Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 328 posts

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#261

Post by xchip »

cryoshon wrote: post #153
xchip wrote: post #142

Critical thinking skills are not taught because they teach you how to question authority, and that means criticizing parents, teachers and the system. Socrates already tried doing that and was accused of corrupting youth (and got him condemned to death)

critical thinking also incentivizes discontent, generally speaking. better not to ask the difficult questions

Epictetus (134 BC) explained very well how to deal with that:

http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

It's a short but amazing read. On can't believe it was written 2151 years ago :) Let me know if you liked it, I'm curious!

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#262

Post by lr4444lr »

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…

What law schools admit people without an (undergrad) college transcript?

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#263

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#264

Post by icelancer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #97
icelancer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could always work for me. I tell applicants to leave off their education credentials and to show me their previous work history and projects. Hired a dropout who ended up producing sports science research that probably could have netted him a Ph.D. We're out there hiring.

> Hired a dropout who ended up producing sports science research that probably could have netted him a Ph.D. Is there any way he could turn that into actual Ph.D.? I ask out of curiosity, because many people do things in their professional lives that are equivalent of achievements in academic work, and I wonder if there's a way to turn former into the latter.

Potentially. We've obtained IRB approval for some other studies we are working on. His particular research will almost certainly go into another paper and he'll be credited with multiple published works, and probably get cited quite a bit.

He has very little interest in starting up Ph.D. work, same as me (we're both college dropouts). However, AUT in NZ has offered to examine work for their Ph.D. program which is remote and based solely on research contributed. We might look into that.

I have essentially no interest in dealing with the machine that is academia, so unless it's minimal work, I'll probably pass. My employee feels the same.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#265

Post by smileysteve »

6stringmerc wrote: post #160

If I'd used my critical thinking skills to go to an HVAC vocational track, following years of hourly / labor Summer jobs as a teenager, and took out a business loan half of what I've spent on University studies, I'd probably have a small empire by now. Universities are great for a liberal arts study track, but that's kind of it. I'm not even sure most require Students to study Retirement Planning or "How to Understan…

No Universities require students to do anything. On mandatory attendance, a good professor will tell you, "you're paying for it, I could care less if you show up."

But on retirement planning and car loans; these are failures of being aware of the world around you. On understanding a car loan, plenty of people that are not college educated need to and do "understand" these concepts.

Anecdotally, I bought two cars (though I didn't finance) before I turned 18; Enrolled in my first 401k by the time I was 18, and understood my work's entirely employee paid healthcare options at 16.

To the autodidact admission though; I learned about programming on my own on a TI-80; about finance from picking up a "Money" magazine - and posters on a teacher's wall from a different class doing an investment challenge, and cars from walking around the neighbor's garage.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#267

Post by icelancer »

pas wrote: post #126
TeMPOraL wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hired a dropout who ended up producing sports science research that probably could have netted him a Ph.D. Is there any way he could turn that into actual Ph.D.? I ask out of curiosity, because many people do things in their professional lives that are equivalent of achievements in academic work, and I wonder if there's a way to turn former into the latter.

He/she can start publishing papers. Basically that's the only important thing to become a researcher/scholar. (You can be an independent scholar, so not associated with any research institute/university/group. But of course being in a group helps a lot.) And then various universities and doctorate schools have various requirements for a PhD. There are doctorate schools that don't require undergrad degrees or anything…

>There are doctorate schools that don't require undergrad degrees or anything.

AUT in NZ (as I said in another comment) seems to be one. Do you know of others to investigate? Within 2 years I should have at least 5 peer-reviewed papers published in open journals [PlosONE/PeerJ] (and probably 1-2 in closed, "elite" journals... something I'm opposed to but... business...), and I wouldn't mind looking into it.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#268

Post by icelancer »

wccrawford wrote: post #137
TeMPOraL wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hired a dropout who ended up producing sports science research that probably could have netted him a Ph.D. Is there any way he could turn that into actual Ph.D.? I ask out of curiosity, because many people do things in their professional lives that are equivalent of achievements in academic work, and I wonder if there's a way to turn former into the latter.

You can buy degrees that turn "work experience" into credits, but nobody respects them, so it's not really worthwhile unless you really just want some letters after your name.

Shrug. I don't really respect the letters or degrees that people have anyway. Only reason I would do it is to help my employees get better opportunities.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#269

Post by cirgue »

Fricken wrote: post #205

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…

> It doesn't matter how much education you have, if entertaining a particular problem causes your amygdala to start firing then your ability to think critically is out the window.

Thinking critically is, by definition, the ability to not hold beliefs and opinions too deeply or too personally. This is a learnable skill, and is one facet of intellectual maturity.

Post reply on HN