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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

#301

Post by dhimes »

antisthenes wrote: post #283
dhimes wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm very interested why 20% wouldn't write down Colgate. Did they know something the others didn't?

They probably just forgot about it. If someone asked you to write all the brands of X that you've ever used, can you remember all of them, especially if they were nearly equivalent in quality and use case?

I might forget about Aquafresh or Close-up or something, but I'm pretty sure that I would remember Crest and Colgate- especially if I was a dentist. It's like leaving Honda off a list of reliable cars. Hard to believe it's an accident for any reasonable sample size.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#302

Post by jdmichal »

clavalle wrote: post #206
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…

Agreed. Critical thinking isn't a subject, it is a framework. It seems foolish to allow a framework of non-critical thinking to take root for 13 years then expect a few classes to tear down and rebuild those habits of thought. Further, arguing edge conditions and inserting plausible falsehoods that must be discovered or synthesis of ideas into unfamiliar areas is just more engaging and fun then accepting happy-path t…

Honestly, it begins in math education, and very early. Math is a field entirely founded around and dedicated to solving problems. Yet, its foundation concepts are often taught as formulas and rules. It's the perfect place to start introducing problems and allowing / leading students to work through them. I'll copy-paste another comment I made a while ago:

"This is the consequence of not teaching domains of problem-solving through actual problem-solving. You see the same thing in math. I had an excellent practitioner of this method for AP calculus. I learned limits by attempting to find the area under a curve using ever-shrinking rectangles, until we got to pushing them to zero width. And now, 15 years later, I still remember the concept. I don't necessarily remember how to do any particular problem involving limits, but I know what limits are and when they apply to a problem."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966570#11970303

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#304

Post by wutbrodo »

andrewflnr wrote: post #83
wutbrodo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, the fact that I'm the only one in my circles who didn't figure this out put me in a wayyyyy better position than most. If you think that college is for learning instead of just being present until they give you a degree, you spend a hell of a lot more time and effort figuring out what you want to study, where you'll learn the most, etc etc. All of my friends who treated college as "probably the b…

I think about it pretty much backwards from that. To me the value of realizing it's a diploma mill is that you know you need to do most of your real learning independent of class. Taking the the classes and tests seriously is a distraction from that. You might be more right than me, though, looking at the attitudes of other students.

Hm, maybe it depends on where you attended college. I usually didn't attend lectures but between assignments, exams, and discussion sections, college was by a million miles the most productive learning environment of my life.

I orient my career around learning but there's always this little nagging "ultimately the needs of the employer are paramount when push comes to shove" that rears it head every once in a while and prioritizes work I'm already good at over stuff I'd be learning by doing.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#306

Post by dragonwriter »

blorsh wrote: post #285
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…

Fox and Breitbart have both lost key leaders due to death. (and other causes) They are both rapidly transitioning to the views of typical reporters (journalism majors), which will soon put them on the left. Breitbart has even started firing people who are strongly toward the right. One America News Network is still on the right. It probably isn't moving... yet. It's rather hard to operate a non-left media outlet when…

> Fox and Breitbart have both lost key leaders due to death. (and other causes) They are both rapidly transitioning to the views of typical reporters (journalism majors), which will soon put them on the left.

Viewpoints are set by media owners, not line workers, and the entire corporate media has a corporatist conservative pro-capital bias.

To the extent that ends up sometimes favoring Democrats, well, the dominant faction of the Democratic Party for several decades (since the 1990s, at a minimum) has been corporate capitalist conservatives.

Anyhow, Fox and Breitbart aren't moving into the left or even getting closer to centerpoint of the mainstream corporate media; they just aren't moving further to the Right as fast as the Republican Party is.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#307

Post by tropo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #306
blorsh wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox and Breitbart have both lost key leaders due to death. (and other causes) They are both rapidly transitioning to the views of typical reporters (journalism majors), which will soon put them on the left. Breitbart has even started firing people who are strongly toward the right. One America News Network is still on the right. It probably isn't moving... yet. It's rather hard to operate a non-left media outlet when…

> Fox and Breitbart have both lost key leaders due to death. (and other causes) They are both rapidly transitioning to the views of typical reporters (journalism majors), which will soon put them on the left. Viewpoints are set by media owners, not line workers, and the entire corporate media has a corporatist conservative pro-capital bias. To the extent that ends up sometimes favoring Democrats, well, the dominant f…

The media owners have died.

Yes, there are new owners, but those new owners are not putting forth the effort required to enforce a viewpoint. It takes real effort to keep the line workers from setting the tone.

Walmart used to be all about stuff made in the USA. Sam Walton died. I'm sure he spins in his grave.

The same goes for media companies. An original founder with a vision dies, and then things go off track.

Re: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills

#308

Post by lemming »

raleighm wrote: post #140
lemming wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

These are good: The Art of Reasoning: An Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking (Fourth Edition) 4th Edition https://www.amazon.com/Art-Reasoning-Introduction-Critical-T... Reflections on Reasoning 1st Edition https://www.amazon.com/Reflections-Reasoning-Raymond-S-Nicke...

Thank you!
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