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I recently saw a quote that struck me poignantly:

"We teach our children what to learn, not how to learn"

I see this as mostly true. Cultural, ethnic, religious, and socio-economic values are taught to children. There is very little, if anything, from those fields that children are asked to form on their own. "Well-rounded" educational institutes (high schools and liberal arts colleges mostly) encourage a variety of learning...but it's just educational subjects where information is fed to them, rather than thinking patterns and related skills.

"Critical thinking skills" seem to be valued at any and all levels, but are they really taught? And how are they taught this amidst the overwhelming cirriculum standards of the vast majority of schools?

Find out what the teacher wants, then do that well. That's valued by the majority. But I don't know that students are taught how to form their own opinions from scratch, or how to evaluate information from various sources and choose that which is most logical.

A. Do you agree that this is essentially the case in society?

B. How can we increase critical thinking skills of our populace, either at home or in the classroom? What specific methods are needed?

C. If this is not the case, how were you taught critical thinking skills, or how did you self-teach them to yourself?

...

Hopefully this encourages discussion, because I'd be interested to ehar input.

Our lecturers integrate the teaching of critical thinking into their subject areas. As an academic student, we are expected to apply those critical thinking skills to all our academic reading, writing, listening and debating. Critical source evaluation and analysis is key.

We are, among other things, encouraged to apply a variety of questions to whatever we read or hear. Is the author of the information clearly identifiable? If so, can his or her credibility be established? Is there any reason to suspect bias on the part of the author? Does the source rely on testimony or anecdotal evidence? Etc.

Originally posted by DigiMark007
I recently saw a quote that struck me poignantly:

"We teach our children what to learn, not how to learn"

I see this as mostly true. Cultural, ethnic, religious, and socio-economic values are taught to children. There is very little, if anything, from those fields that children are asked to form on their own. "Well-rounded" educational institutes (high schools and liberal arts colleges mostly) encourage a variety of learning...but it's just educational subjects where information is fed to them, rather than thinking patterns and related skills.

"Critical thinking skills" seem to be valued at any and all levels, but are they really taught? And how are they taught this amidst the overwhelming cirriculum standards of the vast majority of schools?

Find out what the teacher wants, then do that well. That's valued by the majority. But I don't know that students are taught how to form their own opinions from scratch, or how to evaluate information from various sources and choose that which is most logical.

A. Do you agree that this is essentially the case in society?

B. How can we increase critical thinking skills of our populace, either at home or in the classroom? What specific methods are needed?

C. If this is not the case, how were you taught critical thinking skills, or how did you self-teach them to yourself?

...

Hopefully this encourages discussion, because I'd be interested to ehar input. A. yes
B. Teaching them how to learn. Or rather, let them learn how to learn themselves. That may be a cause of depression though.
C. I learnt how to learn myself. You know, seeing problems, looking at the cause of the problem, looking at the solution to the problem, etc. Anaylising data, hypothesising it, solving it. Whatever. I do have a lot to learn myself though. I may be the smartest in my school, I may be the smartest on KMC, but I'm still not the smartest I can be, and I may never be.

The NYC Dept of Ed is data-driven. This means its concern is with testing, scores, malleable statistics, and ultimately, Mayor Bloomberg's image. "Critical thinking" is given lip service.

^ Truth.

Standardized tests ruin learning. I'll refrain from jumping on my soapbox concerning them, but their only advocates are people that have no connection to real education.

Originally posted by DigiMark007
^ Truth.

Standardized tests ruin learning. I'll refrain from jumping on my soapbox concerning them, but their only advocates are people that have no connection to real education. I agree. I feel that the tests and teaching methods in my country has, in a way, prevented me from learning. Probaly unintentional.

i was never taught critical thinking until i got into college, but you sort of pick things up as you go along in life....

although i think they should try to teach that in school, more than some other useless subjects...

Originally posted by ~Forever*Alone~
i was never taught critical thinking until i got into college, but you sort of pick things up as you go along in life....

although i think they should try to teach that in school, more than some other useless subjects... Like Art!

Originally posted by lord xyz
Like Art!

Actually, it's all in the approach (imo). Art can be useful for abstract thinking, regardless of talent level or relevance to life. But yeah, usually it's not the most useful thing we have in school.

Originally posted by DigiMark007
Actually, it's all in the approach (imo). Art can be useful for abstract thinking, regardless of talent level or relevance to life. But yeah, usually it's not the most useful thing we have in school. In my school you can take it as 2 GCSE options. That's such a waste.

GCSE?

well doesnt surprise me. teaching has always been concerned with CONTROL more than actuall learning or a passion or thirst or curiosity of knowledge. it is there mostly to keep the status quo of culture, heirarchy, dominant philosophy, socio/economic/political systems of rule and control etc etc.

gcse= crap examination board based in the uk, the international counterpart to O/A levels.

Originally posted by DigiMark007
GCSE? General Curriculum of Secondary Education, or a project and a test, taken at the end of 'high school'.

We take a course when ages 14-16, (but some schools have us start at 13,) and we do work over that period which gets marked and take a test and the end or during the years.

A GCSE in art is where we do nothing but draw as a project, and exam. We take about 5 different subject, along with Maths, Science and English. Art can be taken twice, so can Science and Business Studies.

I don't know that teaching is always about control, just sometimes. Sure, the status quo is maintained, and a lot of that should probably be changed.

But the only way to affect meaningful and lasting change is through education. So even those educators that do nothing but maintain societal norms, if they are good at teaching children knowledge they become part of the destruction of the norms they seek to uphold.

And thanks for the info xyz.

Originally posted by DigiMark007
I don't know that teaching is always about control, just sometimes. Sure, the status quo is maintained, and a lot of that should probably be changed.

But the only way to affect meaningful and lasting change is through education. So even those educators that do nothing but maintain societal norms, if they are good at teaching children knowledge they become part of the destruction of the norms they seek to uphold.

And thanks for the info xyz. It's what I do, oh and the C means certificate, not curriculum...long words are confusing. >.<

It's unfortunate that children are told what to learn instead of how to learn or love to learn. Pushing test material doesn't teach a child to love exploring and learning. It kills off the interest.

Originally posted by debbiejo
It's unfortunate that children are told what to learn instead of how to learn or love to learn. Pushing test material doesn't teach a child to love exploring and learning. It kills off the interest. I think more people want to be taught what should know.

Learning how to eat a steak with intellectual sizzle

In grades K-12 we have had teachers take us by the hand and introduce us to new domains of knowledge in slow incremental steps. The teacher takes us only to that part of knowledge that our minds were prepared to comprehend. The teacher cuts our intellectual food into bite size portions for easy digestion.

If we go to college we find that our class scheduling catalog details for us what are the prerequisites of any course in which we might wish to enroll. If we do not have the proper preparation then we cannot enroll in that course. The catalogue prevents us from attempting knowledge for which we are unprepared.

Our educational system has protected us from attempting to learn that for which we were unprepared. We have grown in knowledge under this umbrella of protection; however, we are left unprepared for the task of independent learning. Our educational system has left us without the intellectual dental structure required for independent learning.

After our educational system is finished with us we must, on our own, learn how to become independent learners; the first thing we must recognize is that we must not reject an idea because it is not easily digested. When we are not taken by the hand and incrementally introduced we will often meet ideas for which we are not prepared to deal. If we reject every idea about which we are not prepared to learn we will never learn anything new after our school daze are over.

If our response to everything unique to us is “I do not comprehend it so I will reject it” we will never be able to learn new stuff.

Our mothers and our teachers have been cutting our intellectual food into bite size portions throughout our young life.

If we reject a juice steak in the future because it is not cut to bite size we will be eating nothing but that which can be swallowed whole for the rest of our life.

Do you think that your education has left you intellectually toothless?


First Mother Fly: How's the new baby?

Second Mother Fly: Very restless. I had to walk the ceiling with him all night.

My highschool offered InternationalBachalureate classes which are entirely about critical analysis of the subject material.

"They don't encourage you to be what you want to be, they encourage you to be what they think you should be. No teacher will ever tell you you would be cut out to be a great pornstar or illegal arms merchant...

I was a funny **** in school, but it was never encouraged, believe me. No one ever saw my natural ability, no one ever sat me down and taught me how to write a punchline or structure a segue, no, I went to counceling. If I hadn't quit school I'd be in a ****ing cubicle now."

- Doug Stanhope


I think in our societies (US and Germany), I think Schools don't support alternative approaches enough and they certainly don't support autodidacts. They have such a powerful standing in our society that it is almost impossible to go a different successful road, and on top of that it is not even a particularly good system. I think there would need to be fundamental changes in the schools as well as society to make that better though.

Much as I fail to see his thesis, my thanks to coberst for bumping this. And thanks for sharing, everyone. I don't know that there's an answer to this that's simple, because writing about it is about as far away from teaching as writing an adventure novel is to fighting in a war. It's never as easy, even if we could define a set of ideologies that worked toward this goal.

And I liked Bardock's anecdote there.

This sound good, but it takes specific, technically accurate information to do a lot of important stuff- building bridges, engineering highways, making medicine, ect... and without standard education in math, language, science, societies can fall behind. I'm all for sharpening the mind, learning HOW to think- but this need not be the enemy of standard education. Like with most things in life, the answer is balance.

Cap'n Happy is right; the key is balance. You can learn things from other people and you can learn things on your own from personal experience.