I figured out around the last year or so of my university career that I should have actually spent less time in class than I did, but I did eventually figure it out. And I agree wholeheartedly with no one explicitly telling students about all of this. I can't tell you how livid I was once it all clicked. I try to expose the idea to as many high schoolers as I possibly can, but they aren't yet affected so it doesn't exactly make a whole lot of sense to them.
Anyhow, this comparison of student loan / universities working as a new profit center, similar to the junk mortgages of the '08 crash is new to me though. I think it illustrates what's going on very clearly, even if Micheal Hudson is a bit extreme with his view of the schism between public/private.
Jane Jacobs also wrote critically of what Universities had become (credentialing), and how it might (negatively) affect our culture sometime down the line in her book, Dark Age Ahead.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#25I went to Boston University for undergrad. When I went, tuition and board were 46k, which I thought was absurd. Fast forward a decade and it's 70k. At this rate, in less than 10 years it will be 100k per year. How does any of this make sense?!?!?!?
https://aap.cornell.edu/admissions/undergraduate/tuition-cos...
In 1997, it was roughly
$19,000 $4,000 $1,700 (the best plan) $1,000 etc.
I know that was 20 years ago, but even your $46k sounds outrageous to me. But someone who went to cornell 30 years ago would say the same about $25k of 1997.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#26Communist professors are assaulting protestors with bikelocks. That really tells me all I need to know.
If we were all communist we wouldn't have any bike locks. There's a silver lining, you just have to look for it.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#27I've taught college. This study is wildly unsurprising. I've written about this in various places (e.g. https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz... ), but most colleges have evolved majors and paths that are designed to move students through the system, collect their tuition money, and graduate them. In re-reading the previous sentence, I think I sound opposed to this. I am a little bit, maybe, bu…
I was a part-time college instructor and agree. Some of the smarter students IMO were the homeless, poor, and others who paid little to nothing. I taught a homeless ex-Stanford professor who was well known in the community and he was very sharp. The rest were mostly under no illusions about what they were there to do: Get a degree or certificate and move along. It doesn't take much critical thinking to recognize a st…
How exactly did a Stanford professor end up homeless? And why in the world would they be taking classes afterwards?
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a student and I agree. I'm enrolled in 3 classes right now that will have little to no impact on my future career. I am personally motivated to learn more about topics that interest me, and I believe that colleges should be more focused on helping kids work towards something that they want to do, and not have them taking extraneous classes just for the sake of it.
I don't think you're really agreeing with the OP. The OP didn't say anything about not making you take classes that aren't directly focused on your career. Those classes are what make college different from trade school. You may think it sounds like a meaningless platitude now when you just want hurry up and be done with the whole thing, but many of those "extraneous" classes will make you a more rounded person if yo…
Right. While I actually believe society (and students) would benefit by converting a large fraction of our "liberal arts" colleges into more practical trade schools, your point stands—the problem with the "choose your own adventure" model of undergraduate education is that 18-22 year olds are distinctly bad at choosing the adventure that's best for them, especially when it comes to getting a liberal education. Trade schools for STEM and the trades, but stronger core curricula and less highly-specialized BS in the humanities.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#29Communist professors are assaulting protestors with bikelocks. That really tells me all I need to know.
If we were all communist we wouldn't have any bike locks. There's a silver lining, you just have to look for it.
Communism isn't funny. It's killed much more people than fascism ever has, yet it's completely acceptable in a university setting.
You have to be very blind to not think that rampant, institutionalized political extremism among faculty isn't a huge reason why critical thinking skills are lacking.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#30Why should we believe that their critical thinking evaluation is accurate?