I like this post:
''Why young people lack critical thinking skills''
I?’m reminded of an old and very bad joke that attempts to explain why woman are so bad in math?… It has to do with men telling them that (________) measures 10 inches (254mm for you metric types).
I?’m a high school teacher and one of the skills I hope to develop is critical thinking. You know the ability to evaluate information, separate the significant from the trivial, make informed choices, and see through the sales pitch and all. I have to admit, if my students were tested on Cynical Thinking Skills they would get high scores but they struggle when it comes to thinking for them selves.
Reflecting on this I can make the following observations:
As we chase those elusive ?“High Standards?” we narrow the choices students have and we become almost dogmatic with our good grades = good college= good job mantra. We don?’t trust young people to discover this on their own so we convey the message, ?“don?’t think just do?”.
Having students evaluate choices using direct information would certainly complicate college recruiting. If students investigated the job market, made realistic projections of wages and benefits compared to how much debt they needed to assume a entire industry might be put at risk.
Think of the impact on military recruitment if young people actually spoke to people doing the work they were being recruited for before they signed up.
If students calculated the real cost of the I-Pods and Cell Phones they carry around against listening to the radio or walking to someone?’s house and talking to them or for that matter considered the privacy they surrender in the connected world they live in it could destroy yet another industry.
So I guess we should decide if we want our young people to have critical thinking skills or do we just want better marketing targets.
By Albert08 at: http://www.whistlestopper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66529
Peace
