Texas GOP Educational Platform Opposes Teaching Critical Thinking Skills

An anonymous reader writes "Texas Republican delegates met earlier this month to put together their 2012 platform. Much of this focused on the educational system. Alarmingly, they openly state that they oppose schools teaching critical thinking, on the grounds that it may challenge 'student's fixed beliefs' and undermine 'parental authority.' Page 12 of their official platform (PDF) discusses their thinking on teaching thinking."

Comments

Breathless summary by the clueless

[jmorris42]

This is a very old argument. The /. summary links to but doesn't actually quote the platform. Allow me:

"Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

Now go hit the 'ol Wikipedia on "Outcome Based Education".... I'll wait. For the impatient I'll summarize: This is just a re-run of the long running battles in the late '80s and early '90s over new age teaching methods/using our teachers and kids as lab animals to try radical 'progressive' new ideas in teaching how to be a good progressive doubleplus good thinker that knows everything about stopping mom from putting the trash in the wrong recycling bin but can't locate the US on a map or tell you who George Washington was.

Having read all that, if you still can't figure out why Republicans would be against it you are simply too closed minded since you shouldn't be ignorant anymore. You don't have to agree with their opposition but you should be able to understand they aren't totally off the rails either.

We have a crisis in K-12 education where most kids are graduating barely able to send a mangled SMS; 'progressive' experiments that require huge infusions of new money in a recession should be at the bottom of anyone's list in the current environment. We know how to teach Reading, Writing and Math. We have successfully done that in classroom environments most readers here would consider primitive. Get the basics right, then come talk to me about experimenting.

We KNOW what is going to happen if you let a bunch of lefty trolls loose indoctrinating K-12 kids on 'critical thinking' because we have seen it already in the colleges. Nowhere else do you find such an intolerant monoculture as the tenured elite in their ivory towers.

Re:Breathless summary by the clueless

[Galaga88]

Propaganda? The summary comes straight from the policy guideline document.

Knowledge-Based Education - We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Re:Breathless summary by the clueless

[cpu6502]

Good question.
"In Judeo/Christian tradition, the term Ivory Tower is a symbol for noble purity. It originates with the Song of Solomon (7,4) ("Your neck is like an ivory tower") ....... From the 19th century it has been used to designate a world or atmosphere where intellectuals engage in pursuits that are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life. As such, it usually carries pejorative connotations of a wilful disconnect from the everyday world; esoteric, over-specialized, or even useless research" - wikipedia

Re:Breathless summary by the clueless

[geekoid]

You get it all the time because your lack of actual logic and rational thinking makes it look like a troll.

I mean, you're argument almost always have come down to ad hom attacks.

Re:Breathless summary by the clueless

[SoftwareArtist]

Sadly, what you just said has nothing to do with the actual platform document. They say quite explicitly that they oppose the teaching of "critical thinking skills". That's not the name of some taxpayer funded propaganda campaign, nor is it some modern "left-wing pseudo-intellectual" idea. That's a standard, widely used term that has been around for many many decades, and simply refers to the idea that you shouldn't accept whatever someone tells you without considering it carefully. The fact that they consider it "a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education" shows just how wacky they are. There is nothing novel or experimental about it. Teaching children to think critically and question beliefs is exactly what good teachers have been doing for centuries, and has long been considered to be one of the essential goals of education.

And that is exactly what they don't want people doing, as they state very clearly. They say these curricula "have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs", and they consider that a very bad thing. They want students to believe whatever they're told to believe, and never question it. In short, they support "a policy of teaching children to have a pavlovian "yessum massa!" response" to whatever the authority figures in their lives tell them, and how you can possibly twist that around in your mind and claim the complete opposite is a mystery to me.

Re:Breathless summary by the clueless

[Obfuscant]

Except that you seem to seem to think that just because one stupid wave of "progressives" was wrong, no progressive approach is possible and teaching has to revert to the 19th century model of cramming bookfuls of facts mindlessly for the greater good of all.

He didn't say that.

You still haven't pointed out how having critical thinking skills is wrong for a student.

He didn't say it was, and neither does the Republican platform. You left out part of the plank, but that's probably because it was a complicated sentence and not because you have a confirmation bias against all things Republicans say. There were lots of commas and parenthetical inclusions that make it hard to realize the last part of the sentence connects to the front.

The rest of that plank says "which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority." The focus on behaviour modification and not education is part of the problem, and the part about having the explicit purpose of undermining parental authority is the second part.

The problem is the goal of the methods used, and the plank opposes the purpose and focus of the methods, not critical thinking in and of itself.

Parental authority isn't parental infallability or parental intelligence, it's the authority of the parents in raising and making decisions for their children. Schools should not be trying to undermine that, they should be promoting it. A large part of the education problem in this country is that parents do not exercise enough authority, or even interest in what their children do.

I suspect that if this opposition was to home schooling by religious parents, it would be put in terms of "child abuse" to mould their minds into the correct way of thinking. When schools use modern methods to do the same kind of thing it's ok. How about the schools teach the students and let the students use that information and critical thinking skills to challenge themselves? If we don't trust them to do that, how will we ever trust them to become the next generation of leaders?

Re:Breathless summary by the clueless

[DragonWriter]

The liberals did take a good page out of 1984 by learning how to warp and manipulate language to fit their own agenda. For example, relabel the same old provably ineffective (or intentionally worse than ineffective) teaching techniques as "logic" or "critical thinking".

OBE isn't a teaching technique, its a system for evaluating educational systems and students within them (obviously, how you assess effectiveness will, in an ideal world, inform what approaches you take down the line, but OBE is not in itself a teaching technique.)

Critical thinking skills also aren't a teaching technique, they are a subject matter that is taught. They can be taught within a system that uses traditional input-based methods of system evaluation and traditional relative-performance based evaluations students, or within a system that uses objective outcomes-based measures for both systems and students, and by any of a variety of teaching techniques independently of the system of evaluation.

The only relation between the two is that OBE is an application of critical thinking skills to education, rather than equivalent to teaching critical thinking skills.

(OBE, incidentally, isn't particularly a liberal thing; its more of a "run education like an efficient business" thing. Ideologues on the left and right both often oppose it, because it threatens to reveal that practices driven by ideology that are sold as effective actually, objectively, are ineffective.)

Re:Breathless summary by the clueless

[docmordin]

I just said that terms like "Higher order thinking skills" are a bunch of linguistic BULLSHIT attached to what is effectively a policy of teaching children to have a pavlovian "yessum massa!" response to politically correct buzzwords.

If you had bothered to consult any of the literature pertaining to the concepts you are so quick to condemn, you'd know that your entire take on higher-order thinking skills is incorrect.

To elaborate, in the past, psychologists and educational specialists have found it meaningful to partition thought into two groups, referred to as higher and lower, both of which have been rather well characterized. For instance, N. R. F. Maier ("An aspect of human reasoning", British Journal of Psychology, vol. 24, pp. 144-155, 1933; "Reasoning in rats and human beings", The Psychological Review, vol. 44, pp. 365-378, 1937), who used the terms learned behavior and reproductive learning in lieu of lower-order thinking, found that learned behavior came from contiguous experiences with previous repetitions of the relationships involved in the learned behavior pattern, e.g., memorization of multiplication tables via repeated practice. In contrast, behavior integrations that are made up of two or more isolated experiences are qualitatively different, as they arise without previous repetition, and hence constitute "reasoning" or higher-order thinking. To phrase this in a slightly different manner, "reasoning", is used to solve problems that arise when behavior is blocked because a desired end is not immediately attainable. A good example of "reasoning", that is in line with this description, is when a student that knows how to compute the area of simple geometric shapes, e.g., triangles and squares, and can see how to apply that knowledge, without guidance, to solve for the area of general polygons; in that scenario, the student has happened upon a combination of events that may have never been previously associated.

As a second instance, F. M. Newman ("Higher order thinking in teaching social studies: A rationale for the assessment of classroom thoughtfulness", Journal of Curriculum Studies, vol. 22, 41-56, 1990) defined higher- and lower-order thinking, in virtually the same manner as Maier, based upon observations in classrooms and interviews with teachers and department chairs. That is, lower-order thinking demands only routine or mechanical application of previously acquired information, e.g., inserting numbers into established formulas or regurgitating lists of facts. On the other hand, higher-order thinking "challenges the student to interpret, analyze, or manipulate information". Furthermore, he pointed out that since individuals differ in the kinds of problems they find challenging, higher-order thinking is relative: what one person finds challenging another may find elementary; as such, to determine the extent to which the individual is involved in higher-order thinking, one would presumably need to know something about that individual's background.

Beyond the above two examples, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles in education and psychology journals that touch on higher-order thinking and critical thinking (which are sometimes used interchangeably). In all of the ones that I have skimmed over, the overwhelming consensus is that higher-order thinking skills are critical, logical, reflective, metacognitive, or creative processes activated when one encounters unfamiliar problems, uncertainties, questions or dilemmas, and certainly are not, as you erroneously stated, "linguistic bullshit" designed to indoctrinate students.

Oh, and before you fly off the handle and claim that I'm some brainwashed, leftist moron, let me state that all of the higher-order thinking skills I learned when I was in primary school and at university prepared me rather well for publishing papers in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Journal of the American Statistical Society, Biometrics, Biometrika, and Annals of Statistics, i.e., the top statistics journals.

Re:Breathless summary by the clueless

[dark12222000]

Are you referring to the same NSDAP platform of 1920 as declared by Adolf Hitler as I am? You know, the crazy one that burned, maimed and executed Jews, Gypsies, the handicapped, and non-whites? Because they are pretty much pure on conservative. I'll quote a few highlights here.

"Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest, and must be under the authority of legislation for foreigners."

"Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented."

" We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, Schieber and so forth are to be punished with death"

And my personal favorite (emphasis mine) "24. We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: common utility precedes individual utility."

Aside from some *very* basic progressive ideas (parks, some basic welfare), the Nazi party is fundamentally conservative, both in it's approaches to foreigners, it's heavy usage of Christianity, and the death penalty.

I think you're going to find FDR to be at odds with Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini at several places. Obviously, he agreed on minor points (public parks, welfare), but on most he did not. While Hitler was putting Nuremberg Decrees in place, FDR was setting up social security.

Beat them don't teach them!

[gatfirls]

"We recommend that local school boards and classroom teachers be given more authority to deal with disciplinary problems. Corporal punishment is effective and legal in Texas. "

Re:Beat them don't teach them!

[KhabaLox]

It is unpatriotic not to consent to state workers detaining and disciplining your child?

No. Their support of corporal punishment shows that they support the State in physically disciplining children, which may be against the parents wishes and/or beliefs. Then, in the Juvenile Daytime Curfew clause they say they oppose "any official entity from . . . disciplining our children without . . . consent." It is either hypocritical or just plain stupid.

Other language in the document implies that they favor parental rights over State rights (except for the corporal punishment). Then, in the Patriotism clause, they say that all students should swear fealty to both the United States and Texas. They don't specifically say that legal resident non-citizen children should be exempt from this, and it's possible that some Republican's may believe as much, but it is conspicuously absent. Furthermore, as a non-native Texan (who lived in Texas for several years), I'm not sure I would want my child to have to pledge allegiance to the Texas flag, and even if I did, I think that given the rest of the language in the document, I find the idea of the State compelling such a pledge somewhat (but not totally) incongruous.

Re:Religious fundamentalism

[Black Parrot]

The truth is, many in the GOP say they are disgusted by the neocons but they don't do anything to discourage or oppose them. Talk is cheap.

The fracture in the Republican party is between those who support the views of the "American Taliban" and the traditional plutocrats who merely want to exploit them to get elected. Neither group has any motivation to tell them to fuck off.

Re:Misleading Summary

[meta-monkey]

No, Outcome-based education is an educational model that emphasizes testing to show students have achieved the desired "outcome." The debate over OBE boils down to who gets to decide what the desired "outcome" is. Where the /. summary gets deceptive is the when they change the words "have the purpose of" to "may."

The /. summary (emphasis mine):

Alarmingly, they openly state that they oppose schools teaching critical thinking, on the grounds that it may challenge 'student's fixed beliefs'

The PDF you quoted (ellipses and emphasis mine) :

We oppose the teaching of...programs...which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs

The Texas GOP does not oppose "critical thinking skills" that may challenge religious beliefs, they oppose things named "critical thinking skills" but are really just a packaged curriculum designed specifically to challenge religious beliefs. Basically all they're saying in this quote is they don't want schools teaching that there is no Jesus. They do not oppose critical thinking skills, just things called critical thinking skills so their opponents can create headlines just such as this.

This article is an alarmist red herring. Spun back around, it would be like the Texas GOP creating a program called "Fluffy Cuddly Bunnies" that uses Outcome Based Education, and tests students to make sure they've achieved the outcome of professing their faith in Jesus. Then you came along and say, "I oppose this program" they can write articles with the summary "Myrdos2 wants to impose atheism on all students, hates fluffy cuddly bunnies and is so ignorant that he opposes rigorous testing to make sure our kids are learning!"

Disclaimer: I am an agnostic atheist and not a Republican. But I don't like misleading articles that use linguistic games to make people look like they said things they didn't.

Summary is more accurate than parent's response

[DragonWriter]

If you actually look at the platform, the Texas Republicans' opposition is to the Outcome Based Education philosophy.

If one were to actually read the platform, one would note that the Texas Republicans -- and this is a direct quote -- "oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs".

They claim -- as justification -- that all those things are "simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning)", which is factually incorrect (OBE is essentially an approach to the management of education, while critical thinking skills are a skill area; the two are completely orthogonal) but independently of their justification, they do, in fact, state that they oppose teaching critical thinking skills.

And, looking beyond that, their further reason for opposing teaching all those supposed relabellings of OBE -- the potential to threaten students "fixed beliefs" -- is something that does not make sense for OBE at all (since OBE is content-neutral), but directly relevant to critical thinking skills (actual critical thinking skills, not any that would be a relabelling of OBE.)

Re:Critical Thinking

[shutdown -p now]

Funny that, you didn't highlight the other part of it which is just as much relevant if not more.

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Re:Totally understandable.

[WindBourne]

Not really. I used to like the republican party back in the 70's. Once reagan took it over, the neo-cons, the religious right wing nuts, and now the tea* have taken control. At this time, the republican party is less about what is good for America, and more of a communist ideal: We will tell the nation, if not the world, what is in everybodies best interest. The party screams about the deficits (like dems and pubs did since the pubs crashed America in the great depression), yet, they account for 2/3 of our debt. Worse, they are the ones that created the situation for most of the other 1/3.

All in all, the republican party is now controlled by social conservatives with a strong religious bent, no fiscal sense of ANY KIND, and with a bent that has more in common with Al Qaeda and the Communist Party, then with what the republican party was pre-reagan..

Re:You people are missing the forest for the trees

[FrootLoops]

I've never understood why divorce gets so much less attention than gay marriage from these people. It's an order of magnitude more "threatening" to marriage, yet the platform gives divorce all of 2 lines. The gay bits total 26 lines--actually more than that if you include things like an oblique Boy Scouts reference.

Anyway, you some of the best parts (emphasis mine):

Immunizations All adult citizens should have the legal right to conscientiously choose which vaccines are administered to themselves or their minor children without penalty for refusing a vaccine. We oppose any effort by any authority to mandate such vaccines or any medical database that would contain personal records of citizens without their consent.

Sex Education – We recognize parental responsibility and authority regarding sex education. We believe that parents must be given an opportunity to review the material prior to giving their consent. We oppose any sex education other than abstinence until marriage.

Controversial Theories – We support objective teaching and equal treatment of all sides of scientific theories. We believe theories such as life origins and environmental change should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced. Teachers and students should be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these theories openly and without fear of retribution or discrimination of any kind.

Juvenile Daytime Curfew - We strongly oppose Juvenile Daytime Curfews. Additionally, we oppose any official entity from detaining, questioning and/or disciplining our children without the consent of a child’s parent.

Traditional Principles in Education – We support school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded and which form the basis of America’s legal, political and economic systems. We support curricula that are heavily weighted on original founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and Founders’ writings.

Judeo-Christian Nation – As America is a nation under God founded on Judeo-Christian principles, we affirm the constitutional right of all individuals to worship in the religion of their choice. [ed: note the non sequitur]

Traditional Military Culture – To protect our serviceman and women and ensure that America's Armed Forces remain the best in the world, we affirm the timelessness of those values, the benefits of traditional military culture and the incompatibility of homosexuality with military service.

To be fair it's not universally awful; some of their positions are somewhat reasonable:

Internet Access - We support a free and open internet -- free from intrusion, censorship, or control by government or private entities. Due to the inherent benefit of anonymity, the anonymity of users is not to be compromised for any reason, unless consented by the user; or by court order. We also oppose any mandates by the government to collect and retain records of our internet activity.

Still, there's sure a lot of crazy in there.

Re:Religious fundamentalism

[WindBourne]

You misunderstand. The GOP head is currently neo-con controlled. There is a 3-way battle going on within the party. Basically, you have the reagan/W neo-cons who are only interested in their party (hate to use it, but 1930's Germany should sound familiar). They constantly use patriotism to appeal to Americans to follow them. Likewise, they will SAY the right thing, such as promising to balance the budget.. Yet, if you look, reagan inherited a minor deficit/debt and then ran it up massively. W inherited a balanced budget and then destroyed it (and our economy). Under both, they built up the military and sent trillions to their friends. For example, re-doing battleships was worthless. B1 was a disaster. Likewise, DARPA is a useful defense R&D. Basically, it does loads of advanced R&D. Under W, the money was shifted from Cheap University R&D, into expensive Businesses. It is extremely wasteful. At any rate, the neo-cons are about power and making sure that they remain in power.

The religious right wingers here have a goal of making us into a theocracy. Like the neo-cons, they wrap themselves in the flag, but also the cross. They scream that they are opposed to abortions, but then work hard to deny access to Birth Control. Likewise, if a single girl has a child, then the mother AND the child are punished. These ppl are idealists simply to AQ. You do what they want, or some of them WILL kill you. Pat Roberts comes to mind. Likewise groups like Focus on the Family. Oddly, these kinds of ppl love to scream that God is punishing Gays, etc. and therefore caused Katrina. So, now with Focus on the Family area being massively burned, I am waiting patiently to hear what Robert and FotF will now claim? Perhaps that God hates liars?

Now, we have the tea party. It is NOT what it looks like. Many will claim that it is Libertarian (which is what I am still registered as, but increasingly, I am 'l' and not as much 'L'), but it really is not. The teaparty has multiple leaders. It was created by the Koch brothers and Rove (yes, the great evil one has his hands all over this one). The problem is, that many of the younger congress is supported and related to it. For example, Cantor is a major tea* member. When Obama and Boehner were close to a deficit deal, cantor came in and killed it. Why? Because it allowed tax cuts to expire, which Cantor is sworn to prevent (google for grover norquist).

Now, have you noticed the older GOPers leaving office and saying that they can not solve things? That is NOT about the dems. They have and could easily work with dems. They were typically about working on AMERICA's needs. Their problem is that their party REFUSES to work with dems, libertarians, etc. All 3 of these groups have sworn that they will NOT COMPROMISE. Gov. is all about compromise. Without it, well, we have a situation in America.

Goldwater had many things to say about groups like this
But probably the best one, would be:
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

At this time, the GOP is a party of some of the worse of America, that is hard at work trying to do the same to America.
Sadly, the dems are loaded with idiots at the top.
We desperately need a 3rd party that is composed of social moderates to liberals, but with STRONG fiscal conservative and a strong sense of who are nation is.

IOW, your assessment of the GOP is pretty much accurate.