Can Your Children Think?
In a Christian Science Monitor article called "Rethinking Thinking" comes this paragraph:
"Critical thinking, social responsibility, reflective judgment, and evidence-based reasoning ... are the most enduring goals of a first-rate liberal education," says Ms. Schneider. Yet research shows "many college graduates are falling short in reaching these goals."
I certainly tried-- with varying success-- to make this kind of reasoning happen in my students in biology classes (versus rote memory required to simply regurgitate facts) and when I was a forty- year-old Physical Therapy student myself, I was very much called on for "evidence based reasoning" in every test and practical exam I took in that two years.
But it is alarming that you can pay the very big bucks to send your children through four (or frequently more) years of college and they still may not have the skills (and yes, critical thinking to some degree is a learned process and a skill) to think and reflect clearly and deeply on their major subject, much less on general issues that will face them in the world outside academe. If you have or will have children in college, demand that they be truly educated by educators who have rethought thinking.
Comments
Critical thinking is not "to some extent" a learned skill. It is precisely a learned skill. You don't learn to think critically, to evaluate evidence and come to conclusions based on evidence unless someone has TAUGHT you. The problem is that once you've got them thinking critically, they might turn that faculty on YOU. Indeed, they usually do, before they do anything else. And then you have people who question authority, who want better evidence for weapons of mass destruction, who wonder who's getting paid for the reconstruction of Iraq. Oh dear.
Posted by: trish | October 14, 2003 11:53 AM
What surprises me, though it shouldn't, is the incredible resistance I face from students when I try to teach them critical thinking skills. It's always, 'But what's the answer?' and when I say there isn't one, that critical thinking (and writing, in my class) is about questions, they groan and wonder how they're going to write a paper about questions.
It's hard work, I know, but I remember my own discovery of these skills as being exciting and actually fun, so I'm a bit dismayed that it isn't coming across to my students that way.
Posted by: steve | October 14, 2003 2:40 PM
I recall reading about a philosophy professor at a major university who on his final exam asked only one question.
That question was "What is the question?". One student turned in his paper after only five minutes and left, while the rest of the class took the full hour writing in depth and complex essays. Every one flunked the exam except the one student who left early.
His answer was "This is the answer."
Posted by: fletch | October 14, 2003 9:17 PM
Ow, you have once again hit on my daily angst. How do I teach them to think? Am I teaching them to think? How do I document (for me, for them, for my chair) that they have learned to think? What do I 'sacrifice' to teach them to think? How do I justify not covering XY and Z in a way that is meaningful to my colleagues? It makes my head hurt. But on the days they get it... the joy is all mine.
Posted by: punctilious | October 14, 2003 10:22 PM
By not giving "the answer", I encourage "my" engineers to think through the problem facing them to come up with their own answer. Then I poke holes in that answer to encourage them to come up with other answers. Then I make 'em choose their "best" answer. (Their best answer is generally as good as any answer that I would be able to give them.) After varying periods of being exposed to this routine, the engineers no longer expect answers from me. They come in with a statement of the problem, the results of their research, and their recommendation, asking only if I see any holes in their thinking. Usually, if I do see a hole, the hole is due to their not having been exposed to some aspect of the problem before--not because they didn't think critically.
Posted by: Cop Car | October 15, 2003 8:12 AM
P.S. They also come to me for information pertinent to their research. But, they don't ask me for answers!
Posted by: Cop Car | October 15, 2003 8:13 AM