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"We aren't teaching students how to think critically!" So goes the exasperated lament you have probably heard and possibly uttered. The thing is, that's a crazy hard thing to do. It may seem like a logic class should teach you to think in a more disciplined way, for example, but the sad fact is that those mental habits are very unlikely to transfer [PDF] beyond the walls of the logic course. There are many different styles and contexts of critical thinking, and there is no magic subroutine that we could insert into our mental programming that covers them all.
But despair is not the only option. Effective coursework can build important and useful critical thinking skills. Doug Bonn at the University of British Columbia and Stanford's N.G. Holmes and Carl Wieman focused on good scientific, quantitative thinking when teaching a group of first-year physics students. And like good critically thinking educators, they put their strategy to the test and published the results so they can be evaluated by others.
Original article from Ars Technica .
[Related]: How to improve students' critical thinking about scientific evidence
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Wednesday August 19 2015, @12:28PM
A logic course teaches you mathematical / algebraic concepts. It's true enough that those aren't going to transfer into ordinary conversations. No one is going to derive truth tables from sentences in ordinary conversation. I'm not quite sure where ordinary logical fallacies [yourlogicalfallacyis.com] will be covered. Maybe in a philosophy course? While both of those are valuable, neither is what people mean, when they want students to learn critical thinking.
Critical thinking, imho, means that students genuinely realize and accept that every issue has two or more viewpoints, held with equal sincerity by their respective proponents. It means understanding the arguments off people you disagree with, understanding opposing arguments so well that you can effectively argue for the other side. If you cannot do that, you haven't understood what your opponents believe and want. Only when you accept that other people have differing views, and understand those views - only then do you have a chance to find a way forward (likely, by proposing an effective compromise). And who knows - by understanding all sides of an issue, you may be able to persuade one side or another that they are actually in error.
Teaching this is actually very simple: The teacher must take an issue and fairly discuss and present all sides. Just as an example: imagine a college class in the US studying slavery and the Civil War. The teacher needs to present both the argument "slavery is evil" and the argument "slavery was a net benefit to blacks", and both of them with equal sincerity. Then discuss and analyze. Students incapable of civil, rational discussion - students who cannot calmly represent the side they disagree with, fail the class.
Carry this through every class in the entire university. In my introductory lectures to networking, we discuss the Internet - this is a lovely opportunity to examine all sides of privacy issues, pro- and anti-government arguments, and so forth. In programming, I personally dislike GUI builders but some students love them. In software engineering, there are some arguments to be made for the waterfall model, even though agile methods are currently trendy. Discuss.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Wootery on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:18PM
The teacher needs to present both the argument "slavery is evil" and the argument "slavery was a net benefit to blacks", and both of them with equal sincerity.
I was with you up to this point. Why choose such a charged topic? Doing so will reinforce the idea that dissenting positions are simply not worth sympathising with.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:19PM
If you shut your brain off because it's a sensitive topic, you're not exactly demonstrating good critical thinking skills.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday August 19 2015, @03:22PM
Right, but why jump in at the deep end?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @03:40PM
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Is+Hillary+dead+yet%3F [lmgtfy.com]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday August 19 2015, @03:41PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @04:02PM
Not such a good method if you're trying to teach people to swim.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday August 19 2015, @04:39PM
It's an easy primer topic. Enslaving people is inherently evil, but would you rather be a prize slave critical for your master's operation or an impoverished free man who's treated like dirt? Which is more inhuman? Teaching critical thinking will let you understand both arguments, but not necessarily agree or even like both arguments. However it will put you in a better position to argue against the position you don't like. What makes it an easy primer topic is it is easy to remind everyone that it is universally held belief (in the western world) that slavery is wrong, no matter how heated the debates get. It is also easy to remind everyone that racism and slavery are two separate topics.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @08:29PM
> It's an easy primer topic.
For a philosophy class. Not for a civil war history class.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday August 19 2015, @09:22PM
That's actually how we approached the Civil War in my US history class. That way the class understands that the war did not start over slavery, but States rights. The Southerners understood that slavery was wrong, but their banking system and entire economy was based around owning your labor force. To overnight declare owning your capital and collateral as illegal has disastrous results over your economy. According to the Constitution, the Federal government did not have the authority to ban slavery without an act of Congress, and that wouldn't happen without support from the Southern States. So, nothing was going happen. It lead to a lot of interesting conversations... many of them make you scratch your head about the current Fed and wonder if the Southerners weren't right.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:12PM
That way the class understands that the war did not start over slavery, but States rights. The Southerners understood that slavery was wrong,...
Assuming you're not trolling, you got taught revisionist history. Slavery had been an ongoing political conflict for the decades since the beginning of the country. The Civil War was definitely about slavery. The Southern States wanted the right to own slaves. Arguing that the desire to own slaves was about state's rights and not about slavery is a mix of both sophistry and, perhaps ironically, contemporary political correctness.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:23PM
Perhaps I was to brief in my previous post, we did cover that debate of owning slaves has existed since the beginning of the colonial times and was brought to the forefront of political debate multiple times. Most significantly was the thee-fifths compromise during the writing of the Constitution. The South argued that they always had the right to own slaves and would like to keep the right to decide if the practice should continue. Naturally, they wanted to continue it as their economy and depended on the practice--and not just for the labor, or so they argued. Because of the establishment of the Mason-Dixon line, you would never see enough votes in Congress to ever make the changes necessary to the Constitution to abolish slavery. Companies that ran the slave trade bought were against it because they made buckets of money buying and selling slaves. Plantation owners were against abolishing slaves as it dissolved their capital and disposed the collateral on their loans. The South reasoned that slavery was a necessary sin to prevent economic disaster in the South (kind of like the bank and automotive bailouts of this era? eh?). Never mind that the North was against the practice as well as much of the South, big business needs to keep its immoral labor practices to stay competitive with the rest of the world. History teaches us that the abolishment of slavery as well as the fallout of the war did wreck the South's economy and left it wide open to being pillaged by Northern carpet baggers, but 150 years later and their economy is nearly recovered and sediments about the war are nearly forgotten. A couple months back didn't we just have an article about South Carolina's Confederate flag being taken down at the capital building?
Nevertheless, you are correct, slavery was always a hot topic issue. However, the South wanted the control over when slavery would be abolished in their States and not the Federal government... if it would be abolished at all. What really ticked off the South was the 1860 election of President Lincoln, where he noticeably had no ballets in much of the South, and yet still managed to secure the electoral college. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1860 [wikipedia.org]
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @08:26PM
I was with you up to this point. Why choose such a charged topic? Doing so will reinforce the idea that dissenting positions are simply not worth sympathising with.
He didn't choose the topic out of a potentially misguided sense of how to apply critical theory. Read his posting history, he chose that topic because he has a level of affinity with it and feels persecuted for being held to account for identifying with it so he thought he could slip it in as a way to give weight to his delusion.
Anyone not in that particular delusional bubble would recognize that it as a form of balance fallacy. [rationalwiki.org] That there is value in giving each position on a topic example equal air time. Applied generally that sort of illogic leads to drowning out signal with noise - watering down truth false egalitarianism. It is the logic of someone who thinks "all lives matter" is an on-topic response to "black lives matter."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:19PM
Having taken numerous such courses, my views are somewhat different but similar to yours. Perhaps my view is based on my upbringing and approach to class, or simply due to life experience.
Critical thinking has little to do with calmly discussing an argument with a rational discourse, agreeing to disagree or disagreeing one agrees with a person who is disagreeable.
Subjective or objective bias can be included in that critical thinking; one can critically think about something that has flawed data, or incomplete data, or false data. Deeply thinking about the wrong things can lead to behaviors that others wish to be exhibited; consider typical newsworthy events. Something bad about a "1%" person may frequently be followed by a typical wag-the-dog scenario. Perhaps Kim K wears a new outfit, or Bieber is found to have slept with another attractive lady trying to become an actress or model, or perhaps something taken out of context back in 2012 is discovered and dragged through the mud and displayed for everyone to gossip about.
Depending on who is doing the asking, critical thinking can be a problem. It's about being able to digest facts and make a determination on those facts and/or information surrounding those facts (ie, metadata I suppose). And then applying them contextually to the problem at hand. However, colleges are looking for academic critical thinking. What makes one an income requires thought of another sort--for many non-management types and lower-rung management types, at least. Adherence is what is valued there, not critical thinking. Do not question your boss even though the idea is not a good one, doesn't follow best practices, isn't a standard, and won't work. (If there are hours to be billed, that is critical. Not success! Doing it right the first time denies one the chance to prolong the problem and fix the issues later, and that could be 75% of the estimated work.)
The real concern I see with critical thinking is that business leaders all demand it, but then do not reward it. As an engineer, one should know better than design something that is cheap, effective, requires low maintenance, and works the first time. That is not how time and materials service contracts work. One should be critically thinking about how to enrich the fortunes of an employer, not building a better product. Only do that if absolutely necessary.
Critical thinking is done in all lines of business, but ethical concerns and morality are often not a part of that equation. Such concerns are inconvenient to many, and it is critical that students coming out of college do not think that way. It undermines the system. Letting ethics get in the way is a great way to get passed over for promotion or a bonus, unless there is a regulatory matter that forces compliance.
I sometimes think that there are people that return to academia because what they learned and did well at in school simply doesn't fit into a business model; critical thinking being one of those skills. Some places reward that, but often good ideas go undeveloped because those at the top are not capable of critical thinking (A good example is Kodak and how they came up with a digital camera many years ago, but it would undermine their film business...and it was quite critical considering their recent business fortunes.)
It makes me think of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest -- from one perspective, it was saner in the asylum than outside of it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:25PM
Yes and no.
That two or more viewpoints may be sincerely held is true. But it is vitally important to remember that that fact doesn't mean that all viewpoints have equal merit: some viewpoints are demonstrably wrong, others have no evidence whatsoever, and still others are more about polite masking of really ugly motivations than they are about a search for truth. The primary reason to learn critical thinking is to be able to recognize all of those.
* You demonstrate that a viewpoint is wrong by either (a) showing that the chain of logic is fallacious, or (b) showing that the premises are incorrect.
* You demonstrate that a viewpoint has no evidence by noticing that none was cited, asking for that evidence, and getting no or poor evidence at all in response. Or alternately, by demonstrating that there's a closed circle of citations, where Bob cites Mike who cites Jim who cites Bob without any evidence outside the closed circle (such as a repeatable experimental result).
* You demonstrate that a viewpoint is really a polite masking by following the viewpoint to its logical conclusions and seeing what actions are implied. For instance, if a viewpoint strongly suggests that genocide would be a great idea, then it's time to be very suspicious about the motivations of that viewpoint.
What you are advocating is training people to do is argue like lawyers or debaters regardless of their actual viewpoints. What I'm interested in training people to do is have a finely tuned baloney detection kit, and demonstrate a willingness to turn that baloney detection kit against their own viewpoints to catch themselves when they screw up.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @02:20PM
Wrong. By doing so you show that the argument of your opponent is invalid, but you don't disprove the viewpoint.
Example: I hold the viewpoint that 1+1=2. I prove it from the premise that 2+2=5, by doing an integer division of that equation by two, giving (2+2)/2 = 2 (because 5/2=2 in integer division), and then using the distributive law to obtain 2/2+2/2 = 2, that is, 1+1=2. Voila, I've shown that my viewpoint that 1+1=2 is right.
Now you come and find that my chain of logic is flawed (because integer division does not give an equivalent equation), and moreover my premises are incorrect (because certainly 2+2≠5). If you were right in the claim I quoted, you would now have demonstrated that 1+1=2 is wrong.
So how do you demonstrate a viewpoint to be wrong? Well, by showing that it contradicts facts the opponent accepts as true. I just did exactly that with your claim (well, actually I just assumed that you consider 1+1=2 a valid fact; if you happen to believe that 1+1=2 is wrong, my example won't be convincing).
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 19 2015, @05:11PM
Quite correct. I should have stated that the specific argument presented in favor of a particular viewpoint was thus refuted.
If, however, all arguments in favor of a viewpoint are thus refuted, and there is an opposing viewpoint that has not been refuted in the same way, then it is a safe assumption that the viewpoint supported only by bad arguments is in fact wrong. Without that, you would be forced to reach the conclusion that no viewpoint can ever be disproven, which I believe we can agree is untrue.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday August 19 2015, @02:35PM
You are absolutely right: all viewpoints are not equal. However, refusing to understand an opposing viewpoint limits your ability to refute it, counter it, or whatever else is necessary. If you don't know how the other side things, what motivates them, you have handicapped yourself.
Not unimportant: understanding an opposing viewpoint may also cause you to realize that your viewpoint is the incorrect one. We all have a tendency to cling irrationally to certain beliefs.
I'm not really wanting to make everyone into a lawyer. However, the best proof that you have understood a viewpoint (even if you vehemently disagree with it), is your ability to state the arguments of its proponents. If you can't do that, then you haven't understood it.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @04:25PM
Because most people don't actually use their minds ;). Most people haven't learned to think critically and logically. For example many will not think and immediately go "NO YOU ARE WRONG!" to claims like "babies are less important than a fertile pair of parents, saving the parents is usually better for the species than saving their babies".
Winning the argument and not converting the person to your side is often pointless.
The ability to win arguments through logic becomes more valuable if we can teach more and more people to think well and logically. Perhaps we will make more progress with studies like these.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday August 20 2015, @12:49AM
That's not the case. I have spent 40+ years on this planet in the company of racists. I have racists in my family, I have met many racists. I have read more racist speech than I would have ever thought. But I still don't understand racism. I don't get it. It. Does. Not. Compute. But it does not limit my ability to fight it at all. And it must be fought.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by danmars on Thursday August 20 2015, @05:35PM
You say that you are not limited in your ability to refute or counter it due to your inability to understand. What if your lack of understanding makes your attempts to counter it mistargeted? What if your attempts to fight racism take a completely unhelpful tack because you don't understand what you're fighting?
I recommend you listen to this. You could read the transcript if you prefer, but the audio is a lot better.
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/14/363896136/the-silver-dollar-lounge [npr.org]
Here's part that's especially relevant to you:
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:57PM
It's also possible to over-intellectualize beliefs that stem from the lizard brain. Sometimes a stupid bigot is just a stupid bigot. It makes as much sense to try to parse their thought processes as to sift through a puddle of vomit.
The extreme moral relativism that was spawned by post-modernism really has done enormous damage to the project of human advancement.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Thursday August 20 2015, @08:32PM
You demonstrate that a viewpoint is really a polite masking by following the viewpoint to its logical conclusions and seeing what actions are implied. For instance, if a viewpoint strongly suggests that genocide would be a great idea, then it's time to be very suspicious about the motivations of that viewpoint.
No, you don't. You engage the argument, not the person making it.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:57PM
Well, I suppose, in theory. But does the exercise of critical thinking encompass all topics, really? How about, "Child rape is a horrific crime" vs. "Pedophiles need lovin' too?" "The Final Solution was an utterly depraved policy that struck at the very foundations of civilization" vs. "The Jews, Communists, Gypsies, Handicapped, Freemasons, and all other classes of undesireables had to go to clear the way for a more glorious future led by the Master Race?"
I rather think it's possible there are some positions that are worth dismissing out of hand.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday August 19 2015, @03:04PM
You don't even need to go for something that emotional: Try "The Earth is at the center of the Universe." - feel free to add in "The Earth is a flat, plate-shaped object." for extra amusement.
Or my personal favorite, "anything that can fly is a demon". I can safely dismiss that viewpoint, though I will listen to the arguments for comedy purposes.
Fact is, one can engage in critical thought without having to let every lunatic vomit their particular insanity at you. The trick is getting to a point where you can tell the difference between the feelings "I'm not listening to you because your viewpoint is obviously wrong" and "I'm not listening to you because your viewpoint is offensive to my viewpoint".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday August 19 2015, @03:40PM
It's taken me a long time to think critically, and I'm still improving at it. Once you attain a degree of skill at it, you begin to see all kinds of things. Our society is manipulative, full of baseless assumptions and unquestioned customs.
For example, we all come to realize that the discipline of Marketing is pretty corrupt. But we tend to see little isolated instances, not the big picture. When it is honorable, Marketing is about connecting those with a need to those who can provide for that need. But that isn't enough, does not maximize profits. Now Marketing is mostly about manipulating people by convincing us that 1) we need something whether we really do or not and 2) overlooking simple and inexpensive solutions in favor of ways that profit a business. For extra credit, marketing often brings the government on board to make it in some fashion illegal not to buy. Propaganda is not evil, but good. For an example of this, lawn care is an area marketed to extreme. Before powered mowers, many people lived with uncut lawns. There is also the ancient technology known as the herbivore. Now it is often against city ordinances to let the grass grow. And neither you nor the neighborhood may keep a goat! It gets more absurd. We are also pushed to buy fertilizer and water for the lawn, which then has to be mowed even more often. Many plants that grow well are maligned as weeds, and the only place to get pretty flowers are private, for-profit plant nursery businesses. All these expectations are highly profitable for the lawn care biz, which is all too eager to cater to these prejudices. Try to have a more natural lawn, and you will be fighting everyone. That a more natural lawn is healthier for us gets brushed aside, or argued the opposite so convincingly that people who aren't very good at critical thinking swallow it all. Besides, health is not as important as profit. Indeed, good health cuts into the profits of the medical biz.
All that is just one area. We've used our relatively recent advances in machinery to unthinkingly indulge all kinds of our whims no matter how destructive. What's with the mania over women shaving off all their body hair? Why is body hair now gross and disgusting? But that's only the latest change. In prior decades, indoor plumbing empowered us going nuts over hygiene. Body odor became offensive, and now we must shower daily. Takes lots of soap and shampoo. My father grew up on a farm with only a hand pump in the yard. They took baths once a week. This involved pumping enough water to fill a small tub, and lugging it all to the wood burning stove for heating, then the family took turns, using the same water. (Took more time and effort to keep the woodpile stocked and to periodically clean out the ashes.) The baby got washed last, when the water was at its dirtiest. For me to live like that is nearly unthinkable. I'd likely be ostracized. Body odor being especially unpleasant has much to do with the change in our diet. Eat unhealthy, and your B. O. will be more unpleasant. Another factor is that all this showering kills off lots of beneficial bacteria, which among other things makes us less stinky. Actually harms our health to shower daily. We then must spend more time and money undoing the damage the daily shower caused. Bring on the hair conditioner! After that, we're encouraged to whip out a hair dryer and do more damage.
So we now have all these labor saving devices, we've achieved our parents' dreams of giving us a better life, and what do we do? Bog ourselves down with nonsense busy work. But, lo! Marketing, that pack of liars who egg us on, has the solution to that too. Employ maid services. Then, we aren't getting enough exercise, so we'd better join a private gym. Wouldn't it be better to get your exercise by doing the chores yourself? Oh, right, that exercise isn't good enough. I remember a time when it was thought queer (and I don't mean that in a homosexual way, just queer as in odd) to spend time at the gym. Energy should first be spent on useful efforts such as chores. And sport ought to be at least a little useful, for instance fishing and hunting. Something like tennis was so effete.
How did we all come to this?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 19 2015, @11:23PM
Huh, you're not kidding. I grew up in the Rockies. My grandparents had a huge garden and used us grandkids as corvee labor. I worked on farms to earn money to get the hell out (personally I think those who decry "them immigrants" should do several turns working as farm labor and then rethink how badly they want those people to not be here to do it).
Fast forward several decades and now I'm married to a city kid if ever there was one. When I suggested we plant a garden and grow our own vegetables she looked at me like I had three heads. "But bugs might poop on it!" I offered to harvest everything and walk it in and out of the magic grocery store portal if it would make her feel any better. Now she admits that home-grown veggies taste fantastic, but she still can't quite wrap her head around the fact that they grow. In dirt.
Also when something breaks my first impulse is to get the tool chest out and fix it. Hers is to "call someone."
In the end dependency is a state of mind. Sure, there are some things you can't do yourself. Try auto-bypass surgery. But for a lot of other things, dependency means you wind up paying a lot of people a lot of money for stuff you really don't need all that much. Because we really don't need all that much to live. Not really. Else, all the poor people in the world who make less than $2/day could not possibly exist.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:26PM
Sounds like my wife. Total modern city woman. Why, just this morning she called for a service person to come out and fix the clothes dryer. Why do we even need a powered clothes dryer, why isn't a clothes line or rack acceptable? Clothes actually last longer when not tumble dried. And then there are those fabric softeners that contaminate the clothes with all kinds of nasty chemicals such as phthalates.
There are so many more big and little things like that. I'm sure I've missed plenty of them. Our cities have been made car friendly, and hostile to all other forms of transport. Walking has been made so low class.
As to evil, another ugly truth is that we are totally dependent upon other life for our food. Almost everything we eat was once alive. We've become hypocrites about it, like to keep slaughterhouses out of sight and mind. When I must hear grace for food, I'd like to occasionally hear one that at least acknowledges that some other life had to end to provide meat for us. Life evolved complicated interdependencies, which in a simplistic view would be seen as murder and theft. Killing is what carnivores do. Are they evil? For ourselves, we've made the eating of meat a status symbol. Poor people eat beans, rich people eat steak. We've gone overboard on that too, eat more meat than is healthy.
I'd like to change some of this, but how? Bucking society is rough going, to say nothing of questioning the wife's assumptions and expectations.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:36PM
This is a common practice among American Indians and other subsistence cultures around the world. It wouldn't seem too amiss to me for modern society to adopt (or re-adopt) it.
I think about this dynamic constantly. Lately I'm of the mind that in life you really have to say "fuck it" and go ahead and blaze the trail anyway. Occasionally it's surprising how many other people fall in behind you because they were just waiting for somebody else to make the first move. In the end what stays is what works.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday August 19 2015, @02:47PM
Funny, I'd define critical thought as less about being able to argue a point and more about a willingness to follow claims to their sources and admit your deeply cherished personal viewpoints might be completely wrong.
I think a person can learn to think critically without being a member of debate club. An actor can present any viewpoint at all calmly and rationally without having the least bit of respect for it. Just because you can argue both sides if you want to doesn't mean you're capable of admitting you might be wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @03:18PM
Are members of debate clubs typically critical thinkers, or just good at bullshitting unthinking people into thinking they are?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @04:37PM
Agreed!
I use to work with 2 other gentlemen. We had "arguments" about a technique or design change. One pro, One Con and One Referee. After few minutes (or hours) the roles changed naturally and fluidly, like Pro took up Con, Con was the Referee, and Referee became Pro. We came out with great meeting of the minds and creation of great code. But to show it was not always a quiet formal discussion, the attorneys in the next office, came in a few times to offer free mediation services.
Now after the point, I do not agree. The teach should (at high school and college levels) NOT present anything, they are the ref and guidance. Should assign students to PRO and CON sides and run the debate. Student should research and present arguments for or against. If like the Supreme Court, when writing a PRO statement may actually turn a feeling to CON. The students can ask to be assigned to other but state the reason.
Critical thinking is through USE, not lecture.
Examples: Civil War Confederate Battle Flag:
Does promote hated?
Is it showing that the South was the side supporting the U.S. Constitution?
If the flag must go, should the U.S. Constitution should also go because of 3/5 count of Slave Males. (Remember women do not count in the Constitution either)