Also, it’s not live. They just keep asking people questions until they get a stupid answer.
That’s silly. Most of the new textbooks (at least my science and history ones in high school in the mid 90s) had critical thinking sections. But we never went over them. Why? Well, because they wouldn’t be on the statewide assessment exam at the end of the year. They had barely enough time to get us through the facts we had to know, much less to teach us how to actually think on our own.
Plus, teaching critical thinking skills is hard. Especially when dealing with a bunch of passive, lazy kids who don’t want to be there, much less learn how to actually think.
I don’t think it’s an openly discussed practice-- no Keep the Masses Ignorant meetings, nor do I necessarily think that it’s any particular group which advocates it-- it’s a lot of people and factors. In my little conspiracy world “The Government” would ignore the problem because they have no interest in a nation of well-educated, skeptical and debate-prone citizens.
It’s accomplished through, several means, one of which is what WhyNot said: requiring large chunks of the year to be devoted to rote memorization to pass state-required tests.
It’s also accomplished with the teachers themselves. Are they over-worked, underappreciated, or worse, a PE teacher who finds they have to suddenly teach history or civics due to budget cuts? Do they try to instill interest in the kids, or are they just trying to cram the information into a bunch of sullen heads? Do they encourage class discussion, or are questions met with a roll of the eyes?
It’s also because of the textbooks. History text books are as boring as hell, and too many people have a say in what the kids are allowed to see–special interest groups like the PC groups, religious groups, etc. Historical figures are generally presented as bland and blameless. Efforts are made to instill patriotism rather than curiosity, and that agenda does not encourage questions and debate.
Look, I don’t really believe there’s a giant conspiracy out there. It’s just a situation which does exist, and no one seems to be in a hurry to correct it.
The use of critical thinking skills would comport just find with our “current political system.” It wouldn’t set to well with the current political leaders, but then that could be said of most members of either of the major parties; not that we wish to exclude Lyndon Larouche :rolleyes: from the discussion. Wasn’t it one of Carter’s advisors that advocated pressing forward with poverty initatives until everyone had an above-average income? 
The reason schools (largely) don’t teach critical thinking skills is because those are hard skills to teach. They require not only time and a dialog between instructor and student, but they must be taught by an instructor who has those skills as well. And in my experience, very few teachers–especially but not exclusively on the secondary level–are great critical thinkers.
There’s also the “live grenade problem”[sup]1[/sup] in that once you teach a student to think critically, they will think just as critically about what you teach them as they will about other topics. This means you have to defend and justify–and possibly, reconsider–your position constantly. Again, this requires someone who has mastered both applied logic and their field of study; I’d be hard pressed to come up with one high school teacher in my experience who could claim any sort of mastery of their material, and few who could accept challenge gracefully.
And let’s face it; most people do not want to think critically; it requires not only intellectual effort and semantic rigor, but it also demands that you face up to your own strongly inculcated but possibly illogical assumptions about the world. It is a tribute to the cleverness, if not the integrity, of religious training which emphasizes logic that it is able to enact such a cognitive dissonance between ideology and dialecticism.
On top of all of that, you have to take into account the current passion for state- and national-level assessment in the form of standardized exams. These exams are find for determining how much information–or more properly, trivia–which students have absorb, and to a limited extent, they can test cognitive abilities; they cannot, however, offer any estimation of the ability of a student to encounter a novel thesis, deconstruct it to first principles or root causes, use logical reasoning and previously integrated general information to assess the plausibility of those bases, and make a rational deduction or extrapolation regarding the quality of the claim. Any college-level class that requires applied critical thinking (beyond basic symbolic logic or a mathematics-based discipline) is going to evaluate based upon essay responses, not multiple guess or fill-in-the-blank answers, and those who have graded such tests are aware of the time and effort that takes.
No conspiracy needed; as with most abeyancies, only lazyness is required to explicate.
Stranger
[sup]1[/sup]A live grenade is a threat to anyone in range, friend or foe.
(bolding mine)
This sounds about right in my expierience. Of all my high school teachers only three would be considered masters of the material, and only two would have accepted challenges well. Of the two, one had been teaching for about forty years, and the other had a PhD and was teaching because he wanted to (I think most of the reason that he wanted to teach high school was so he could do the whole critical thinking thing). Both taught classes for Juniors and Seniors only.
I’m still convinced that one of my high school English teachers actually hurt my abillity to think critically by her presence alone.
Hmm, if you are going to try to be technical, you’d best be quite correct. Which, in this case, you aren’t.
There is nothing inherently inconsistent with my statement “can’t be bothered to learn” and my statement “I didn’t say the cartoonist didn’t think there was an intentional lack of emphasis.” “Can’t be bothered” results in the Cartoonist’s opinion in an intentional de-emphasis of extra-American geography and sociology learning. “Can’t be bothered” is not inherently unintentional. Further, by “our,” I mean the people who run education, not just the people being educated.
So, a correct reading of what I said, by someone not trying to find fault, would be that the Education Establishment intentionally doesn’t teach about world cultures because they don’t think it important enough to bother with. :wally
I teach. I teach in high school. I dispute the entire notion that the mass of educators in the United States are incompetent boobs who don’t know what the fuck their doing. I am privileged to work with people who are quite cognizant of the extent of world cultures, in a state that tests about such cultures in the 10th Grade (pass or you don’t graduate!). The public perception that our education system is bogged down by idiots who can’t think critically and don’t want our children to think critically is wrong, and continuing to flog that horse is irresponsible, as irresponsible as representing lawyers as lying, cheating scoundrels who are only concerned about money, or doctors as aloof, elitist snobs who don’t really care about patients, only the money that caring for them brings in. It sounds sexy to say, but it does a tremendous disservice to the actual education establishment.
Are there bad teachers? Yes, but there are also bad garbage collectors, bad accountants, and bad McDonald’s counter persons. I don’t hear anyone getting all worrified that their Big Mac Meal is going to be substandard because of it. :rolleyes:
Hmm, if you are going to try to be technical, you’d best be quite correct. Which, in this case, you aren’t.
You’re a nut. And you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Neither of your statements, while consistent with each other, addresses your ignoring Keith’s point that the ignorance is dliberately fostered, not the result of intellectual laziness.
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I am not a “nut.”
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You have no evidence that you are more correct about the meaning of the cartoon.
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Intentional = deliberate; you appear to fail to understand what I mean, which should be a sign to shut up until you do, I’d think.
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I may not report your post. Then again, I may. Have a nice day.
TWEEEEEEEET!
OK, you two. Knock it off.
The question on the floor, as posed in the OP, is
Do a substantial number of people beileve that the educational systemn in the U.S. is deliberately dumbed down?
While this thread will (inevitably) wander off into dozens of tangents, Cal is correct that it would be nice if someone addressed the question posed rather than various questions that look like (but are not the same as) the question posed.
Having said that, I will note, Cal that your post #28 could have been much better presented to ensure that no one mistook it for a deliberate insult. (You might want to work on your presentation, generally: this post along with the double negative in the second (not first) sentence of your OP were both misleading.)
[ Moderator Mode ]