Critical Thinking!

https://www.schoolofthought.org/

Check out the ted talk. Critical thinking is one of the most important things we could possibly do. :lol:

Let's increase some knowledge! Feel free to talk about the video above, the website's resources, or provide your own resources for critical thought.

That is awesome. I'd use it.

I like the concept of formally teaching youth to think critically, I just question the need for this to be the job of the school.

Schools were not setup to teach critical thinking. That isn't their function.

I think there are other ways to achieve this teaching than to require it of schools.

It would be cool if it was something schools could do, but I'm not going to hold my breath....

It could interfere with the teaching process!! School seems to be about marks, not learning.

See I often questioned the teachers when they said something I knew was wrong.... but I now know it was beside the point of why we were all there.

I think learning is more about what one focuses on in adulthood as a current set of knowledge..... since memory sort of fades over time. Obviously the foundations of that occur during education, but the things which are not related to the current focus tend to fade.

I self studied alongside my education, and the integration and structure of that experience (guided by curiosity) was so uniform and logical that very quickly the disjointed and disorganized mainstream education become a burden to process.

It was only later that I did realize the trick to mainstream education was learning how to cram and dump using short term memory properly - I'd stupidly thought subjects were integrated sets of knowledge which could be managed logically. Education is about getting marks and grabbing some useful knowledge which might be relevant to individuals from within a diverse group to allow them to specialize and focus later on, IMO.

So I think critical thinking is better kept as a tool to be practised throughout life, but perhaps taught in an exit unit when someone leaves school, a "Stop believing everything you hear/read" course to usher people out of childhood and into adulthood.

Its funny you should mention this topic because as a University faculty member, many of the students I teach are not prepared to be critical thinkers once they get to university, so the first year is sort of a boot camp of sorts and inevitably people fall through the cracks because they don't have the foundation.

Current public education systems, at least in America, are places of indoctrination. Follow the rules, say the correct answer, get the reinforcement (good grades). This is an unfortunate reality and part and parcel why a world class university education still is by and large an elite endevour. Can't have the "masses" thinking critically.

I was just listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson discuss moon hoaxes with Joe Rogan, and he said "If you don't otherwise have the tools to analyze information, then one is susceptible to all manner of forces of thought that go on around you."

If that's not a reason that critical thinking education should be the primary concern of anyone attempting to educate, then I'm not sure we'll find any.

The traditional purpose of public education in the US was to prepare citizens for active participation in civic duties. While this purpose continues the curricular emphasis now is on occupational training. I believe that public education K-12 is a factory-like process enforcing conformity to pass standardized tests.

College is different.

Even though colleges market their occupational training programs the humanities and social science departments are dedicated to the value of the liberal arts. These departments teach critical thinking skills as they are embedded in their particular disciplines. College philosophy departments Critical Thinking courses focus on teaching recognition of logical fallacies and the textbooks offered by publishers for this course are dedicated to this goal.

The Critical Thinking course I teach is more Jedi-ist. We begin with booklets published by the Foundation for Critical Thinking. I recommend their publications and web site (criticalthinking.org). Then, after a four week introduction to the Foundation's principles of critical thinking, we apply this learning for the remainder of the semester to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's excellent philosophical work, Metaphors We Live By. I highly recommend this book to all TotJO Novices and Apprentices.

Fabulous, Alan. There is a problem, though... you're right, colleges teach critical thinking, but only a minority get to go to college at all.

Now, in my high school, we had classes we COULD take in order to learn critical thinking. I took a humanities topics course (basically, a college professor came in and taught us his specialty for a semester, and it changed every semester), which was really awesome. We learned about architecture, art history, philosophy, and the blues roots movement in the southern US. There are no assignments, but we have to keep a journal asking questions about the topics.

In any case, there are ways to implement it in high school.

My mother taught me critical thinking. Not any formal schooling. I teach my son.

Best not to rely to much on outside institutions I find.

I dont think the education system needs to get better so much as families and friends need to encourage such skills.

Of course, the education system has some major flaws, but even if it was a perfect, well oiled machine, it would not be handling the whole of my childs education.