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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.
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.
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').
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.
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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.
Just understanding the laws of physics gives any STEM grad a huge advantage over a liberal arts students in bullshit detection.
Critical thinking in liberal arts schools is just another indoctrination. Test is how well they agree with the teachers opinions.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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Critical thinking is not a part of STEM.
I hear this a fair amount, and am puzzled. As a physics professor, I'm trying to teach students problem solving skills (usually the engineering and science students). As an astronomy professor, I'm trying to teach students (usually the non-scientists taking the survey astro courses) how to apply the scientific method to figure out what's going on up there and have a functioning BS detector when it comes to pseudoscience.
The definitions I've heard of this "Critical Thinking" meme seem to indicate that these are the sort "top of the learning pyramid" skills that go with "Critical Thinking", but somehow science remains a mindless technical skill in the eyes of many.
So your evidence is a blog and people (business and nonprofit PHBs) claiming the same education they have is the best?
Doesn't speak well of your critical thinking skills.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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