Asking WHY is a taboo in modern education system :(
Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
41–50 of 328 posts
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
The latter have been the ostensible focus of primary education for a couple of centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_three_Rs
In a sense, yes. What I'm getting at specifically is that: - Although we teach people to read, we don't necessarily put enough focus on comprehension and understanding. - Although we teach people to write, we tend to focus on mechanics rather than on writing clearly and in a way that emphasizes our meaning. - We don't just focus on functional math, but teach much more complex math to virtually everyone that goes thro…
I don't know, these exact things are what's on the SAT. I don't mean to debate its qualities as a test or whether these are things one should be testing but the notion that they are somehow not the focus of primary and secondary education while also being a key factor in college admissions doesn't quite add up.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#43I'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…
Totally agree. It took me until several years out of school to realize that learning to think should have been a primary focus of university. 25 years on I am realizing that although it got me work and very decent pay I probably would have been much better off if the entire focus of university had been: 1. Learning how to think 2. Learning how to learn Really the focus of earlier schooling probably should have been:…
Learning how to think and how to learn should be the primary focus of early education, since all later learning depends on it.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#44https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_education
> Thomas Jefferson proposed "establishing free schools to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, and from these schools those of intellectual ability, regardless of background or economic status, would receive a college education paid for by the state."
> In the United States, the first free public institution of higher education, the Free Academy of the City of New York (today the City College of New York), was founded in 1847 with the aim of providing free education to the urban poor, immigrants and their children. Its graduates went on to receive 10 Nobel Prizes, more than at any other public university.
https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/about/history
> City's academic excellence and status as a working-class school earned it the titles "Harvard of the Proletariat," "the poor man's Harvard," and "Harvard-on-the-Hudson." Ten CCNY graduates went on to win Nobel Prizes.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#45Lots of reasons for this. Actual generally-applicable critical thinking ability is an exceptionally rare skill. So rare that I think it'd be damn difficult to find faculty who could even start teaching it. I don't think most faculty come close to being solid critical thinkers. Whereas most beliefs are life-long emotional self-indulgence parties (my tribe good! their tribe bad!) critical thinking is a life-long strugg…
I always like to look at the items at the bottom since that's where best and the worst clump together. Thanks for sacrificing some HN points on this. You nailed it!
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#46I'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…
"Paying for the party" is amusing. "Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities" covers much the same material. The importance of drinking didn't happen by accident. The alcohol industry promoted it heavily.[1] Two out of five students in the colleges studied are now binge drinkers. I got critical thinking early because I was brought up by a lawyer. There were always briefs around the house, and I could read the briefs fo…
I'd actually be really interested in knowing what percentage of people read opposing rhetoric.
I easily spend far more time listening to and reading right-leaning rhetoric, despite being left leaning. I already know "my side". Why would I want to live in an echo chamber?
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I think that even upper middle class in US now have hard times pulling out 5K in cash in case of emergency. So it is not surprising that a Stanford professor is homeless, but that so few are.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#48I'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…
"Paying for the party" is amusing. "Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities" covers much the same material. The importance of drinking didn't happen by accident. The alcohol industry promoted it heavily.[1] Two out of five students in the colleges studied are now binge drinkers. I got critical thinking early because I was brought up by a lawyer. There were always briefs around the house, and I could read the briefs fo…
I'd never thought of legal briefings as good educational material, but I think you are right that doing so would help a person understand how to even approach an issue. Maybe even following up with the court's decision and (in the case of SCOTUS) dissents. On a philosophical level, Leonard Peikoff talks about this issue in his essay "The American School: Why Johnny Can't Think" [1]:
"An education that trains a child’s mind would be one that teaches him to make connections, to generalize, to understand the wider issues and principles involved in any topic. It would achieve this feat by presenting the material to him in a calculated, conceptually proper order, with the necessary context, and with the proof that validates each stage. This would be an education that teaches a child to think."
That kind of process is exactly what good court opinion looks like.
[1] https://campus.aynrand.org/works/1984/01/01/the-american-sch...
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#49Higher ed needs competition.
In the interest of human progress, justice, and fairness, top-tier education needs to become open-access and in the form of competitive study.
Instead of the greatest academic achievement having anything to do with money, connections or committees, make degrees open access: anyone can study for them and test for them.
If any person, no matter how disadvantaged, or from what community they come from, wants to study pre-med, then they should be able to self study and test for a bio, chem or other pre-med degree.
There's no technological or economic reason this can't happen.
Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The latter have been the ostensible focus of primary education for a couple of centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_three_Rs
In a sense, yes. What I'm getting at specifically is that: - Although we teach people to read, we don't necessarily put enough focus on comprehension and understanding. - Although we teach people to write, we tend to focus on mechanics rather than on writing clearly and in a way that emphasizes our meaning. - We don't just focus on functional math, but teach much more complex math to virtually everyone that goes thro…
> Although we teach people to write, we tend to focus on mechanics rather than on writing clearly and in a way that emphasizes our meaning.
That's not really true; the five-paragraph essay form and it's fractal expansions that dominate grade-school writing is all about clarity and focus on meaning.
It's a horrible as a model for anything other than persuasive writing for a number of other reasons, and given the way the target output influences process, it's an impediment to critical thinking compared to alternatives like thesis/antithesis/synthesis (or IRAC, which while pretty much taught exclusively in the context of legal writing is a very good model for general-purpose analytical writing.)