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Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

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Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#211

Post by eastWestMath »

camelNotation wrote: post #176

> Results of a standardized measure of reasoning ability show many students fail to improve... The irony of this sentence is painful. The entire reason most colleges fail to improve reasoning - something everyone has known for a while now - is because of standardization and industry-oriented training. They've transformed into advanced trade schools, caring more about selling products (graduates) than producing well-r…

I used to make fun of the idea of coding bootcamps. Then I started a PhD in computer science and realized only 30% of CS students actually engage with the theory courses that would differentiate them from boot camp grads. At this point I'd be more inclined to hire a philosophy grad from a small liberal arts school who went to a boot camp than a CS major from a big school, at least I know there will be a capacity for abstraction and decent writing skills.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#212

Post by sametmax »

davidf18 wrote: post #195

Why wait for college to teach critical thinking skills? My father is a prof at a major university and we grew up discussing ideas, but high schools can teach critical thinking skills and problem solving. My high school was owned by the university and we did a lot of critical thinking. Jewish religious schools (Yeshivas) teach critical thinking skills by studying the Talmud [1]. A number of Yeshiva students take the L…

I agree that critical thinking should be taugth sooner. A 12 years old can perfectly handle it.

I got the most jewish name ever, however, I can't agree with you on the Talmud. Just like the Bible and the Coran, it's full of things that goes exactly in the opposite direction of critical thinking. And religion, while helping with a lot of things like holding communities and sharing values, is definitly using a huge number of arguments that are totally in opposition with critical thinking. Starting by the fact that all of it is based on the assumption you believe in Yahweh.

However, since the Jewish community itself is pretty well educated, it's easy to be biased.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#213

Post by sevensor »

matwood wrote: post #197
sevensor wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for linking to your blog post, that was a worthwhile read. I recently finished a Ph.D. and bailed on academia. I'd been working in a factory as an electrical engineer before this, and I naively thought I could do something about the overall poor preparation of my colleagues. (I worked with engineers who had grave difficulty with basic statistics, for example.) While in grad school, I came to the demoralizing c…

> Engineering professors are incentivized not to teach undergraduates -- indeed, there's a whole system of reward and punishment around the assignment of teaching duties. A light load is coveted, and the most elite professors manage to teach as few as two courses per year. I wonder if this has to do with the type of school. Where I went to college, the dept. chair on down rotated through the intro programming classes…

This is a good point. I'm sure there's a lot of variation between schools. All of my university time has been at Big State Universities. I think the Big State U experience explains a lot about the state of the American workforce, however, since so many students pass through that system.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#214

Post by raleighm »

lemming wrote: post #111
raleighm wrote: post #89

Many comments here are about the value of higher ed generally and are fascinating to read, but I'm interested in critical reasoning particularly, and this study doesn't surprise me. (1) Critical reasoning is rarely taught directly, especially to students who don't major in or take a philosophy course. (2) Even when critical reasoning is taught directly, it's poorly taught. Compare an introductory text on critical rea…

Can you recommend a text on critical reasoning? It's something I often feel I'm quite bad at.

Also these audio/video resources seem good:

http://www.wi-phi.com/front/Critical-Thinking http://argumentninja.com/podcast-episodes/

And "The Great Courses" has a number of courses on logic, critical thinking and argumentation.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#215

Post by davidf18 »

sametmax wrote: post #212
davidf18 wrote: post #195

Why wait for college to teach critical thinking skills? My father is a prof at a major university and we grew up discussing ideas, but high schools can teach critical thinking skills and problem solving. My high school was owned by the university and we did a lot of critical thinking. Jewish religious schools (Yeshivas) teach critical thinking skills by studying the Talmud [1]. A number of Yeshiva students take the L…

I agree that critical thinking should be taugth sooner. A 12 years old can perfectly handle it. I got the most jewish name ever, however, I can't agree with you on the Talmud. Just like the Bible and the Coran, it's full of things that goes exactly in the opposite direction of critical thinking. And religion, while helping with a lot of things like holding communities and sharing values, is definitly using a huge num…

I have learned Talmud without being religious and it is very, very educational in my opinion and very interesting. If you study it you will see that it is full of critical thinking and different ways of looking at the same issue.

It has been translated into Korean and a number of Koreans study it to help them to be better at thinking [1].

Check out an Artscroll Talmud which has a good English translation. There might even be something on-line.

Also, much of critical thinking in my opinion is cultural. In some cultures, children "are to be seen and not heard." In the Passover Seder (The Last Supper was a Passover Seder) the youngest child at the Seder asks "The 4 questions" (memorized ahead of the ceremony of course).

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-the-talmud-be...

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#216

Post by Xeoncross »

danielford wrote: post #210

I teach community college biology, and I agree that we're really bad at teaching critical thinking. But the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) cited by this article was graded by a computer last time I checked. Here's a direct quote from one of their papers a few years ago: "Beginning in fall 2010, we moved to automated scoring exclusively, using Pearson’s Intelligent Essay Assess or (IEA). IEA is the automated sco…

So as long as you think critically the same way as everyone else does you'll be fine.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#217

Post by justin66 »

thebspatrol wrote: post #46
Animats wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

> I'd actually be really interested in knowing what percentage of people read opposing rhetoric.

It depends what you mean by "opposing" - different sides in a power struggle or genuinely different ideas? I think the number of people who read both WAPO, NY Times and WSJ (even National Review and Reason) is probably quite high, now more than ever thanks to the internet. They'll be familiar with the different sides in the nation's power struggle. And after a while, they'll probably know roughly what those papers' editorials will say before they even read them. It's vanity to think that those readers are often engaging in a some kind of big struggle of ideas, I think, although there's a lot of value in just knowing what is going on.

The number of people who seek out outlets like newspapers representing the views of the Communists, Green Party, Syndicalists, Illinois Nazis, Anarchists or whatever is probably vanishingly small.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#218

Post by monksy »

jseliger wrote: post #2

I'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…

Hey man, I've been reading your blog for quite some time. I like it.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#219

Post by rickdale »

davidf18 wrote: post #215
sametmax wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that critical thinking should be taugth sooner. A 12 years old can perfectly handle it. I got the most jewish name ever, however, I can't agree with you on the Talmud. Just like the Bible and the Coran, it's full of things that goes exactly in the opposite direction of critical thinking. And religion, while helping with a lot of things like holding communities and sharing values, is definitly using a huge num…

I have learned Talmud without being religious and it is very, very educational in my opinion and very interesting. If you study it you will see that it is full of critical thinking and different ways of looking at the same issue. It has been translated into Korean and a number of Koreans study it to help them to be better at thinking [1]. Check out an Artscroll Talmud which has a good English translation. There might…

Well, speaking from a secular point of view, studying the Talmud in and of itself makes you religious regardless of the education you are getting from it.

You are funny. You are basically orthodox for whats considered Jewish around me and yet you don't even think of yourself as ,"very religious".

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#220

Post by Xeoncross »

I'm working on critical thinking with my 2 year old. If he can't think critically by college then I've failed.

I spend time each day practicing discussing things with him and he has already come to assume if he wants anything in life he will need to talk about it as throwing a fit or whining ensures he does not get anything.

People assume because kids haven't been trained, they can't be trained. So they wait until they are older (or even at college level) to begin training. Really bad idea.

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