SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
"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: 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.