In order to teach critical thinking, you need to have well educated teachers who can think critically.

Most of those people were drummed out of Teaching years ago, in favor of union lackeys, and Democratic Party activists, who were heavily subsidized and hand picked for their journey through the hamster wheel of educational credentialism.

Make a list of countries that have been run by Caucasians for the last few hundred years. Now, make a list of countries to which people wish to immigrate. Other than Russia, those lists are going to be pretty similar.

"So, California is planning on teaching racism and sexism as an everyday study?"

I think that's what they've been doing for several decades now.

"What schools should be teaching is critical thinking."

A traditional means that dictators use to repress the population is to deny access to education. Educated people are more likely to see the Socialist Paradise for what it is, and less likely to fall for propaganda. But the American/international Left figured out a long time ago that they would not be able to outright deny access to education in the United States. So Plan B was to introduce corruption into education.

Plan B has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Most of the American population believes in all manner of superstitions and nonsense, while having almost zero knowledge of either the STEM subjects or the roots-of-Western-civilization topics like literature or philosophy. Half of American adults cannot read at an eighth-grade level (source). I can't find any numbers on adult innumeracy (nobody tests the adult general population on math), but I suspect those numbers are similar. Meanwhile, we have academics writing papers in pig Latin, using terms that sound impressive but have no comprehensible or consistent definition; a lot of them are derived from root words and Greek/Latin suffixes incorrectly, and a fair percentage are simply slurs to be used by highbrows. (It's hard to know which academics take this stuff seriously; some do, while others seem to be in on the joke and are only using the language to impress the townies.)

So we have a large population of mostly ignorant people, including a great many of our so-called elites. Mission accomplished, Left. I don't know how we will ever get out of this box. The entrenched forces are just too powerful. The Internet might help some, but first the potential students (A) have to know where to look, and (B) be motivated to do it.

In order to teach critical thinking, you need to have well educated teachers who can think critically.

Damn it. We're stuck in Möbius strip.

There are quite a few people who are inherently rational (yes not a lot as a percentage). From that start you can promote rationality and critical thinking. But that requires you actually want to do that IRA. Something US public schools clearly aren't interested in.

I don’t have much hope for “critical thinking” . Because leftists have a tendency to twist words to mean what they want them to mean. I’ve heard some left leaning teachers pushing critical thinking, their explanation of what it was always trust the credentialed elite.

As to how we get out of this. More are being homeschooled.

To bemoan the evils of capitalism is to imagine a world where workers are exploited by being chained together and worked to death--a Marxian dystopia. In America you can change jobs any time you like. Ask any employer about all the people who quit. Millions of people have their own business--are they all evil capitalists? It is also funny how the heroes of the Left like Michael Moore or Tom Steyer are never called capitalists and how Pelosi and Bernie somehow got rich.

> I don’t have much hope
> for “critical thinking” .

I reject the notion outright. It's a pretense by which people who get good grades in school, and aspire to do so for practical impact, spray their hair and paint their nails for each other.

"Critical thinking" is just thinking. Everybody does it, and there are no exceptions, and get over yourself.

Critical thinking" is just thinking. Everybody does it, and there are no exceptions, and get over yourself.

Crid at August 5, 2019 1:59 PM

Yea, at some point it became an Education industry buzz word.

I sort of disagree that there is no such thing, but most of what the educrats describe as critical thinking, isn’t anything of the sort.

Critical thinking is required to solve a calculus problem. But applying it indiscriminately to the social sciences is just nuts.

(Waiting for a post by Artemis to pop up on this thread, so you can see that there is no transference between the two areas at all.)

Damn it Isab! Why do you seek to summon devils? My head hurts enough from work. I don't need such a headache inducing demonstration.

Ben, guess I just can’t help myself.

Don’t get into an argument with Artemis. Once he posts, do not respond. He is an unwitting troll. Best ignored. Just read it, and weep for the state of American education, and the Democratic Party today.

Are we certain Artemis was educated in the United States? Are we sure Artemis is a male? Over the first months or the first years, the comments were so childishly defensive that these elements of the identity were in doubt. And nothing from recent casual reading suggests forward motion.

After the entrance we all saw, there will always be doubts.

Lots of people have the "critical" part down...they just need to start doing the thinking part.

After the entrance we all saw, there will always be doubts.

Crid at August 5, 2019 5:46 PM

You attacking my gendered pronouns Crid?

Are you affirming that my critique is mean-spirited, unsustainable, or problematic?

How dare you, Isab. How dare you.

Don't kid yourself: You can be cancelled just like Charlie Rose and Garrison Keillor.

Only without the sexual misconduct.

Sadly he does appear to be an electrical engineer or physics grad. I promise most EEs aren't like that. PHDs do have a reputation for piling it higher and deeper for a reason.

"Make a list of countries that have been run by Caucasians for the last few hundred years. Now, make a list of countries to which people wish to immigrate. Other than Russia, those lists are going to be pretty similar."

Fred Reed makes a related point loudly.

It's nice to have a fan base.

Amy is of course correct here that critical thinking should be taught in schools.

Unfortunately critical thinking and just plain old thinking aren't the same things.

Critical thinking doesn't come naturally for most people and takes practice.

Often times people hold beliefs or conclusions that are wholly unsupported by facts or evidence and completely resist well-founded criticism.

Incidentally Isab... there is no such thing as an "unwitting troll"... either I am witting or I am not a troll... take your pick.

As early as the 1970s, some California public high schools began offering Ethnic Studies, positing that courses in the field would provide an opportunity to engage the hxrstory, cultures, contributions, perspectives, and experiences of groups that have been overlooked, hxrstorically marginalized, and often subjected to invisibility within mainstream courses.

Hxrstory?!

Hxrstory?! ~ Conan the Grammarian at August 6, 2019 6:27 AM

I can't wait until I have to check the hxrstogram when I do post-processing on my photographs.

Or until I take an anti-hxrstamine for allergies.

Seriously? At what point do we admit this has gone from tragedy to farce?

Critical thinking is not "just thinking" but it is also not what most teachers teach if they try to teach it.
It involves the following: Understanding logical fallacies and trying to avoid them, being able to process data and at least simple statistics, avoiding bias (we love our theories and info supporting our world-view), know how to verify or challenge an idea, correlation not equal causation, etc.
When sticking to a narrative (leftist mostly), parroting your official intersectionalist group lines, and mobbing are how things work, critical thinking is verboten. It is made worse if you are exposed to post-modernism or nonsense jargon, such as believing in invisible "whiteness" forces or racial/gender guilt.

> Critical thinking is not
> "just thinking" but it is
> also not what most teachers
> teach if they try to
> teach it.

Most teachers bring it to their best apple-polishing pupils as an early tier of the condescension and exclusion they're going to give to most of the fellows in their society for the rest of their lives. And it works perfectly.

You've been had.

"Unfortunately," says Artemis. He certainly learned that lesson, if no others.

Crid,

Sorry, let me help translate for you.

"Unfortunate" is kind of like how you feel when no one purchases your soft core F1 fan fiction paperbacks on etsy.

I'd never heard about Etsy before today. Thanks Arty.