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Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills: WSJ (wsj.com)
Freshmen and seniors at about 200 colleges across the U.S. take a little-known test every year to measure how much better they get at learning to think. The results are discouraging. From a report: At more than half of schools, at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence in a document or interpret data in a table (Editor's note: the link might be paywalled; alternative source), The Wall Street Journal found after reviewing the latest results from dozens of public colleges and universities that gave the exam between 2013 and 2016. At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years. Some of the biggest gains occur at smaller colleges where students are less accomplished at arrival but soak up a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum.
pretty darn well. Just look at all of the kids crying for safe spaces.
Evergreen College...
Berkeley College...
Safe Spaces...
Critical thinking skills don't make one rich. Social skills and connections make one rich.
There are a few exceptions, but generally speaking one climbs the executive ladder via connections and social skills, and that's where the money is.
"We threw money at our cronies who promised to turn our kids non-worthless, but so far it isn't working! WTF?" -- the WSJ position
trying to fool citizens with fake news. Come one, WSJ! If students did learn critical-thinking, to whom would you sell the fake news story?
I believe the better generalization would be that Colleges are teaching students "What" to think, and not "How" to think. Since cognitive dissonance is painful, and it feels good to belong to something you believe is important, it's easy to get people to go along with the game.
When you consider that the people with political power on the left are pushing for more "free" college the prospect 10 years down the road could look much worse.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
A populace capable of critical thinking would not be easily herded into reactionary mobs. Only a few of us actually want that. Many others talk about critical thinking, but just claim that anyone who disagrees with them hadn't learned critical thinking.
Of course it is paywalled. Why would anyone post links to this POS?
Talk to recent graduates and you will see this everywhere. I recently had a discussion with a Berkeley graduate student wherein they could not understand the value of doing their own research, rather preferring to simply parrot what they had been fed in school.
So, critical thinking? Analysis? No. Memorization and regurgitation.
Because most colleges are liberal leftist indoctrination propaganda institutions today with safe spaces and administrations that squash free speech, diversity of speech and thought, I would think they would actually reduce critical thinking skills.
trmp
Not even posting this under my own name because I know damned well a shitstorm is what I'll get for my trouble. No thanks.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed this, but it saddens me at the same time.
Corporations, Rich People, Governments, organized religion -- they don't want people learning how to 'think'. They may allow them to learn certain things so they'll be productive and useful workers, and so they can afford the Bread and Circuses that keep them occupied when they're not making their masters richer, but they sure as hell don't want them actually having the mental tools and time to doing something as dangerous as thinking about how their world is being governed, or the direction the rich and powerful are pushing us.
Those of us who CAN think, and voice our concerns about the state of things, are scoffed at, mocked, ridiculed -- and very often attacked, both virtually, verbally, and sometimes physically. In extreme cases our lives are ruined -- because, apparently, we know too much, and that Powers That Be can't have us runnng around loose, so we're discredited to the point where no one will get anywhere near us or listen to us anymore (discrediting and disgracing someone is much, much more powerful than killing them, which creates a martyr, and leaving someone alive serves as a living example of what will happen to you if you don't 'behave' and 'keep your place').
Critical thinking is not a part of STEM. Be careful what you try to cram down everyone's throat.
Very few people teach critical thinking, at least at the institutional level. It's antithetical to what they stand for. If you learn critical thinking, it's because you transcended various things. In a world full of critical thinkers, it becomes difficult to overcharge for a degree.
I think the better generalization is that colleges are being used as prep for employment, and teaching us the loads of data required to function in a corporation in a particular discipline.
Seems to match what I stated.
To your second point, critical thinking is essential all the time every day. People in power have historically attempted to keep people from learning the skills, because their bullshit is easier to see.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The article I read did not give enough specifics (I skipped the paywall one).
So you can't tell if a good school merely failed to improve rather than had their students fail.
Everyone should have critical thinking skills, and if you don't have any, then college should teach you that skill. But that is NOT the only thing a college should teach. Once you have that skill, there are many other skills you need, from pure knowledge, to creativity, to social skills (beyond drinking), pattern recognition, basic computer usage, among other things.
In particular, I would be SHOCKED if Ivy league schools showed significant improvement in critical thinking. It's exactly the kind of thing they love their incoming students to already have, and the ivy league schools have gotten so selective that they can pick the students that already have that.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
They don't reward critical thinking because they're meant to prepare students for the real world, and there nobody appreciates critical thinking either.
I once taught math at a "Top Tier" college and was absolutely appalled by what I saw: kids cared more about whining for better grades than actually working for them. I once had a student who got upset that I deducted 1/3 of her quiz grade because she left one of the questions blank (out of three). She could not understand, for the life of her, why I would do such a thing. Another complained to the chair that I gave him a poor grade on his final project (half was blank, and what was written managed to contradict itself). Additionally, for my exams, I tried to focus on applying concepts we've learned in class, yet many of them had noticeable difficulty doing anything that wasn't directly regurgitated from class. It's entirely possible that I was an ineffective professor, however when your feedback to your teaching is either "no comment", "you suck" or "you're awesome", it's hard to know for sure.
The cynic in me has to wonder if this is because those in charge don't want their new sheeple to know how to think for themselves.
I went to a mid tier college as an adult and was surprised to find that most of the students already had good critical thinking skills. I guess you couldn't get in the door without it.
Is all about memorization. There's no actual skill involved, all you have to do is memorize everything and you're fine. Don't think for yourself, if it's not in the book, you don't need it.
If you look at the table of results, the schools cited in the article as being poor had higher test results than schools rated as very good. UT Austin was rated as very poor, but had the third highest senior result. It had poor improvement because it had the highest freshman result. If the test actually measures critical thinking, and your freshmen are well above average, it isn't unexpected that they will improve less than at a school where the freshmen are well below average.
In order to teach critical thinking, the profs need to be able to do it.
So test the profs to split the problem in half and see which half is broken.
Remember, the first rule of debugging is divide and conquer to locate the problem.
Evergreen College fits this to a T
For more fun go to Youtube and search Evergreen College and watch the spectacular fail by SJW Students and one Jabba the Hut teacher in particular.
Be sure to bring Popcorn.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So testing college age students really doesn't say much because by that age more of your critical thinking ability has been formed already. If you want to develop people with really good critical thinking skills you have to start very young, preschool even but then continue throughout adolescence.
Not surprising. There are no solid studies that show that generalizable critical thinking skills CAN be taught.
I needed a class to fill out my schedule. The theory of scientific thought was led by a prof (?) who instructed us to talk as he left the classroom. I was right behind him and gave myself an "A".
The original medieval concept of a liberal arts education was that it prepared you intellectually to perform the duties of a gentleman. This is why mathematics played a major part in the liberal arts. First you mastered grammar, logic and rhetoric, then you tackled the mathematical disciplines: astronomy, music (theory of harmonics mainly so that counts as another dose of math), arithmetic (Books V - X of Euclid) and geometry (Books I - IV, XI - XIII).
Only after you'd mastered all that material were you considered prepared to go onto specialized advanced studies (sadly, your choices were limited pretty much to theology, law or medicine).
Now from my geekish perspective this medieval curriculum looks a hell of a lot more rigorous than anything any modern American university offers. I'd update the math curriculum, add some basic courses in physical and social sciences and finance and you'd be graduating people fully prepared to be kick-ass citizens.
But universities act more like vocational schools. Even if you major in art history, they train you as if that's going to be be your job. And employers treat universities not as educational institutions, but as certifiers of social class.
It's no wonder that universities don't improve critical thinking skills. You're supposed to pick them up by osmosis.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
From George Orwell's "What is Science?" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/science/english/e_scien
. . .
Almost everybody approves of "education", but that is only because the definition of "education" has been stretched to cover a variety of perspectives, some of which are directly opposed. STEM is the latest iteration of this problem. "Everyone" agrees that STEM is important, but how many because STEM studies are a superior forum for developing intellectual and academic rigor (which is highly debatable), how many because they believe that throwing more people at these fields will drive innovation, how many because it is viewed as a path to a high paying career, and how many because funneling more people into those careers will solve the "high paying" part?
Education as an exercise in personal and intellectual development is in peril. Or maybe, its rapid expansion was never meant to include these core concepts. Perhaps the goal was always to herd people through a highly costly system of earning credentials required to acquire even the hope of subsistence. A scam.
Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/mone...
At the first glance, this statement makes the college or at least the classes in question sound rather shoddy. Thinking a bit further, it might be interesting to know what exactly they talked about after watching the documentaries and videos. Did they do a thorough deconstruction and have many students contribute to it? Evaluating the internal logic of the arguments made? The evidence that was presented, the methods they used to collect it? There's really a lot that still can be done here IF the students are taught the value of logic and its application.
Education ruins peoples critical thinking ability. Probably because a little education goes a long way to improving your own opinion of your own opinions (which is primarily the vector through which we believe higher education makes people more easily scammed).
Education is highly linked to belief in the paranormal (http://www.livescience.com/564-higher-education-fuels-stronger-belief-ghosts.html).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Critical-Thinking Skills are for trade / tech schools. Collage is for theory.
It does not seem obvious to anyone that colleges and universities define "critical thinking" in a way that is different from "critical thinking" defined by businessmen. Businessmen always ask for critical thinking skills in potential employees, cannot find it, and whine. Academia whines back, "But we are teaching them critical thinking, we are!." In other words, "critical thinking" is nothing but a buzzword. The inabilities cited above are a product of that lack of knowledge for which American education is famous.
--- Andy West http://andywest.org
If only we had chapter 11 and 7 for student loans then the banks would force the schools to lower costs / time and teach real skills with less fluff and filler.
if it were we'd have a lot less problems in the world. Folks are great at holding inconsistent ideas. I'll refrain from naming names, but it's been all the rage with humanity for thousands of years.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
degrees are theory loaded with limited real usage of the skills. So people may know alot of theory but have a hard time working on thinking / using them in an day to day setting.
it's all about the loans that just about any one can get.
Nothing in TFA to show it's a "new" problem, but the massive amount of degrees, student debt, and money going into a massive number of institutions sure is. At least agree that the scale of the problem has grown massively.
To be a bit more fair with your minor point, even 30 years ago when I was going to college people in the administration attempted to keep people from learning Philosophy, Ethics, and Logic. For a 4 year degree, we were required at least 1 year of Philosophy though (and my degree is in Mathematics). Colleges then were happy to push you into "Humanities" for a 2 year degree, but at least we had pure Philosophy courses in even community colleges. Many schools today don't offer the courses, and have no requirements for any for many degrees.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Translation: colleges fail to teach kids to think what the WSJ wants them to think.
College would be great but it's important to teach this as early as possible so that kids can also learn to properly grasp the concept and use it effectively, and to be taught how to argue without fighting early on.
Twinstiq, game news
I wasn't taught critical thinking at college. In my day, if you weren't capable of it you didn't get it. See also: belt, onion, Morganville.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Many people get far on only memorization, without any understanding or creativity (often relying on social connections instead of any skills). Critical thinking is a threat to the status-quo, so a culture that has difficulty changing will naturally stifle critical thinking, providing indoctrination instead. This movement towards self-perpetuating incompetence is directly related to current social mobility, which is based on government policy (Social_mobility)
My father taught for 30 years at a small private college and retired in 2002. He said every year, the attitude of the incoming freshmen was worse.
"You want me to proofread and revise? Yeah, right. Read the assignment for the week? Pffft! That'll happen." They didn't want to do any work, and they resented being told to take responsibility for their own education.
Dad was much happier to work with grad students who had some sense of the value of the education they were getting, but the freshmen basically wanted to pay their tuition and say "I showed up for 90% of the lectures, so give me my A."
I've heard it said many times.
I don't agree though. I think most people who earn a degree are very practiced at the hands-on task of writing a paper including the keywords that the professor emphasized.
The claim that people "only" know the theory seems to imply that the theories are wrong. I favor the idea that many of the theories are actually useful, and if the students had bothered to actually learn the theory they'd have an easy time applying the knowledge. But instead, they've only practiced talking about the theory, which is a different thing than understanding it.
Do employers really want worker drones to have critical thinking skills?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
"College-educated, still dumb as a box of rocks."
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
They want programmable robots that will repeat the instructors mantras without hesitation or reservation.
Independent thinkers are quickly able to tell which instructors are full of shit and we can't have that now can we?
WTF? Clearly you didn't learn 'critical thinking' in College so maybe that proves your point BUT what the HECK do you think 'theory' is about? Here's my take:
1) How to create a theory - which needs critical thinking to surmise
2) How to USE a theory - which needs critical thinking to apply (when it can & can't be applied etc.)
3) How to CRITICIZE a theory to better understand where it breaks down.
All of these things require critical thinking. Trade schools may require SOME critical thinking but a plumber doesn't question the theory behind how household plumbing works, they just fix shit.
What he/she implies is not "theories are wrong", but it's only theories. literally, you learn mostly just theories.
Let's say we teach a kid about a tomato. We teach them that it's a fruit, it's part of the family Solanaceae, and it's called Solanum [I can't read] lycopersicum.
The kid learned a lot, but none of those directly lead to practical use. The kid more or less wouldn't know how to prepare the tomato for the salad.
College degrees are exactly like that. We learned everything about the tomato except the practical stuff. That's why it's only theories.
They are just in for the money. They don't care about teaching garbage or even invalid garbage. They just want the student's money and know that the dumber and simpler a class is, the better the chance that it will attract the lazy and self-entitle millennial.
In particular, I would be SHOCKED if Ivy league schools showed significant improvement in critical thinking.
I wouldn't be.
It's exactly the kind of thing they love their incoming students to already have, and the ivy league schools have gotten so selective that they can pick the students that already have that.
They definitely select mostly top level students, but even after the Ivies have filled their incoming ranks for the year, there are still plenty of smart and arguably equally qualified students going to other colleges and universities. No, the real value of an Ivy league education is not in the education. One just as good or better can be had at dozens of other top universities in the United States alone. The actual value of an Ivy league education is in the people you meet there and form networks with. It's how the children of the 1% are introduced to each other, cement their social connections and ensure the transfer of power to the next generation of the elites. Incidentally, this is one reason why attending an Ivy league university as a poor person on scholarship won't necessarily guarantee your entry into the 1%. These heirs and heiresses are able to spot and exclude pretenders from their social circles. So you may sit in the same classes as the children of the elites, but they won't accept you as one of them because they recognize your proletarian roots and either consciously or unconsciously exclude you.
That's unpossible!
The greatest generation, those who won WWII, after the war gave their children, The Baby Boomers, the best education they could. This included thinking about thinking.
At the end of the 60's, the powers that be, aghast at what free thinking really resulted in, vowed never to allow that to happen again.
This may sound trite, but this concept has been floating around since, I dunno, 1971. I was born in 1951, putting me in the early middle of baby boomer's. I noticed a big change between 1970 and around 1980. In 1970 and before a lot of talk of education was about improving the individual. By 1980 the emphasis was how education improved a person chances of getting a better paying job.
Recommended reading: Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument, Fearnside and Holther (1959)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1813837.Fallacy
For some reason the education system still live under the illusion that people actually learn anything useful using rote 'learning'. How in the world are you supposed to remember and use this information in a sensible way later on, when you have no context or practical relations to apply it to while studying?
Everyone should have critical thinking skills....
And yet it remains quite the rarity in humans, including those spat out from expensive universities with highly coveted reputations. What is common rather than rare? Self-delusion is commonplace. It crowds out critical thinking, since the two cannot coexist. Tribalism is comorbid with that self-delusion, and nurtures it to the detriment of critical thinking. The so-called top universities actually nurture tribalistic thinking. Critical thinking goes out the window more often than not; it's simply not the most useful survive-and-thrive skill in this over-populated highly tribalistic groupthink-dominated environment. Only certain roles in this civilization make well developed critical thinking a necessary mental discipline.
You rarely get what you pay for. That is capitalism for you.
Curious - what was your major? Most colleges if you're in a science type program, you either get it or you're going to be a non competitive major such as a journalist. Even business schools were known for kicking you out.
Of course, I haven't been in college in decades.
In particular, I would be SHOCKED if Ivy league schools showed significant improvement in critical thinking. It's exactly the kind of thing they love their incoming students to already have, and the ivy league schools have gotten so selective that they can pick the students that already have that.
From a critical thinking perspective, you're confusing a multi-valued quantity (a measure of critical thinking that can show "significant improvement") with a single-valued quantity ("already have that"). It's not even clear that critical thinking skills can be measured as a single quantity in a meaningful way. Let's assume that they can.
Very few people can be expected to have good critical thinking skills in high school, because very few high schools teach certain key courses that are especially useful in developing these skills (such as economics and the other social sciences, plus philosophy, argument, logic). This means there should be substantial room for improvement in college.
We might not be seeing that improvement, of course - but then again it might be there and we're simply relying in this discussion on a worthless measurement. It is very difficult to have good measurements in the social sciences.
Aside from considerations concerning whether we're measuring what we would like to measure, it is certainly the case that the existence of the publish-or-perish system casts doubt upon the capability of schools to teach critical thinking skills - after all, a critical assessment of this system would doubtless conclude that it is certainly unethical and possibly illegal (with respect to rights arising under the 9th Amendment), and we have to ask why people with good critical thinking skills are not doing anything to fix the system? If the professors don't have good critical thinking skills, then it would seem hard for them to be able to teach these skills.
As far as the publish-or-perish issue is concerned, the Ivy League school I attended didn't seem any better than the other schools I've been to (over many years of education leading to multiple Master's degrees). It's been my experience that about 20% of the instructors at any given school are competent at teaching, the others seem to have other priorities.
Large class sizes also tend to cast doubt on the capability of colleges to teach critical thinking skills. In a large class setting, the instructor has no good way to know how effective their communication is. The occasional test does not constitute a "good" way to know this - after all, the instructor needs a way to differentiate between the test as a measure of how effectively they are teaching versus the test as a measure of individual students.
In general, being a good teacher requires motivation on the part of the instructor, potentially training and feedback from other instructors, lots of time spent with a relatively small number of students, and a willingness to learn from their mistakes - testing is a very small (though useful) part of this. Here, again, Ivy League schools seem to have no advantage - if anything, most are at a disadvantage compared to the smaller schools.
Can we all agree that the vast majority of colleges? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Can we all agree that the news reports have very frequently been talking about how Trump voters are less educated?
So, now we see that all of these more educated people are lacking in critical thinking skills. Oh, the irony!
Just another day in Paradise
This lack starts before college as for many decades liberal arts has been trashed as having little value. Except, oh, it prepares one to think critically! Lack of critical thinking = group think and therein lies the problem.