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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: 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".