No, it isn’t “working very well” for the same reason that the teaching of reading doesn’t seem to be “working very well”, and the reason is that skills have to be used on a consistent basis in order for them to be developed, refined, and improved upon.
To assume the reason is that the teaching is bad is unfair. You could have Frederic Chopin give you piano lessons but, if you never practiced, you wouldn’t be any good.
Seconded. The exercise might be improved if it instead asked:
Because my sense is that “critical thinking” breaks down not in the binary “is this a fact or an opinion,” but rather in the “are you justified in coming to a conclusion as to the truth of this claim yet?” And of course the answer to the latter question may at times depend on the nature of the claim, with a recognition that all conclusions are (or at least should be) tentative.
Duly noted that you had no answer to the reply made to your point about the “misuse of statistics in discussions of gun regulation”.
I’m already on the record reporting that there are statistics that both the left and the right misuse regarding gun control, but for the mentioned point about what the right did with lead in bullets use in hunting was that the left did not misuse statistics, serious researchers showed who was wrong there; of course, as Trump’s henchmen showed, science continues to be ignored by the right on that item and many others.
I think that’s a good description of some of the skills needed, and how they might be taught. Of course, for my two second-graders, it would be a bit advanced, so the exercise they did is a building block.
I’ll say that I hope their schools will help them to learn critical thinking, but regardless, I consider it one of my most important duties as a parent. I model it, and I try to explain when it comes up organically why I am questioning, what hypothesis I might have, what research I am doing to find out the truth, etc.
I also think that it is perhaps a necessary foundation but I’m not even sure about that. It might even reinforce the idea that unless a sentence outright labels a statement as a belief, or it is a statement about obviously subjective things, then the statement is not an opinion. When I took the quiz in elementary school, the only one I got wrong was the statement “In 19[xx], moviemaking moved to Hollywood.” I marked it as an opinion because I wasn’t sure that moviemaking did indeed move to Hollywood in that year. My reasoning back then was too simplistic, but I still think that that statement is an opinion, because there are still movies made completely outside Hollywood, and the threshold of how many movies need to be made involving Hollywood to make it the “home of the movies” is not set in stone and so is subjective.
Since I began my post, before even addressing the left, by listing fully ten separate ideas that I believe are commonly held by the American right and cannot stand up to evidence-based critical thinking, would you be willing to list 1 thing that you acknowledge is both a genuine leftist belief and, if not outright unsustainable in the face of reason, at least subject to debate?
I’ve never personally heard of this debate about lead pollution from bullets. That doesn’t mean it didn’t go on, but my reference is to things like “the UK banned most guns and has less murders” that doesn’t address the fact that the UK’s murder rate was just as low before they banned guns, that the US murder rate has been on a long-term decline since the 1960s despite gun regulations becoming on the net less restrictive, etc. These specific points of argument are statistical fallacies irrespective of how one interprets the Second Amendment or what your overall conclusion is about what the state of gun laws should be. Do we really think that the average Democrat is going to acknowledge that and even teach it in a classroom?
Funny thing, I do think that that was one item I acknowledged a long time ago, so speaking of learning about what is going on, your ignorance of the lead item shows how you are reaching for arguments from ignorance or incomplete ones.
Sure. For me personally, I’m not fully on board with the belief that trans women are women and that it’s a conversation worth having. My position is nuanced and should not be interpreted as being transphobic, however this is not the thread in which I’m willing to get drawn into detailed conversation about it.
Now that I’ve provided you with an example of a left idea with which I am not ideologically aligned, does it have any impact on your strawman hypothesis which I took the liberty to satirize?
Okay, that was poorly worded. What I meant to say was that it is a conversation/debate worth having.
A good example is how having that “Dr.” before or “MD” after someone’s name instantly makes them an authority on anything health-related, whether or not they’re a total quack or kook. I mean, any woo diet or alternative health plan ALWAYS has a pet doctor involved to lend it the air of legitimacy. And plenty of people believe it.
I’ve personally always applied a sort of ‘crowdsourcing’ process to stuff like that, in that if there’s only ONE doctor touting the benefits of colloidal-something, then they’re probably a kook. Or if one doctor is touting taking frog fruit supplements for athlete’s foot, while every website and other product at the store has clotrimazole as the active ingredient, I’m going to go with the clotrimazole.
Or in a broader sense, if five out of six news outlets report one thing, and the sixth reports something different, I’m more likely to believe the five outlets.
Of course, the trick here is to cast your net wide enough- you don’t want your six sources to be Breitbart, OAN, Fox News, National Review, some nincompoop on Parler, and CNN.
But knowing that takes some kind of thinking skill- sort of meta-critical thinking, for lack of a better term. And it takes effort- sometimes you may end up with your sources not agreeing, and then you have to dig in and do more research.
I think that’s probably the biggest stumbling block here; few people are willing to put in the effort, and would rather find sources that confirm what they already feel, rather than dig in and see what’s actually going on, at risk of having those preconceived notions challenged.
Teaching critical thinking is basically impossible.Those activities are either simple/contrived “THis is a car ----Fact or Opinion?” or becomes an ideological fight. It’s not like learning the chemical symbols or the prepositions.
What you do as a teacher is provide chances, devoid as much as possible from (current) political topics, to express what they think or what the source was saying/implying/biasing. Critical thinking is a process from the very first day. If your students know they can ask questions and come up with crazy ideas, then you get critical thinking.
Seek out the consensus of the professional community in question (is how I would summarize). I think what a lot of people get hung up on is that “appeal to authority” is supposed to be a logical fallacy, and yet that’s basically what we urge students to do: rely on the position of authorities in a field. I think an important distinction is to separate out concepts of metaphysical certainty and proof from day to day questions of knowledge. Students would need to be taught, then, that not all things we would tend to refer to as “known” are in fact known with 100% metaphysical certainty. That there is a difference between the claim “A is true because Authority B says so” and “I am justified in believing A given the consensus among the collection of authorities that include and share Authority B’s position.”
I think some people get uneasy at the notion that, no, actually, you can’t just come to your own conclusions about nature based on what you see. At some point, to reach higher levels of practical functioning in the world, you will need to can rely, at least tentatively, on certain authorities. Which, again, is distinct from the absolute/metaphysical “A is true because B says so.”
ISTR that somewhere along the line in my educational process, right about the time that we started to have to actually cite things in assignments, or at least list where we got our information from, teachers were pretty relentless about what was and wasn’t an acceptable source- you’d get points counted off if you cited your Uncle Bob’s weirdo astrology newsletter printed with a ditto machine, but stuff like “Science” magazine was ok. Same with things like current events- our sources generally had to be reputable news sources like a real newspaper or magazine. Or if we were diligent enough, some kind of broadcast TV news program (ISTR also that there were unusual citation requirements- like the date, the program and the speaker). We’d also get dinged if we didn’t balance out any biased sources- I don’t recall our teachers being very tolerant of cherry-picking source viewpoints for the sake of making a point.
Anyway, this was all pre-Web, and either just before, or immediately after the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, so there wasn’t any real contention about what was and wasn’t a reputable source.
Maybe we need something like this today; some sort of independent source that vets websites, news outlets and publications, and assigns them some sort of score as to bias and truthfulness. And teach kids in school how to identify BS when they see it. I mean, it was rather impartial back in the day- you had to use mainstream sources, or your grade got dinged. Nobody cared what side of the spectrum your sources were from, so long as they were mainstream.
(that’s part of the problem- the right-wing media have basically declared the mainstream to be the enemy).
(Can we minimise the topical politicla comment?)
Good sources and the process by which you decide they are good help a lot in developing Critical Thinking. The good thing is that here we are not as politicized in education as in the US. Asking for sources whioch have opposing views is also good. Basing your opinions on good data and analysis thereof is also great.
Really strong point.
In a mission akin to tightening the cilice, I have – for years – consumed news from as many parts of the political spectrum as I can.
My wife would loudly proclaim that it’s become a bit of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 show around the house because I tend to critically evaluate the stories we’re told, without regard to the source.
In high school, I studied Logic, Statistics, and took Debate. I could not be more glad for having taken these courses or for the excellence of the teachers who taught them.
But having those skills doesn’t prevent intellectual laziness or the human tendencies that can stifle and derail them.
One thing I’ve come to say that puts most of this into a pretty pithy little package is:
Just because you like it doesn’t mean it’s true.
Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not true.
That’s almost a foundational starting point for what we’re talking about. Pithy though it is, it has a story behind it – one that’s painful and difficult to come to terms with.
Also a good point, but … IMHO … even if an educator thought that one side had provided 100 excellent examples of bullshit while the other side had provided only three … you cover as many as you possibly can without favor or prejudice.
Taking propagandistic pieces out of context and evaluating them in isolation is probably most useful anyway.
Also teaching about economics … in the very narrow sense of ‘pressure’ (eg, pricing pressure) is probably useful.
In other words, understanding the motivation of a statement or the funding behind an outlet, an organization, or the source of a statement doesn’t ensure it’s corrupt or false, but it gives one reason for cynicism.
The aphorism that comes to mind on this piece is:
The race isn’t always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but it’s a pretty good place to put your money.
Which speaks to tendencies. I think it’s important to teach the difference between tendencies and certainties.
To many Republicans, if George Soros can be connected with something in any possible way, it’s bullshit. Similarly, if a scientist was ever wrong, then science is quackery. Or, the SCOTUS decision in Dred Scott means that they’re just a bunch of idiots whose opinions should never be trusted.
I love to cite my mother:
The older I get, the more I realize how much we’re all being manipulated.
Raising children who have great critical thinking skills – just the right amount of cynicism – has very little downside … aside from subtly threatening the status quo 
ADD: I’ve often said that one should get one’s information in the same way that one should get one’s nutrition:
One thing this implies is that – IMHO – if you actually want to know anything rather than just quadruple down on a diet of what you already believe – you may want to eschew any of the opinion/entertainment stuff … from either side.
Nobody really learns anything useful from Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh or any of the evening shows on Fox, CNN, or MSNBC. It’s just church, preaching among the converted.
Challenge your own assumptions. Dare to find out how the other side is telling the same story.
Eat some broccoli fer chrissakes 
I’ve included critical thinking elements in science teaching for about a decade. The elements have varied based on what the (Norwegian) government approved syllabus required and where it just fit along with other syllabus items. And what I can say is that it is hard to teach.
Students need to learn things step by step, so you can of course not treat them like you’re peer reviewing for NEJM, but that means that when you’re first teaching them about citing sources, you can’t ding them for using the Daily Mail, and when you’re first teaching them about the different ranks of sources and our preference for peer-reviewed papers you can’t expect them to not cite controversial papers that underwent that process, and you’re not an expert either, so from time to time you might not be qualified to judge if a paper is innovative or just crap.
Mix that in with that most of high school is about teaching well established knowledge, and that only the most contrarian or curious students continue questioning the book’s answer after their, almost always wrong, intuition cause them to doubt it and …
It’s somewhat related to how hard it is to teach kids about scientific inquiry, when most questions they can investigate already have well established answers. Yes, you can judge them on their scientific rigor, but unless you want some of them to be left with the impression their improbable conclusion actually represent reality, you have to also tell them they probably got the “wrong” result.
I think that’s a fair point. I certainly experienced cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias prior to graduation but I don’t think I understood those concepts until college. And even though I understand them now, I sometimes fall prey to both. I admit it. Not only can I be fooled but sometimes I even fool myself. It might have been grade school where I was taught to evaluate the pros and cons of an argument in order to come to my own conclusion and I still use this basic method today though finding my sources is a lot more complicated.
And kids do engage in critical thinking. From what I recall about those mandatory DARE assemblies, most of us knew it was all a load of bullshit. As a kid who went through high school without ever taking a drink or a drug, even I knew it was bullshit.
Teaching children to think critically requires subjects that are within their experience. The most common being the deluge of advertising claims that flow from the TV. Approaching advertising critically is not so much a matter of disproving the information as understanding what it means rather than what it implies. Phrases like: Lifetime guarantee, up to 1000 hours, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, manufacturers warranty; are terms of art that children should be prepared to examine. The pharma ads that show pretty girls doing delightful things while the voice over describes vomiting , diarrhea and death as possible side effects are worthy of discussion.
I was part of the Apollo program and I have seen space videos of components I worked on, but I could not prove that they are real. That effort is beyond just critical thinking. Critical examination requires subjects that are closer to home.