Critical Thinking is a glorious thing. That’s what our public schools are telling kids and parents.
Critical Thinking is said to be synonymous with fairness, impartiality, science, logic, maturity, rationality, and enlightenment. If you read some of the literature on Critical Thinking, you will have the sense that you are being welcomed into a new religion.
In truth, that is a fairly accurate description of this highly popular and much promoted pedagogy.
Now, let’s start looking at Critical Thinking as if we, in fact, are critical thinkers.
The first thing that would need to be stated is that Critical Thinking, after all is said and done, in merely endorsing the age-old values of being open-minded and willing to consider all the evidence.
But nobody disputes those virtues. So what are all the high-level educators going on about? When supposedly smart, enlightened people carry on as if they are tipsy on something, you should be on guard.
Critical Thinking basically says to be suspicious of everything (except the fad known as Critical Thinking). It is perhaps best understood as a new and watered-down version of an earlier fad called Deconstruction, which was a fancy word for debunking. Basically, Deconstruction told college students to dismantle everything except Deconstruction.
Yes, that’s what we’ve got here, another oh-so-clever and highly selective way to encourage students to tell Mom and Dad to take a hike.
After you strip away all the high-minded rhetoric, Critical Thinking is typically used to tell students that they need not trust conventional wisdom, tradition, religion, parents, and all that irrelevant, old-fashioned stuff.
Critical Thinking also turns out to be contemptuous of facts and knowledge. The formulation in public schools goes like this: children must learn how to think, not what to think. WHAT is, of course, academic content and scholarly knowledge.
Ahhh, now you may sense where this thing leads. “What” is out, excluded, delegitimized. Students exist in a perpetual state of “how.” They evaluate information, they juggle information, they do everything with information but know it.
Critical Thinking is clear on this matter. Most facts are obsolete, they’re in a state of flux, or they are readily available on the Internet. So students should not bother knowing facts.
For the Education Establishment, knowledge is the perennial enemy. To fight it, our top educators come up with one sophistry after another. Critical Thinking is the latest and perhaps slickest. Who will dare criticize Critical Thinking??
Problem is, basic facts such as “Paris is the capital of France” are neither obsolete nor in the process of change. They are old reliables and need to be acquired. Facts are things you have in your head so you can discuss the evening news, European politics, or history. Critical Thinking says hell no.
Critical Thinking is another of those alleged breakthroughs that sweep through our schools every few years. Textbooks must be thrown out, teachers must forget what they know, classrooms must be rearranged. Everything must serve the all-devouring needs of Critical Thinking. First step: don’t bother teaching anything.
Critical Thinking, which claims to increase a child’s intellectual sophistication, can actually be used to keep the child in a state of perpetual ignorance and shallowness.
Let’s take the simplest examples. You want to learn to play the piano, to fly a plane, or to be a bartender. In every case, you have to start acquiring the facts and skills that go with these jobs. You can’t sit around talking about the job in some abstract realm.
It’s only when you know a lot of basic information that you can engage in genuine critical thinking.
Take something as complex as a war or as simple as a poem. It’s only when you know lots of specifics about several wars or a group of poems that you can start making smart comments. You can compare and contrast. You can play armchair general or be a literary critic. At this point you are actually engaged in real critical thinking. But so-called Critical Thinking forecloses this possibility because students are told not to learn basic facts.
Do you think I exaggerate? Consider what a school teacher wrote of his experiences in California’s public schools:
“I was directed in no uncertain terms to immediately cease all instruction in phonics, spelling and grammar, as these would -- you guessed it -- destroy all hope of reading with critical thinking skills.”
That’s what I meant by the all-devouring needs of Critical Thinking. Note that anything the child actually knows will get in the way of the true goal, Critical Thinking.
Here’s some puffery from a site devoted to the techniques of Critical Thinking: “Socrates established the fact that one cannot depend upon those in ‘authority’ to have sound knowledge and insight. He demonstrated that persons may have power and high position and yet be deeply confused and irrational. He established the importance of asking deep questions that probe profoundly into thinking before we accept ideas as worthy of belief.”
These poor sophists don’t see that their pretext for Critical Thinking should first be applied to themselves. Are they not persons with power and high position who may well be deeply confused and irrational?
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Critical Thinking is said to be synonymous with fairness, impartiality, science, logic, maturity, rationality, and enlightenment. If you read some of the literature on Critical Thinking, you will have the sense that you are being welcomed into a new religion.
In truth, that is a fairly accurate description of this highly popular and much promoted pedagogy.
Now, let’s start looking at Critical Thinking as if we, in fact, are critical thinkers.
The first thing that would need to be stated is that Critical Thinking, after all is said and done, in merely endorsing the age-old values of being open-minded and willing to consider all the evidence.
But nobody disputes those virtues. So what are all the high-level educators going on about? When supposedly smart, enlightened people carry on as if they are tipsy on something, you should be on guard.
Critical Thinking basically says to be suspicious of everything (except the fad known as Critical Thinking). It is perhaps best understood as a new and watered-down version of an earlier fad called Deconstruction, which was a fancy word for debunking. Basically, Deconstruction told college students to dismantle everything except Deconstruction.
Yes, that’s what we’ve got here, another oh-so-clever and highly selective way to encourage students to tell Mom and Dad to take a hike.
After you strip away all the high-minded rhetoric, Critical Thinking is typically used to tell students that they need not trust conventional wisdom, tradition, religion, parents, and all that irrelevant, old-fashioned stuff.
Critical Thinking also turns out to be contemptuous of facts and knowledge. The formulation in public schools goes like this: children must learn how to think, not what to think. WHAT is, of course, academic content and scholarly knowledge.
Ahhh, now you may sense where this thing leads. “What” is out, excluded, delegitimized. Students exist in a perpetual state of “how.” They evaluate information, they juggle information, they do everything with information but know it.
Critical Thinking is clear on this matter. Most facts are obsolete, they’re in a state of flux, or they are readily available on the Internet. So students should not bother knowing facts.
For the Education Establishment, knowledge is the perennial enemy. To fight it, our top educators come up with one sophistry after another. Critical Thinking is the latest and perhaps slickest. Who will dare criticize Critical Thinking??
Problem is, basic facts such as “Paris is the capital of France” are neither obsolete nor in the process of change. They are old reliables and need to be acquired. Facts are things you have in your head so you can discuss the evening news, European politics, or history. Critical Thinking says hell no.
Critical Thinking is another of those alleged breakthroughs that sweep through our schools every few years. Textbooks must be thrown out, teachers must forget what they know, classrooms must be rearranged. Everything must serve the all-devouring needs of Critical Thinking. First step: don’t bother teaching anything.
Critical Thinking, which claims to increase a child’s intellectual sophistication, can actually be used to keep the child in a state of perpetual ignorance and shallowness.
Let’s take the simplest examples. You want to learn to play the piano, to fly a plane, or to be a bartender. In every case, you have to start acquiring the facts and skills that go with these jobs. You can’t sit around talking about the job in some abstract realm.
It’s only when you know a lot of basic information that you can engage in genuine critical thinking.
Take something as complex as a war or as simple as a poem. It’s only when you know lots of specifics about several wars or a group of poems that you can start making smart comments. You can compare and contrast. You can play armchair general or be a literary critic. At this point you are actually engaged in real critical thinking. But so-called Critical Thinking forecloses this possibility because students are told not to learn basic facts.
Do you think I exaggerate? Consider what a school teacher wrote of his experiences in California’s public schools:
“I was directed in no uncertain terms to immediately cease all instruction in phonics, spelling and grammar, as these would -- you guessed it -- destroy all hope of reading with critical thinking skills.”
That’s what I meant by the all-devouring needs of Critical Thinking. Note that anything the child actually knows will get in the way of the true goal, Critical Thinking.
Here’s some puffery from a site devoted to the techniques of Critical Thinking: “Socrates established the fact that one cannot depend upon those in ‘authority’ to have sound knowledge and insight. He demonstrated that persons may have power and high position and yet be deeply confused and irrational. He established the importance of asking deep questions that probe profoundly into thinking before we accept ideas as worthy of belief.”
These poor sophists don’t see that their pretext for Critical Thinking should first be applied to themselves. Are they not persons with power and high position who may well be deeply confused and irrational?
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