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Critical Thinking
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| Renegade |
Just got done reading this article here on the power of critical thinking and thought it was worth posting. It's a long article, so I won't post the whole thing, but I definitely recommend reading it in its entirity if you get the chance.
Anyway, the part that I specifically wanted to discuss was this one:
| quote: | Consider for a moment how costly uncritical thinking can be. Stephen Jay Gould (1997, x, xii) calls attention to two precious human potentials that together constitute "the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known":
| quote: | | Only two possible escapes can save us from the organized mayhem of our dark potentialities - the side of human nature that has given us crusades, witch hunts, enslavements, and holocausts. Moral decency provides one necessary ingredient, but not nearly enough. The second foundation must come from the rational side of our mentality. For, unless we rigorously use human reason . . . we will lose out to the frightening forces of irrationality, romanticism, uncompromising "true" belief, and the apparent resulting inevitability of mob action . . . Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency. |
According to this striking claim, critical thinking is one of the most important resources a society could develop. This is because bad things do not emanate only from bad people. Bad things can also occur because of the mistaken thinking of decent people. Even when a bad idea originates with a psychopath, the real danger occurs when it is accepted by the gullible and condoned by the sincere who have little more than a child's understanding of what intellectual due process entails. |
A democracy, as this snippet implies, is only as strong as the people who participate in it. A democratic nation full of people unable to critically analyse govermental policy - or the claims of the politicians who oppose it - is democratic in name only. The possibility of ending up with a competent government (or at least a government which represents the needs of the people better than the dichotemic alternative under a two-party system) is - at the very best - a coin-flip under such circumstances. People who vote with their "hearts", on "gut-instinct" or - in the case of those who consider themselves to be more sophisticated than that - on the basis of whatever their own illconsidered "moral shibboleths" may be (discussed later in the article) are ultimately undermining the democratic process rather than contributing to it.
Democracy is only a superior political system to the extent that people can be trusted to vote critically on the basis of their own needs, on the needs of the society in which they live and on the likelihood of the candidate they vote for to deliver on these needs. Those incapable of critical thought will be incapable of adequately determining what those needs may be (or may be convinced otherwise by politicians savvy enough to know how to manipulate public opinion) or will be incapable of discerning just how likely it is that the policies of the candidates available for selection will meet these needs. Under a political system where critical thought is absent, bad ideas will go unchallenged and the government will be held unaccountable. For this reason, the strongest democracy will be the one where the ability of the people to think critically is at its most great.
The only question, then, is how this may be acheived? Education, undoubtedly, is important here, but it needs to be a certain type of education. Science, for instance, requires a certain level of doubt and skepticism amongst those practicing it for it to function as an viable epistemology. As the article says:
| quote: | As many have noted, we teach science as a collection of facts and theories about a certain category of phenomena, rather than as a set of principles for understanding the world.
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By themselves, science classrooms are poor competition for the powerful obstacles to highly developed critical thinking that reside in human social life and in the wiring of the human brain. |
Getting children to rote learn a series of theories is not going to help them to understand the scientific method. To properly understand, say, the theory of evolution, one must first understand the scientific process. If you teach children the theory of evolution as a dogmatic series of assumptions stuck together in the form of a "theory", then you can't expect them to understand why evolution holds more factual credence than the "theory" of creationism. It would be far more valuable and instructive to teach the method behind the theory, in this instance, than to merely present the theory as an unchallenged tennet without making any attempt to justify how such a conclusion was reached in the first place.
The same, then, must go for all other facets of education. Just as science is not a collection of dogmatic "theories" but rather an empirical epistemology, so to religion is not a collection of commandments and parables but rather an metaphysical epistemology. In the same vain, mathematics isn't a collection of equations, it is an abstractly logical epistemology. English Literature isn't a collection of words and stories, it is a trascendently rational epistemology. In each of these cases, the subject matter cannot be properly taught unless the underlying philosophy is properly understood. To properly teach these subjects is not to ensure that the students memorise the key concepts, it is to ensure that the students understand how the key concepts were arrived at in the first place. It is less valuable, in most respects, to know offhand that "2+2=4" than to know how the solution to the equation can be reached. And this brings me to my main point.
Ultimately, teaching people how to think is much more important than teaching them what to think. In a system where people may not understand how to properly discern facts from falsehoods, getting them to memorise all the facts in the world won't do them (or, in a democracy, the society in which they live) much good at all. You're essentially asking them to accept dogmatic statements with undue credulity and this will be the ultimate lesson they take with them from their time in the educational system. If democracy - and therefore democratic society - is to prosper, then we need to teach people how to think critically: anything less and we're putting the future of society in the hands of voters who are quite literally incapable of thinking for themselves.
So, who's with me? |
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| Lira |
Although I do agree with you, being a teacher has taught me the other side of the coin. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to some other parts of the article (rather than write something new), as they portray what I have observed in the classroom:
| quote: | Originally posted in the original article
From this perspective, the world is a deceptive place-not just occasionally but inherently. Such a worldview goes beyond the usual suspects (e.g., deceptive TV ads and phony crop circles) to incorporate a broader recognition of the deceptive nature of the world, including such insights as:
- Like fish who are unconscious of the water that envelops them, we are often unaware of the constraints imposed on our thinking by the taken-for-granted social forces surrounding us-not to mention the gene-based forces within us.
- Some aspects of the social world appear natural, but are actually human contrivances. And vice versa.
- The social roles we play can shape not just our behavior but our identity-often we unwittingly become what we play at.
- We are often ignorant of our ignorance. And the more incompetent we are, the more likely we are to overestimate our competence.
- It is normal for seemingly contradictory things to occur together.
- All good things have costs. Many bad things have benefits.
- Issues frequently appear black-and-white, when in fact they usually consist of grays.
- We typically mistake pieces of the truth for the whole truth.
- Partial truths can be just as misleading as outright lies.
- We are more likely to be misled by people who sincerely believe what they are saying than by liars.
- Self-deception can be an even bigger problem than deception by others.
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| quote: | Idem
As many have noted, we teach science as a collection of facts and theories about a certain category of phenomena, rather than as a set of principles for understanding the world. |
Countless times I've witnessed the whole process of critical thinking being jeopardised by what these excerpts say.
These are some of the difficulties I often see in the educational process nowadays: students can't be taught "how to think" because educators seldom know how to do it themselves - even in university. During all this time, students were being taught facts so they could get a job and fit in the society, and it's hard to break the inertia, specially when social control seems to be against such shift.
You can't strengthen democracy when society itself frowns upon individualism and any sort of different thinking. |
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| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
So, who's with me? |
not the governments of today, and by proxy, nor those of tomorrow.
and unfortunately, convincing people who can't think critically that they are jeopardising the future of their society by inaction so much so as to follow the kind of revolution that would seem to be required for the outlook of things to change seems low on the viability scale.
...or we could use their lack of critical thought against them, but since when do ends justify means? |
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| WM2 |
This is something that has always driven me nuts. The "stupid" vote is huge, but simply trying to educate people to counteract it is nearly impossible. I've never come to one good conclusion on how to eliminate the stupid vote without alientating and ultimately ignoring the wishes of certain people. The electoral college was designed to help comabt this, but unfortunately they're only representing the people in their district much like a Congressman.
I do agree that education system being the way it is has a lot to do with it, but many people just don't have the capacity to do anything more than learn the material required to pass. Thinking beyond that isn't required, so why bother? To us it seems obvious that the persuit of knowledge is very important, but to others it's just a waste of time.
Another good example of this same reasoning is the internet. All the knowledge and information shared is amazing, yet the amount of people actually using it for those purposes are the minority. I can only speculate, but I would put money on Porn, file transferring, and blogs as the three biggest reasons for getting on the internet for most people. The information is right there for everyone to access, but not many people do. Look at me right now. I could be reading up on any number of things, but instead I'm on here shooting the breeze with you guys and trying to throw out my pretty unnecessary in the whole scheme of things .02. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by WM2
blogs |
Hey, some are actually quite interesting ;) |
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| WM2 |
| Some, but quite the majority are rubish. |
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| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by WM2
I do agree that education system being the way it is has a lot to do with it, but many people just don't have the capacity to do anything more than learn the material required to pass. Thinking beyond that isn't required, so why bother? To us it seems obvious that the persuit of knowledge is very important, but to others it's just a waste of time. |
ermm, that's what we're discussing here mate, the hypothetical scenario in which 'thinking beyond that' is required. |
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| WM2 |
| Thank you, Mr.Obvious. |
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| Arbiter |
Changing education to focus on developing reasoning abilities rather than the memorization of facts is a generally good idea, but it would be difficult to secure such a change under our current political systems and even if that were managed there are many other barriers to it's proper implementation (the current crop of teachers is largely inadequate, for example.)
We may have to take one step backward in order to take two steps forward. |
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| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by WM2
Thank you, Mr.Obvious. |
oh, so you do realise you've put those 2 cents in the wrong slot? |
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| WM2 |
Not exactly.
Had you understood, quoted and commented on this instead,"but many people just don't have the capacity to do anything more than learn the material required to pass," you may have realized that speaking of a hypothetical situation in which education was taught in this manner would only be setting up many people for failure.
The real issue is correcting the problem with the capacity people have to learn. Fix that first, and this falls in place. The real unfortunate answer was already stated by Lira. The fact of the matter is how can you require this when only some of the students can perform in this kind of atmosphere of learning, and even some of the teaching staff wouldn't be able to recognize when a student had caught on to the idea of discussion.
The root of this problem isn't the education system. It's the people being educated. As flawed as the current system is, it's about all we can do because unfortunately it's the simplest way possible and doesn't alienate anyone. |
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| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by WM2
Not exactly.
Had you understood, quoted and commented on this instead,"but many people just don't have the capacity to do anything more than learn the material required to pass," you may have realized that speaking of a hypothetical situation in which education was taught in this manner would only be setting up many people for failure.
The real issue is correcting the problem with the capacity people have to learn. Fix that first, and this falls in place. The real unfortunate answer was already stated by Lira. The fact of the matter is how can you require this when only some of the students can perform in this kind of atmosphere of learning, and even some of the teaching staff wouldn't be able to recognize when a student had caught on to the idea of discussion.
The root of this problem isn't the education system. It's the people being educated. As flawed as the current system is, it's about all we can do because unfortunately it's the simplest way possible and doesn't alienate anyone. |
yay, a discussion-worthy post! :)
if your preditctions are right, perheps alienation is the price we have to pay for progress...
i'm not necessarily saying we have to disband the equal opportunities concept though - i'm thinking more in the line of adhering more strictly to the concept;
- everyone, regardless of nature and nurture may (must?) receive education
- divisions in education based on tests that test your thinking patterns rather than their outcomes
- those that pass carry on to the ideal education discussed above
- those that fail proceed under the current paradigm
but perheps that will be too slight of an improvement, in that case, how do you propose to imrpove people's capacity to learn? |
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