The Need To Be Critical
I try to live a regret-free life, but one of the few misgivings I carry as a parent is having put my children through the public school system. Yes, it’s probably politically incorrect to say that. But I doubt many would dispute this stark reality, that the educational system in the United States is deeply flawed. So I won’t bother arguing the point.
The flaws are many. Some studies decry the amount of math knowledge, others lament the sorry state of science literacy. Employers groan about the lack of work ethics and basic skills that the emerging work force brings to them. Community colleges are not only underfunded and overflowing, they have to put high school graduates (including honors students) through multiple levels of remedial courses, just to bring them up to a level that would’ve been unacceptable a generation ago. But the root problem runs far deeper than most of these studies have addressed.
It’s not simply a matter of knowledge; as any kid can attest, Google has brought almost unlimited knowledge to the masses. The core issue I have maintained for many years, is that our educational system does not teach critical thinking. So imagine how pleased I was when I came across this Scientific American article on the failure of lower education to teach critical thinking skills. At last, someone gets it!
The point is NOT to bash teachers. Sure, some measure of responsibility lies with inadequate teachers and a system that doesn’t do enough to weed out poor performers and groom excellence. More of that fault, though, probably belongs to educational administrators. Accountability also has to be shared by parents, school boards and politicians. Entertainment and media devalue education to the point where achievers are ridiculed.
Yet, we live in an increasingly complex world, with deep and complicated problems, and the single most important task of our educational system is to teach the next generation the thinking skills to deal with these problems. But this is somewhat of a Catch-22.
Because addressing the lack of critical thinking is going to require critical thinking. While there are some critical thinkers left.