Do you think that we need more instruction in and emphasis on critical thinking in our education system?

Question

I can't believe how many people seem to not practice critical thinking to any extent. They just go by rules, what people tell them and so on. Do you think that there should be more emphasis on logic, analytical thinking and being able to detect the tricks (logical falacies) that people like politicians and salesmen use to convince people of something?

To: tr_on_ashbory_bass (1st answer): Thanks for your thoughtful and informative answer. I'm skeptical about the following, however: "Most of your students at this level are in a 'concrete operations' phase, where their thought processes run exclusively to right-and-wrong, no capacity for shades of gray. The ability to start critical thinking in any but a rudimentary degree doesn't start until around age 16 at the earliest,". My skepticism is based solely on personal experience and observation. Can you cite any studies that support this assertion? I'd like to examine the data and their methods closely.

Answer 1

Absolutely. But the school system is part of the government bureaucracy. It is not concerned with developing critical judgment or understanding. It prepares people for a life of reward and punishment, memorization of the "right" answers and becoming consumer/producers.

The only people lucky enough to learn how to think for themselves are those who refuse to accept anything else. Maybe someday all that will change. For humanity's sake, I hope so.

I have to respond to the answer given directly above my own. This is the output of someone who has been totally brainwashed. He fails to see that children are born curious and that their curiosity is an innate part of who they are. His "facts" are all information he memorized as the "right" answers on tests. He is a perfect example of how the current education system perpetuates itself.

Answer 2

First: you really --can't--believe it? Why not??

Second: in K-12 education, you're dealing with people who are still developing. Most of your students at this level are in a "concrete operations" phase, where their thought processes run exclusively to right-and-wrong, no capacity for shades of gray. The ability to start critical thinking in any but a rudimentary degree doesn't start until around age 16 at the earliest, after the big brain-structure reorganization of early adolescence. So, trying to teach the level of analytical thinking where one can assess all sides of an argument, see the logic in the views that one doesn't hold personally, and weigh the controversies in some of society's most nettling values conflicts in pre-college is a little like teaching the proverbial pig to sing; in fact, most early college students aren't up to it yet either.

Now, it's certainly possible to teach students something about propaganda, rhetoric, deception, hype, and other ways of misleading in the earlier grades. In fact, that's part of the range of listening skills that could be learned better in the early grades, but instead gets postponed to first year of college for most students--too bad we don't think about age-appropriateness when we design our curricula, you'd think the education colleges had never heard of Piaget.

One last point; you can't teach critical thinking unless the student has something to think --about-- which means content knowledge.