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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.
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?
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.