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Employers Worried About Critical Thinking Skills
Nerval's Lobster writes: Every company needs employees who can analyze information effectively, discarding what's unnecessary and digging down into what's actually useful. But employers are getting a little bit worried that U.S. schools aren't teaching students the necessary critical-thinking skills to actually succeed once they hit the open marketplace. The Wall Street Journal talked with several companies about how they judge critical-thinking skills, a few of which ask candidates to submit to written tests to judge their problem-solving abilities. But that sidesteps the larger question: do schools need to shift their focus onto different teaching methods (i.e., downplaying the need for students to memorize lots of information), or is our educational pipeline just fine, thank you very much?
Except they still want standardized, punctual, obedient, docile workers that will take substandard wages and living conditions while thanking their overlords that they're not homeless.
It's even easier when you flood the market (see Google/FaceCrook manufactured tech worker shortage for details).
I think, ultimately, what critical thinking means is to internalize the ideology of your employer, i.e. you're hired to make decisions that account for everything that fits your employer's methods and goals. This is necessary because there are many, many minute decisions for the employee to make that the employer simply cannot dictate to the employee in every case. The book "Disciplined Minds" called this ideological discipline, and discussed it at length in terms of professional level work, where the professional is trusted to maintain the company ideology within the narrow range of creativity defined by their job. Makes sense to me.
I wouldn't be surprised, but we could fix it by refusing to let corporations sponsor people for visas.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Exactly this! People forget that in the 1930s the US adopted the Prussian education system and dumped the classical education system for exactly this reason. What I find at least as interesting is that Germany followed suit much much later. Germany has gone from one of the best educated societies to as bad as the US in about 1/2 the time. Perhaps due to smaller scale, or perhaps because the implementation in the US was progressively implemented and the result exported to Germany.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
To way too many people "critical thinking" seems to just mean criticizing the establishment just because it's the establishment.
or "You're wrong because your way doesn't use the new shiny I use but some old thing ..."
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Perhaps it's time to downvalue memory and detail retention?
With the internet always available, knowing what to do seems to be the key to success, while figuring out how to do it can be achieved with a quick search (I personally start with wikipedia). What cannot be found on wikipedia is how to model a problem such that it can be deconstructed into smaller pieces. That's where a broad and comprehensive education comes in. I'm all for requiring less memory intensive tasks, and more 'from-start-to-finish' problem solving tasks that require active creativity and input.
As for critical thinking, hell yes. The world as a whole can only benefit from critical thinking and questioning beliefs. Stop with the 'listen and believe', start with the 'independently verify'. This would help in matters ranging from 'whom can I trust with my life savings?' to 'what political candidate isn't a twisted sadist lying bastard hellbent on screwing the whole country?'.
And to sweeten the bargain, once the citizenry starts practising this type of behaviour, politicians and corporations will have to follow suit if they wish to retain their voters/consumers.
No, really! The Republican party had the opposition of "teaching of higher-order thinking skills, critical thinking skills and similar programs" in schools written in their platform document as one of their policy aims.
Wash post
The problem with critical thinking is that it makes people... critical.
It's nonsensical to do an awful lot of things that the average business will do. Critical thinking questions that. Rightly so, but that's not compatible with the way many do business.
And I dispute that you can "teach" critical thinking. You can expose students to it, and ask them to practice it, but teaching it is another matter.
I work in schools, including private schools. The difference is clear - private schools take no shit and make the kids work at learning - by rote, critical thinking, free-form learning and even attaching themselves to the IT guy outside of lessons to "help out" if they are keen geeks. They allow this, and encourage this, and aren't constrained by what's on some table of what must be learned.
They also know that they are there for the children, not solely to get "Five A-C's" so that the league tables look good to next year's parents.
I have coworkers in IT that want their kids to have computers so they are ready to enter the work place one day. I keep telling them that when I went to college that no one my age had a computer at home and we still turned out to do very well.
I ma not shocked to find that kids staring at iPads are resulting in stupider kids. Why is this shocking? The kid that goes in the woods and builds a fort is probably better at critical thinking than the kid playing angry birds all day.
I didn't learn critical thinking in school. I learned it from my family. Mostly my grandparents. That's also how I learned things like budgeting, project planning, vehicle maintenance, home repair, laundry, cooking, landscaping, electrical repairs, etc. All the day-to-day things a person needs to function. Gramps taught me how to replace a water heater. School taught me how to determine how long it'll take that new water heater to heat 50 gallons of water enough that I can take a warm shower.
Those CEOs, executives, and their "pay-per-use" politicians are terrified of there ever being a self-aware, critically thinking labour force. Those are the seeds of democratic participation and social, non-violent revolution, i.e. true democracy, which would undermine their power. The so called "education reformers" are simply asking for more of the same: More of what Paulo Freire called the banking model of education:
"This solution is not (nor can it be) found in the banking concept. On the contrary, banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction through the following attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole:
the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
the teacher talks and the students listen -- meekly;
the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;
the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;
the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.
It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them."
Source: http://www2.webster.edu/~corbe...
It's a very well known problem that "A players hire A players, but B players hire C players", and not just in engineering. The best want to work with the best, but the nervous-that-they're-not-the-best want to work with the mediocre. So most companies large enough to have formal hiring processes are at least aware of the problem, and are trying to cope.
The real problem IMO is "how can you create a standardized test to measure critical thinking", because our school system is helpless without it (and for all the complaints of teaching to the test, we need some objective way to find schools that aren't working).
Plus, the whole structure of school is around training manufacturing workers. You may not learn math, but for damn sure you're learn to sit for 30 minutes, move form task to task when the bell rings, rush to the bathroom during designated windows, and so on - all great for the manufacturing jobs that were the best jobs most people could get in most of the 20th century. But it's a new millennium now, and manufacturing is the past. We need a classroom in which student are given time to think, to stare off into space while the subconscious works on the problem - but how to distinguish that from daydreaming and doing nothing? It will take a lot of change to schools, that's for sure.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Fascinating. Evil does not even hide anymore. They are now operating in the open!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You can tell a lot about a person (or political party) by whom they choose to ridicule, and why. Gore never said he invented the Internet, but rather that he was instrumental in its creation. And it was quite true. This is what Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf had to say about the matter:
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development... No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.
So the kids in the back of the class are laughing and shooting spitballs at the smart kid. It's Junior High all over again.
"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 studentâ(TM)s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."
We shouldn't challenge student's fixed beliefs? Or undermine parental authority? Those sound like usual and desired outcomes of critical thinking skills.
Outcome-Based Education means, as far as I know, "teaching; then testing for those skills". It's not perfect (nothing is) but I'm not sure what the complaint is.
And I'll admit that "focus on behavior modification" sounds like a code phrase. You seem to like this statement; could you translate it into language that I can understand? Because you complained about the interpretation but did not explain how that interpretation doesn't come from those words. Actually, that paragraph sounds like it was written by people who have no idea what "Higher Order Thinking Skills" or "Outcome-Based Education" mean but are pretty sure they're designed to turn kids against their parents somehow? Or am I mis-interpreting it too?
Because that's what they're being paid to do, and nothing more. There is virtually no incentive to go outside what you've been assigned. You will not get paid any more for doing more work than you have already been assigned; all that will happen if you do that is that you will be assigned that extra work permanently in the future (with no commensurate raise in pay). Congratulations, you devalued your own labor, saving the system the trouble.
People will say that that's lazy, that you should take on more on your own initiative because that will benefit the employer, and, in theory, you.
Those people are wrong.
Let's say you've been assigned the task of assembling 450 widgets in a day. You have become more skilled at that task, so it only takes you 7 hours instead of 8. (Assuming, naively, that they let you stick to an 8 hour day.) So, on your own initiative, you take on more work and get to 500 widgets a day. Congratulations, your labor is now worth less, since they got more work out of you for the same pay. Leaving aside that you're a massive chump if you do that, your extra labor does not benefit you. The company can sell 50 more widgets than they would have previously, so obviously that extra profit goes into your paycheck. Oh, wait, it doesn't. No, that profit goes to the rich folks that own your company, while you eat a 2%-raise shit sandwich.
A big knock against the auto worker unions is that the amount of work a union member is assigned over the course of a work day is negotiated. If they have been assigned 450 widgets to assemble, they assemble those 450 widgets and go home. Usually early. Then they get called lazy for not doing more work than they have been assigned. What they've really done is work to the letter of the contract. They have done the work that they have been paid for doing. You don't go into a butcher shop, buy a steak, and say "Oh, also, I'd like those short ribs for free." You'll get laughed out of there.
Because they're not being paid to do that, and they have no incentive to do so independently. Your role? Cog. Expanded role? Same pay, more responsibility. Changed? The only way it changes is if you quit or get fired.
They follow the instructions because they will be fired if they don't. They follow those instructions because that is what they are paid to do. Usually they're being paid to do it, not figure out another way to do it, because while they're figuring that out, they're not doing the work they're getting paid to do.
Because 1) they have no incentive to do so other than to kiss up to the boss, and 2) their boss will usually steal the idea and take credit for it themselves.
The American groupthink of the worker class has been subtly engineered over the last fifty years or so to remove the idea that as your company is more successful, you will share in that success. It's considered un-American to think that the CEO shouldn't get paid more than 2000 times what the front-line workers make, because freedom, eagles, free market, etc. Don't question your betters, get back to work, citizen. Oh, and don't get any ideas, or we'll remove your ability to pay your rent and take your kid to the doctor when they're sick.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Ok... Now please explain what that huge difference you percieve is, the one that warrants the use of the words "highly doctored". Because to me this looks like just a longer version of the same thing. "Don't teach them to think, teach them to accept whatever the parents and the church want them to". Quite hard for me to find any redeeming aspect of that line. It's just a combination of catering to not-so-bright parents afraid of losing authority because of their own stupidity and to everyone in power, political, religious or any other, as dumber people are easier to control.
Nah, you're wrong, thinking black-and-white. That's just a case of optimization error. They most definitely do want people with good critical thinking skills, just not too many - just enough to fill the right positions. They simply missed the golden ratio, too many people are on the "herd" education track. The positions are filled by idiots and companies lose money. They just assumed the "right" group is big enough to support their growth and they were wrong.
"critical thinking" is the new buzzword.
I'm 55, the phrase has been around for a long time, Carl Sagan was fond of it (unfortunately my HS never mentioned it) so it wasn't until I dropped out and saw Sagan and Randi talking about it on TV that I became personally aware that it was a skill that can be taught. Perhaps it's been hijacked lately in the US to mean something else but I haven't noticed. To me it has always meant 'skepticism', in particular self-skepticism. Sagan also referred to it as his "bullshit detection kit". As for TFA, memorising facts* is essential but insufficient, ie: you can't even start to think about things that you don't remember, which is what Newton was getting at with his "shoulders of giants" comment.
*Facts as in - "two bodies attract each other with a force proportional to their combined mass and the distance between them", that the force is ~9.8m/s on Earth's surface is trivia, handy to know but not essential to the concept that's being memorised since it can easily be looked up or measured. A physics teacher who sets up a gravity problem and expects students to know the value of 'g' from memory, is doing it wrong. Of course there are exceptions where memorising numbers is a useful "short-cut" for the student, multiplication tables being the most obvious
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.