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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

#231
post #49

Higher 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…

One aspect of MOOCs is that the completion rate is fairly low. This can be helped by increasing the value of the offered accreditation, but even then the main hurdle is that the environment of college is more conducive to long term discipline than the internet.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#232

I'm not sure this is a reasonable expectation of college. Critical thinking is hard to teach. I don't know if it's possible to scale it beyond the few teachers who are good at it. Measuring critical thinking is hard, too. The universities who criticized the test used here are probably not wrong, even if their motive is only to save face. It's only 90 minutes, which is a time limit more suited for quick sophistry than…

I went to a very religious school that has a bad reputation for being closed-minded. I found many of the graduates and students to live up to that reputation, but I learned to question a lot from the professors. My biology professor there taught evolution in the most convincing way I've ever seen. Presented the history, the evidence, the thinking behind the theory, common fallacies, etc. Across the board, I heard some of the most convincing arguments for political, religious and scientific thinking that contradicted the stereotype from the very professors who were teaching everyone. So they exemplified it well, and I feel like they taught it to me well, but I look at the result and it just didn't happen a lot. Could be hard to teach, could be hard to make someone learn (I feel like it's the latter), but it certainly is not just a problem caused by professors who can't think critically themselves.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#233

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…

> Just like the Bible and the Coran

Keep in mind that the Talmud is different from the Torah.

As I understand it, the Torah are the five books allegedly inspired by God; the Talmud is that, plus all the commentary, which is where all the critical thinking and analysis takes place.

> Starting by the fact that all of it is based on the assumption you believe in Yahweh.

Keep in mind that it's totally possible to apply critical thinking skills while starting out with totally different axioms.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#234

The problem isn't critical thinking skills. You can get together any 5 jokers and ask them 'what's the best way to build a backyard patio?', and they'll all start stroking their chins. But when thinking critically interferes with some sort of strong emotion, or pre-conceived belief system, then forget it. It doesn't matter how much education you have, if entertaining a particular problem causes your amygdala to start…

So the problem is indeed critical thinking skills. We must be able to critically identify devices and experiences that emotionally compromise us and lead to illogical action.

I've got social anxieties, I've critically identified the devices and experiences that lead to illogical action. From a distance I can be cold and calculating, once I get close to that situation, though, the only thing going through my mind is 'nope, nope, nope...'

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#235

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've read that many yeshiva students in New York City Orthodox communites [1] lack English skills. What is the percentage of yeshiva students who are well-prepared enough to just skip college and take the LSAT?

1 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/nyregion/new-york-city-qu...

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#236

The problem isn't critical thinking skills. You can get together any 5 jokers and ask them 'what's the best way to build a backyard patio?', and they'll all start stroking their chins. But when thinking critically interferes with some sort of strong emotion, or pre-conceived belief system, then forget it. It doesn't matter how much education you have, if entertaining a particular problem causes your amygdala to start…

Ah the glorious cognitive biases we have.

I believe you're referencing the Backfire Effect coupled with cognitive dissonance of your views being a part of your identity. Plus a generous helping of the overarching Confirmation Bias[1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#237

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…

The fact that it claims to check spelling and grammar seems suspect to me because if it really were even at least as good as Microsoft word at good at checking spelling and grammar they would have spun it out and sold it as a spelling and grammar checker instead of as a complete packaged writing analysis tool. This makes me doubt the validity of their more ambitious claims like checking for quality of "ideas" and analytics.

It seems to me that there is a much easier way of automating logical reasoning tests. Just make it a standardize multiple choice and have a machine check the answers - the LSAT is probably one of the most successful analytic and logical reasoning test and it has been done this way for a while.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or perhaps worse: think critically the same way the test writer does: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-s...

I've often thought that a lot of the high-brow analysis put into art was junk. Just people taking dots and connecting them with shreds of evidence existent in the art. Confirmation bias masquerading as analysis. It's nice to see an artist agreeing with that viewpoint.

I should clarify that I don't mind when the context of a piece is explained. I like knowing about where the artist was when a work was created; what was happening around them that might have influenced the work. It's when that jumps to "and this small detail is about this particular thing that was happening" -- and always spoken with confidence -- that I feel like the train jumps the rails.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started doing that far more over the last year or so - I'm definitely "left leaning" but it's good to try and understand the viewpoint of others even if you don't agree with their conclusions. Echo chambers are boring.

I mean I don't feel like I get much out of listening to the same talking points trotted out over and over again, personally.

I'm solidly on the liberal side of most issues, and I definitely try to remain informed, which includes exploring conservative viewpoints and media.

The problem is that MOST media (of any focus) is shallow. Reading the "opposing" side is just as tiresome as reading points I already know if obvious information is skipped over or not explored (actually, more tiresome). I end up chasing down lots of details myself, which is time-consuming and frankly, not really my primary skillset. It theoretically is the skillset of, um, journalists.

So when on the left I see "Immigrants on average commit less crime than native-born in the US" and on the right I see "3% of the population (immigrants) commit over 50% of the crime", I'm not finding any media exploring both sides. I can spend a few hours chasing down this one fact (a pretty important one, but still just one), which leads me to find vague references to a DOJ report on reported crimes supporting the conservative view, and surveys of self-reported crimes supporting the liberal view. So neither position is without basis, but I really have no better info on which is more true, and if I spend all this time chasing down evidence myself, the media is serving zero purpose.

Secondly, I've found left-leaning sites that do more factual digging (at least it seems that way) and will cover and attempt to disprove some of the opposing arguments. (Both sides have vapid overly dramatic coverage offered by many sources - I'm referring to the better sources on both sides). The closest I've found on the right is the National Review. I'm all ears if someone has better suggestions, but as it is I tend to read more within my "echo chamber" because it's actually the best source of nuanced information I've found so far.

Thirdly, when you're reading two sides: One side says things that you mostly know and agree with. The other side says things that are often ridiculous and false on their face (as far as you are concerned). Why would you want to frustrate yourself with the state of humanity all the time? I read enough (I think) to get an idea of the zeitgeist of others, I read enough to understand what the basis of their arguments are, but any reading past that tends to be far more frustrating than enlightening. (I assume this is something true for both sides).

Lastly, left and right may both have reasonable people, but the right seems to have a lot more [carefully edits this description several times] general disdain for science and more embracing of hypocrisy. The Left has baseless GMO fears, anti-vaxers, and sometimes more optimism than might be best, but in general I can expect less denial of well-demonstrated concepts and science. (I'm sure this is slanted by bias, but I'm happy to go point by point offline if anyone wants). This means that while I "check-in" with sources espousing opinions I don't agree with, I have no more desire to spend a lot of time there than I do on a site informing me that eating GMO corn will cause me to mutate.

Off topic side note: I really hate how the useful GMO discussions (monocultures, sustainability, environmental impact, prions, etc) can't really get any progress because everyone spends all their time rebuffing ridiculous accusations. Just like "what do we do about climate change" doesn't get as much discussion as "is there actually human-caused climate change".

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps worse: think critically the same way the test writer does: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-s...

I've often thought that a lot of the high-brow analysis put into art was junk. Just people taking dots and connecting them with shreds of evidence existent in the art. Confirmation bias masquerading as analysis. It's nice to see an artist agreeing with that viewpoint. I should clarify that I don't mind when the context of a piece is explained. I like knowing about where the artist was when a work was created; what wa…

>> It's nice to see an artist agreeing with that viewpoint.

Yep. I've always beaten myself up over my ACT score. Near-perfect scores on grammar, science, and math, but near-zero on reading comprehension. And it was a lot of, "what is the author trying to express by using this word in the title?" I'd rather know how good I am at, "after reading this 5 page article, did you catch this really important detail well enough to recall it quickly?"

Art's important too, but can you judge someone's artistic side in a multiple choice test graded on a scale of 1-9? Don't think so...

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