Posts: 784
Threads: 1
Likes Received: 790 in 416 posts
Likes Given: 1,889
Joined: Jul 2020
Reputation:
11
12-24-2020, 05:55 PM
How 'teachable' is critical thinking?
Yeah, now I'm at the stage where I think I'm smart for realising how smart I'm not. :-)
Posts: 8,948
Threads: 562
Likes Received: 11,421 in 4,788 posts
Likes Given: 13,678
Joined: Oct 2018
Reputation:
59
12-25-2020, 01:22 PM
How 'teachable' is critical thinking?
I am smarter than most people. It is a fact I have learned to accept.
Posts: 5,874
Threads: 35
Likes Received: 8,810 in 4,045 posts
Likes Given: 5,906
Joined: Apr 2019
Reputation:
28
12-30-2020, 04:11 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-30-2020, 04:14 AM by mordant.)
How 'teachable' is critical thinking?
Thanks to Danu for her question, it's a good one.
First, I think it's important to define "critical thinking skills". My definition is "teaching the major logical fallacies -- what they are, and how to correctly identify them and guard against them". I would maintain that getting children widely able to explain a few key ones, like confirmation bias and agency inference, would make a big difference.
Secondly, it's true that some people are far more ... for lack of a better term, "gullible" ... than others. I'm sure that some children will take to such instruction more readily than others, just as they do in ANY subject.
In my field it's generally accepted that software development is something that some minority of people simply CAN'T be taught, even a little. It is completely beyond them. This doesn't make them stupid, but it makes their brain wired to think about things in ways that aren't optimal for holding the scope of a problem in your head and solving it in a particular systematic way, breaking it down to its atomic aspects. I'm sure critical / objective thinking is like that. Some creative types, for example, just need to FEEL their way through life; it is their intuition that seems self-evidently right to them, and any facts contrary to their intuition seem self-evidently wrong.
But no good can come of what we're teaching now, which is, systematically and officially, nothing. We don't expect every child to have some basic thinking competency, and in fact encourage a dichotomy between the geeks / nerds and everyone else -- the latter gets a free pass, and even intellectually inclined children tend to end up intellectually sloppy. No one has their ridiculous thoughts challenged. It's like everyone is entitled to their own "truth".
Decrying this state of affairs is mostly a waste in the US, though, where parents demand that their children not be subverted in their faith, nor be sent home asking uncomfortable questions, or getting "uppity", etc.