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Employers Worried About Critical Thinking Skills

Posted by Soulskill on from the employees-worried-about-it-too dept.

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?

15 of 553 comments (clear)

  1. What is critical thinking? by magarity · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To way too many people "critical thinking" seems to just mean criticizing the establishment just because it's the establishment.

    1. Re:What is critical thinking? by Lilith's+Heart-shape · · Score: 5, Insightful

      IMO, the fact that the establishment is the establishment should be reason enough to subject them to constant questioning and criticism. Nobody in authority should be able to do so much as fart on the job being expected to justify their actions -- in front of a jury if necessary.

      --

      I write sci-fi for metalheads

    2. Re:What is critical thinking? by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.
    3. Re:What is critical thinking? by mtrachtenberg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Way too many people don't realize that our current economic and political system would not survive if critical thinking skills became commonplace.

      We are destroying our own planet in the name of making 0.01% wealthy, and most of us, most of the time, are perfectly content to participate in the process in any way that pays decently and offers "interesting" work.

    4. Re:What is critical thinking? by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The idea that the Wall Street Journal and the corporations they represent are worried about "critical thinking skills" is just laughable. Those kinds of corporations actively discourage independent thinking. They want everyone to be a trained monkey so that they can devalue your labor and replace you easily.

      The LAST thing they want are people with hard to replace cognitive skills or tribal knowledge.

      They want COGS.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    5. Re:What is critical thinking? by akozakie · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. Too Late by sexconker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The people doing the hiring don't have the critical thinking skills necessary to identify people worth hiring.
    If you're a retard, just apply everywhere you can and be polite and enthusiastic - you'll get an offer.
    If you're not a retard, apply everywhere that may interest you and treat the interview in reverse - answer their questions but make sure you ask your own to assess if you want to work there or not.

  3. Bennett to the rescue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Easy solution: Hire clones of Bennett Hasselton. He spends 10s of hours a week solving the hard issues facing the world such as distributed social networks and the optimal queuing for ice lines at Burning Man.

  4. Want Critical Thinking? Fix the Public Schools by Lilith's+Heart-shape · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The government-run schools still run on a nineteenth century industrial paradigm designed to take children and churn out standardized, obedient, punctual factory workers. Fix that first if you care about kids getting critical thinking skills.

    --

    I write sci-fi for metalheads

    1. Re:Want Critical Thinking? Fix the Public Schools by PvtVoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Compulsory public education is a mass violation of individual rights (those of the students compelled to attend).

      It's finally happened: whackjob libertarians have come full circle and are nicely in alignment with the Taliban.

      Education is a civil right, which is why girls in fundamentalist Muslim societies are risking their lives to access it. Compulsory education doesn't violate children's civil rights, it ensures those rights, even if it is parents who want to deprive their own children of the right to an education. You have a right to be an ignorant asshole if you like. You do not have the right to force your own ignorance onto your children.

  5. Be careful what you wish for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    An increase in critical thinking skills leads to:

    Contract renegotiations in which the employer is expected to pay more.
    High employee turnover, since the second you stop treating them like a valued employee they will begin looking for another job elsewhere.
    Resistance to overtime and an insistence on work/life balance.
    General insubordination when the employee realizes he's smarter than his boss.

  6. Shift in priorities by fey000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. teachers teaching teachers by Twillerror · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My problem with school is it always felt like teaching too abstractly. A certain level is good and I do want people to learn to innovative, but I do not think there is enough application.

    Don't teach calculus, teach engineering. I feel like i spent months doing super complex math that I wouldn't even use as a rocket scientist. I would have loved to predict planetary motion than solving random math problems for hours and hours only to never use those skills.

    The real world is generally open book. If I forget how to solve an equation I look up a solution on the internet or even my old math text books. I think if kids learn how to solve problems vs solving problems we'd be in a better place. I'd rather just give kids a problem and help them solve it vs give them a predefined example and make them solve it correctly the first time or get an F.

  8. Critical thinking by ledow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion