May we discuss the lack of critical thinking skills in our High Schoolers??

Great Debates
1

Trying to decide if it is the lack of maturity that all high school students deal with, or a true deficit on the part of our school district. It’s a fine district, best in the county, yaddah yaddah.

My daughter came to me last night with a copy of the poem, " Death, Be Not Proud" , by John Donne. ( He died in 1631 so I’m feeling pretty safe copying the text in it’s entirety here)

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

She needed to do some analysis. I was irked that she was largely clueless but then I stepped back and read the poem twice. These are complex themes here. How do we define death?

Donne is seeming to define death as an entity who wants to have control over humans and thinks it owns the moment of death. Donne ( to me ) feels that Death has some real balls in thinking this, as it is existing as a moment in time at the whim of Fate and Chance, etc.

She and I talked about this and I admit I told her what I thought. I felt as though I was doing her homework for her. ( This was prep for a written English Final she took today.) So, on the one hand, did I screw up and not allow her to work through it? She was utterly lost and frustrated. I kept trying to solicit responses from her, trying to get her to articulate where she thought Donne was going with all of it.

How should your average high schooler relate to a discussion about the nature of death, or Death?? How could I expect her to be able to articulate thoughts on a concept that most kids do not spend much time considering in any great depth. Despite popular culture, I do not find that the teenagers who float through my home are obsessed with death, Goth, suicidal, hating life, etc. They’re as angry and screwed up as any OTHER kids, which makes them average- but hardly makes them experts on a critical discussion of death.

Are my kids being failed by their teachers? Do I like to look back and think I was a highly intellectual analytical kid at 17, far superior to my kids and their contemporaries because it makes me feel good, or was I prepared in a different way with better critical thinking skills?

My H.S. valued writing skills above almost all else and we wrote in every class you can imagine. With those skills came at least an attempt to teach us to dissect and analyze what we read and wrote.

Is this a lost art? Did I go to an unusually forward-thinking HS 27 years ago? Or is it just seasoning that comes with being 44 and not 17 that lets me read the most lovely work by Donne and see things she cannot see?

And- what is the big difference between 15 and 18? She’s in 10th grade. She’ll be in college in a few years, and likely asked to do more critical thinking then she is asked to do now. Is it a learned skill or one that comes more easily as we mature?

Would I look back at my H.S. papers with complete embarassment now as an adult? Would you? How frustrated should I be with our local district, with the “teach to test” mentality nationwide that seems to produce a serious lack of chops when it comes to abstract thinking?

I’m not suggesting that I want my kid to be Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who at 20/21 wrote Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. I am suggesting that perhaps there is room for more critical thinking in the lives of our teenagers and there has always been room for this.

This isn’t a harsh indictment of teachers or teaching, just so we are clear. I’m married to a teacher ( though I indict her plenty on other accounts :smiley: ) and I am familar with the process.

I bemoan how upset and clueless she was, and I want to undersand why the conversation last night unfolded as it did.

Cartooniverse

2

Critical thinking seems to come naturally to some people, while others have to work harder at it. Even for those who seem to have a knack, though, it needs constant exercise in order to not allow it to atrophy.

A teacher’s job is hard (as I’m sure you know), and getting harder by the year, because the government keeps thinking of more stuff we have to cram into the curriculum, and at the same time, refusing to give failing grades to kids who really deserve failing grades. So, it falls to the parents to help teach critical thinking (Note: I’m not saying you’ve fallen short on this). One thing that I do with 16-year-old EtherealFreakOfPinkness (who is homeschooled, btw), is pose questions culled from Great Debates. I’ll ask her how she feels about something, then ask why she feels that way, then try to provide her with another point of view, etc. These are conversations she looks forward to. I like to believe it helps her to develop those critical thinking skills.

OTOH, it’s pretty standard, I’d say, for a kid your daughter’s age to find this assignment overwhelming. First, she has to deal with the language of the poem, which is somewhat alien to her, and then she has to deal with the subject matter of the poem. Most teenagers simply have not come to grips with the idea of death. They feel immortal (hence, the dangerous behaviors that are typical of kids that age). So, yeah, it’s a tough assignment.

I’d be very surprised if anyone in your daughter’s class does very well on this assignment.

3

So would I. She shared the fact that the written Final also made use of a short story about a man who was approaching the age of 90, how he felt about impending death, etc.

Maybe I’m being too quick to cut myself some slack here but I am glad I took her down the path with the poem and didn’t have the short story in front of me. Perhaps she was able to apply the process to the short story, having done it with me with the poem last night.

We’ll find out soon enough. The idea of using G.D. for this is brilliant.

4

I think there are a number of factors which could be at play here, and only some of them relate specifically to your daughter’s critical-thinking skills. Here are some possibilities:

  1. You’re daughter just isn’t into this kind of thing. Does she prefer math, science, social studies, or some other topics? For some, reading is a bit of a chore. To them, it should relate the facts of any given topic and relate them as clearly and directly as possible. Everything else is needlessly complex and a waste of time. Heck, The olden-times spelling may have been enough to throw her off.

  2. She’s into this kind of thing, but not in this instance. Does she enjoy reading as a pastime? If so, what does she like to read? Maybe this piece just didn’t resonate with her. She’s at an age at which, when something doesn’t resonate, it’s difficult-to-impossible to scrape up the interest and time needed to meet the requirements of the assignment. For example, when I was in high school, my freshman English teacher did a unit on the Bible as literature (or more as a foundation for other literature). We’d read non-Biblical works that had their roots in the Old Testament. One of those works was A Separate Peace. I was an avid reader but I HATED that book! Hated! It was torture to slog through it and I didn’t give two shits about its parallels to Genesis. My work for that unit was pretty bad and I didn’t participate in class. My teacher and I had some conversations that were a lot like the one you had with your daughter, because I simply did not care.

  3. Critical analysis of literature may start later nowadays (or at her school) as you’ve suggested. Part of that may be that they’re focusing more on the basics and I get the sense that now, more than ever, the lowest common denominator is what gets focused on in any given class. The kid who is slowest determines the pace, not the fastest. So if lots of class time is spent on things like sentence structure, grammar and verb conjugation than on literary devices and themes, who can blame your daughter for feeling over her head on this meaty poem?

Finally, I do think there is a great deal of maturity gained between 15 and 18. Scads of it. Followed by lots more in your 20s. She’ll gain some critical thinking skills just through life experience. Maybe she’ll wind up at the funeral of a friend and suddenly realize that Donne wasn’t just some guy who wrote stuff 400 years ago, but someone reflecting on the same sense of loss and defiance that she’s then experiencing. She’ll read a lot more books and begin to see how some stories are told over and over, with new costumes each time. She’ll encounter a character that is JUST LIKE that guy on the basketball team. Accumulated experience makes for better analysis of foreign stuff.

Hang in there. Help her step back to see larger things at work, but don’t by any means assume she won’t be able to do it soon enough on her own.

5

It seems to me that you’re surprised your daughter hasn’t learned something that she’s currently learning how to do. Critical thinking doesn’t just magically appear once a kid starts high school. It takes time, exposure to different subject matter, and plain ole maturity to get those skills.

From what you’ve posted, your daughter seems fairly normal to me. It may be that poetry goes over her head, as it did mine at that age, but that she can be quite “critical” when it comes to less subjective areas like history or philosophy. I was a great English student in high school, but I often had to bullshit through analytical essays because I didn’t care enough about relating the diction to the imagery and symbolism blah blah blah. It all seemed “woo woo” to me, and I’m a meat-and-potatoes kind of girl. Give me a topic like history or political science and I could pick the shit apart. It may be that English–or more particularly, poetry–just isn’t her best subject.

I say give her time. If she were in the 12th grade, about to start college, I’d be worried. But she’s got a couple of years of intellectual growth ahead of her.

6

I’ve had similar experiences and the same frustration with my daughters when they got to high school. I wouldn’t blame the teachers, but the cultural and social environment surrounding todays students. Everything is fast, fast, fast and attention spans are getting shorter. Critical thinking requires an attention to detail that must be nurtured within the children. I had to reread many books in the past years so that I could combat the standard complaint from my kids, “I don’t understand what this stupid author is saying!” I proceeded as you have, talking the child through the passages without giving the answers straightout. I refuse to spoon-feed information to them but try to stimulate the brain through discussion, much like you and norinew. It is frustrating at first, but has paid off with each of my daughters! The youngest just tore into “The Lord of the Flies” and produced some excellent critical essays all on her own. As she told me, “Gosh, reading is fun!” Ha! Gotcha!

Keep up the good work, so many parents don’t bother!

7

That was (and is) me, too.

Some people like to read, but aren’t into poetry. I have an apartment full of books and it’s a rare week when I’m not reading some book sometime in the week, but I don’t do poetry (except for short, funny poems). Even in prose, my preference is for straightforward, clear, and direct writing.

8

All good comments. Gee, if I sounded that down on her I didn’t mean to ! She’s the apple of my eye and I manage to operate a motor vehicle and work daily despite the fact that I exist wrapped firmly around her left pinkie. :smiley:

monstro, it seems you’re really on it here. Yanno what? If English, or poetry, isn’t her bag that is just fine. Perhaps it was the feeling that the basic skills weren’t being developed but as you astutely pointed out, she isn’t 18. She’s 15.

As for death, well. Everyone is exposed to things differently. Between July after HS graduation and 4 months later in November I buried two good friends my age. So, at 18 I can say I thought about death quite a bit. Most kids do not, at least in the United States.

I did mention this to her last night, to assuage her frustration. " Look honey, you exist in America and are not living a life in constant danger. If you lived in Lebanon or Iraq or Israel or for that matter, some states in Mexico or elsewhere, you would understand death very differently." She grokked that just fine.

9

One of my university profs had to devote one entire class trying to teach the freshman students how to think for themselves. He called in the “Highschool Antidote”. In the decades he ws teaching he found that more and more students are trained to regurgitate information rather than actually think about it.

On his weekly tests students did abysmally. It was as if we were all expecting questions for which the answeres would simply proved that we read the chapter. So when we were asked questions like “Why did Kensey make Chief Bromden the narrator of Cuckoo’s nest?” our heads would explode.

So he devoted one full class every term on learning to think critically about what we were reading as we were reading it.

10

I think I would have had a pretty hard time with that poem at 15, too. Granted, I got a rotten education! But I would be surprised to see any 15-yo take that poem apart competently with no help.

I won’t repeat what everyone has said here, but it will take time to develop those analytical skills. One thing that might be good to try with a piece written in difficult language is to have her re-write it in plain English–she’ll have to figure out what each line means and set it down in her own words, and then she’ll be able to look at the whole thing. (This is a good exercise with the Consititution, too!)

If you’re interested in working on her analytical skills at home, you might like to try (along with those GD conversations) logic exercises, an easy course on poetry analysis, or something like How to read literature like a professor. There are tons of things out there.

I know I would be hideously embarrassed by my high-school papers. I still have some college papers, and I’m embarrassed by them! To be fair, I had to learn nearly all my paper-writing skills in college by myself, but still, they’re mostly really cringe-inducing.

11

I will print this out, frame it, and put it on my wall. I’m brilliant so seldom, I need to treasure it when it happens! :cool:

12

True. There is a big problem with lack of critical thinking amongst teenangers in America. Of course, I am not excluding the rest of the world, I’m certain that general (“good”) education and lack of critical thinking is a problem almost everywhere, but I’ve lived in the states’ for a year, and many students behavior and lack of interest closley mirror the attitudes of teenagers in “Old School” or “American Pie”.

I can’t put my finger on exactly why this happens, but I do have a few ideas:

  1. There is too much comodoties in the U.S. When things come too easy, thinking is not necesary.

  2. I find school in general to be boring. Believe me, I’ve had many “qualified”, “amazing resume” teachers, and simply, they fail to transmit information in a way that is Intersting for the student to learn/ know. I also think that if a subject is life relevant, people will pay more attention to it. Too many of the subjects given in school aren’t worth crap in “real” life.

  3. I belive that teens tend to be laid back on intellectual issues becuase America is *the * world super-power. Perhaps they lean back on this fact and think that other people will do the thinking for them.

Still it is dissapointing to see so many teens only care about getting “f***ed up” or talking about chicks all the time.

But hey, as many posters here have previosly stated, critical thining comes with time. Also, certain powerful expiriences may change peoples minds and turn them into critical thinkers.

13

Oh man. I have files. I know I have papers from college, I don’t think I have papers from H.S. I might. -winces-

I DO have a book I wrote when I was in, say, the 3rd grade. It is called " A Trip To Mars" and it is faaaaaaaaaabulous. :slight_smile: ( First edition, with Illumination, sold at Christie’s for $ 210,000 a while back. )

14

Sorry, TheFury, I missed your post on Preview.

I went to extremes with my examples of American teens v.s. teens living in situations of profound danger and emotional trauma. I should have not been so Ameri-centric in my post, so lemme ask this- if you grew up and went to school outside of the United States, what was your experience in this area?

Were the processes developed less superficial in other countries? I wonder how much of the problem is cultural opposed to simple age? Reading “Flatland” in H.S. was spectacular. This is coming from a student who failed Algebra I twice and passed the third time out with a sympathy D. It wasn’t the math, it was the brilliance and allegory. THAT book, I coulda written a hell of a paper on. Wonder if I still own it.

As far as what teenagers talk about the most, that’s fine with me. I don’t expect my kids to sit around screaming about Mein Kamf with their buddies in I.M. I do expect them to slowly develop a world view and some intellectual chops. Perhaps I should be grateful that at 15 she understood as much as she seemed to about the poem and short story.

15

Well, let me say quickly, becuase I have a gym apointment:

I grew up in the Dominican Republic, though I went to the best American School there.

I would say that starting in 10th grade, I noticed far more intellectual conversation then, than I do in college in Boca Raton.

Mind you, it wasn’t everyday that we sat at a table and talked about “cosmic” topics, but it was quite a bit more often than it happened in the states.

However, this has nothing to do with the quality of the people in college. I have met many, many nice people of whom I’ve become good friends with.

16

You know, I had the exact opposite situation my senior year at college. There was a low-level Lit class that was required for my major, and they didn’t offer it until my senior year. So the class was mostly made up of seniors, with a few freshman thrown in. Final exam time came. We were all used to essay finals, where the teacher asks maybe two questions and you have two hours to fill a bluebook with your responses. We’d been doing it that way for four years, and we were damn good at it, because no one can sling the B.S. for hours at a time like an English major.

This teacher gave us a true/false/multiple choice/short answer exam.

Blew. Our. Freaking. Minds. Seriously, we gathered outside after it was over looking shell-shocked and saying, “What the hell was that? I couldn’t get number 15…She didn’t give us enough space to write on the short answer part…”

I guess the moral of the story is that critical thinking is vital, but don’t let your memorize-and-regurgitate skills atrophy, either. Or something.

17

Jesus, that’s a reasonably tough poem to lay on 15-year-olds. Maybe if you pulled it apart with the class, but handing it to them to take home? Most will struggle with it.

And I don’t for one instant believe high school students 27 years ago would have done any better with this than the ones today.

18

Without knowing your daughter or seeing her classroom situation, I’d be hard pressed to say what’s going on.

It could be that the teacher handed this assignment out without adequately preparing them for the task at hand.

It also could be that your daughter is hoping that if she plays dumb enough for long enough, it will magically become someone else’s job to think about it. At least 2/3 of the HS students I teach engage in this behavior daily.

19

No.
As far as the poem in the OP goes, I would find it difficult too. A large part of it, as mentioned before, would be the language–it is written very differently from what most people nowadays are used to, and it makes it hard to figure out what is being said, let alone think about it. I have found though that in high school, as oppossed to university, very little thinking is required. Mostly it was regurgitating information when it came to classes like English. Which I really think is a disservice to students, because it doesn’t prepare them for university at all.

And for the person who pointed out that few high school classes have any relation to real life, there is exactly one class from high school that is still relevant for me today–Keyboarding (typing, not music). It was actually kind of interesting, we had to type up stuff on the Prime Ministers of Canada among other things.

20

I well remember doing “Death Be Not Proud” in high school. I was 17, in Grade 12, and our English teacher loved poets of the metaphysical school. John Donne was one of her special favourites, and we did a number of his poems, “Death Be Not Proud” among them. I can still rattle off both it and “The Sunne Rising” from memory.

If I recall my experience correctly, our teacher made sure that we understood beforehand what the metaphysical poets were trying to say, and how they were saying it. Thus, by the time we actually studied the poems, we were ready to at least try our hands at critical analysis. Although a few students did shine individually, I recall that collectively, we weren’t very good at it. Some students just didn’t care, others couldn’t grasp the finality of death, still others (mostly math and science types) didn’t find that the “squishiness” of the exercise met their desire for right and wrong answers.

In my case, I understood what we were to do with the poems we studied, and did very well in high school English. But as I said, most of my peers at age 17 were able to at least make a try at it, some just plain didn’t understand the exercise, and a few had no interest at all. I’d say age 15 is too young to expect a thorough critical analysis of such a poem, though perhaps expecting some form of critical analysis of it would be reasonable for an 18-year-old.