Interesting article on critical thinking

[EKS]

https://quillette.com/2022/12/25/critical-thinking-reverential-thinking-and-lashing-out/

The trend of getting students to think critically by going "against the grain" before they even know what the grain is should be abolished.  

[Clarita]

I agree that students should start with having the knowledge first before being encouraged to look at something critically. The article though infers a certain timeframe where kids graduate to some point where they can begin the question things. That I don't completely agree with.

I mean a 2nd grader could have enough knowledge in counting to start asking why/how does borrowing and carrying work. 

[Nichola]

While I don’t agree with everything in the article, I think he makes some good points about teaching tradition and reverence. Something he doesn’t address that I think is connected to this is humility. Having a reverence for what has come before you generates humbleness, which is necessary for true learning to take place. Similarly, teaching students to be critical of something before they really understand it will produce arrogance, which makes learning more difficult. If students think they know enough about a particular field to criticize it, they aren’t going to be as receptive to foundational instruction about it.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Nichola

[Sneezyone]

'Reverence', a term I reserve for holy/religious things, is not the same as appreciation for or acknowledgment of what has gone before. I also don't find the uncritical assessment/acceptance of tradition as a good unto itself. I do think historical knowledge is an important thing to have before critiquing its lessons and modern consequences but I've never applied that to household rules like, "Don't hit your brother." Abolish is a strong word. I can think of a handful of prohibitions I support and this ain't it.

Edited December 28, 2022 by Sneezyone

[EKS]

9 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

Abolish is a strong word. 

Sorry I didn't use the perfect word.  How about "avoided"?

I honestly find getting mired down in word choices rather than engaging with the larger picture to be tiresome.

Edited December 28, 2022 by EKS

[LauraClark]

"Beginning a course with such texts can inspire contempt, dampen students’ enthusiasm, and promote a smug, dismissive attitude.". 

I absolutely find this to be true. I think, also, that the tone of how things are taught means a great deal. Teaching race atrocities with an air of great sadness vs teaching it in words like "I'm rolling my eyes when people tell me Thanksgiving is about family and not genocide" (not my sentiments, but stuff I've seen on FB recently) makes a HUGE difference. I want my children to be heartbroken about injustice and hurt, not cynical. Timing it right and using the right teaching tone should be combined.

[8filltheheart]

I find the article and really anyone who defines the development of critical thinking skills as being focused on critiquing or criticizing as having a limited understanding of how critical thinking skills are developed.  In terms of Bloom's taxonomy, higher order thinking skills are built on the foundation of lower order thinking skills (essentially what that article is stating).  But, to claim that criticizing is the objective of critical thinking misses the actual point and educators who are focused on "criticism" are not teaching critical thinking skills based on any standard definition that has existed for well over 1/2 a century. 

"Critical thinking skills are an integral part of both higher and lower order thinking as defined by Bloom. Critical thinking itself is defined as having two components: 1) skills to generate information (lower order thinking) and 2) using those skills to guide behavior (higher order thinking). Critically thinking about a set of facts or other information in order to make an informed decision requires the thinker to go through the six levels of cognitive thinking defined by Bloom: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation."

The goal of critical thinking should be to evaluate information using fully developed lower skills.

Edited December 29, 2022 by 8filltheheart

[mathmarm]

I only browsed the article, but I'm glad that more mainstream educators are thinking about and discussing the need to correcting the Pendulum Swing  in Education away from Knowledge to Thinking. Or at least talking about how there needs to be a thoughtful balancing of the two.

Obviously, a person can't think critically when they have no knowledge to think with or think about. It's a little hard to understand how this is even "news" to anyone who's been in education for a couple of days is a little unsettling.

Talking about teaching "critical thinking" ignores the fact that a human being is naturally always thinking and will naturally think about whatever knowledge, experiences, skills and materials that they have access to and will look for connections between what the know when faced with a normal everyday problem.

Just watching a toddler solve the problem of getting something that's out of reach--they'll use whatever tools that they have access to to either knock it down to the their level or get up to the prizes level.

Trying to lay a foundation with "critical thinking" instead of "knowledge and skills"has always been a "cart before the horse" type of thing.

[Nichola]

3 hours ago, 8filltheheart said:

I find the article and really anyone who defines the development of critical thinking skills as being focused on critiquing or criticizing as having a limited understanding of how critical thinking skills are developed.  In terms of Bloom's taxonomy, higher order thinking skills are built on the foundation of lower order thinking skills (essentially what that article is stating).  But, to claim that criticizing is the objective of critical thinking misses the actual point and educators who are focused on "criticism" are not teaching critical thinking skills based on any standard definition that has existed for well over 1/2 a century. 

"Critical thinking skills are an integral part of both higher and lower order thinking as defined by Bloom. Critical thinking itself is defined as having two components: 1) skills to generate information (lower order thinking) and 2) using those skills to guide behavior (higher order thinking). Critically thinking about a set of facts or other information in order to make an informed decision requires the thinker to go through the six levels of cognitive thinking defined by Bloom: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation."

The goal of critical thinking should be to evaluate information using fully developed lower skills.

This is a good point. It is different from what many people seem to mean when they talk about critical thinking today. I think they usually equate it with criticism in some way. I tend to have negative feelings about the term critical thinking myself because I usually see it used in a way that means kids are being taught to pick apart something they don’t understand. Or they’re being asked to give opinions about complex topics before they have a mature understanding of them. 

I think I liked the term “reverential thinking” in the article because it seemed to me that it was acknowledging the human need to feel wonder and awe for something outside of ourselves, whether we find it in music, math, art, nature, etc., rather than focusing on the child’s judgement of those things. I realize this isn’t the same thing as the definition of critical thinking that you gave though; it’s just a pushback against the way “critical thinking” is currently being interpreted. 

[Xahm]

A lot of what's in this article is good, but I always get suspicious. I totally agree that kids should be taught reverence, but it gets a little murky when we discuss what they should revere. So many times I've seen books and other educational media make horribly dismissive statements towards other cultures and religions while displaying an extreme level of  reverence towards their own culture. I understand that it's hard to present multiple contradicting ideas to children in a reverential way. The adults involved must have done the work of real critical thinking, and be continuing to do that work.  With my own kids I try to present the "big questions" and our human attempts to answer them over the centuries as part of what we revere. A few curricula are helpful in this, but I tend to find most homeschool curricula to be lacking in this regard, either revering certain ideas without evidence of critical thinking on the author's part or else highly reactionary to that and trying to push the "things I wish I'd learned in high school and college" into an introductory course.

[EKS]

I think that the author's use of the term "reverence" distracts from the larger point he is making, or that I would like him to be making.  That point is that if an idea is pushing back against a mainstream idea or knowledge or doctrine (going against the grain), you need to know what that idea or knowledge or doctrine (the grain) is.  And having appreciation for what that idea or knowledge or doctrine brings to the table is also key, as being able to hold what is good (for lack of a better term) about both with-the-grain and against-the-grain thinking is the first step towards being able to deal with nuance, which is an ability that seems to be in precious short supply these days!

Edited December 30, 2022 by EKS

[Sneezyone]

17 minutes ago, EKS said:

I think that the author's use of the term "reverence" distracts from the larger point he is making, or that I would like him to be making.  That point is that if an idea is pushing back against mainstream idea or knowledge or doctrine (going against the grain), you need to know what that idea or knowledge or doctrine (the grain) is.  And having appreciation for what that idea or knowledge or doctrine brings to the table is also key, as being able to hold what is good (for lack of a better term) about both with-the-grain and against-the-grain thinking is the first step towards being able to deal with nuance, which is an ability that seems to be in precious short supply these days!

This isn’t getting mired in word choices? Asking for a friend. 🤷🏽‍♀️

[Sneezyone]

2 hours ago, Xahm said:

A lot of what's in this article is good, but I always get suspicious. I totally agree that kids should be taught reverence, but it gets a little murky when we discuss what they should revere. So many times I've seen books and other educational media make horribly dismissive statements towards other cultures and religions while displaying an extreme level of  reverence towards their own culture. I understand that it's hard to present multiple contradicting ideas to children in a reverential way. The adults involved must have done the work of real critical thinking, and be continuing to do that work.  With my own kids I try to present the "big questions" and our human attempts to answer them over the centuries as part of what we revere. A few curricula are helpful in this, but I tend to find most homeschool curricula to be lacking in this regard, either revering certain ideas without evidence of critical thinking on the author's part or else highly reactionary to that and trying to push the "things I wish I'd learned in high school and college" into an introductory course.

This is thought provoking for me. Maybe I have an aversion to the term reverence in general but the way it’s typically used is with the intention of forestalling critiques based on different understandings of/perspectives on what has gone on before. It implies giving deference to old information by reflex. Nothing about the development of core knowledge troubles me. The circumscription of what counts as core knowledge does.

Prioritizing challenge and questioning is something I value. I just can’t can’t bring myself to apply revere to it.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Sneezyone

[EKS]

1 hour ago, Sneezyone said:

This isn’t getting mired in word choices? Asking for a friend. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I know, right? 🤣

[Clarita]

1 hour ago, EKS said:

I think that the author's use of the term "reverence" distracts from the larger point he is making, or that I would like him to be making.  That point is that if an idea is pushing back against a mainstream idea or knowledge or doctrine (going against the grain), you need to know what that idea or knowledge or doctrine (the grain) is.  And having appreciation for what that idea or knowledge or doctrine brings to the table is also key, as being able to hold what is good (for lack of a better term) about both with-the-grain and against-the-grain thinking is the first step towards being able to deal with nuance, which is an ability that seems to be in precious short supply these days!

I do have a hard time reading past his word choices like reverence, worship, and cherish. I don't know if he really believes we should at that level of appreciation or he's just trying to use eye-catching verbiage. I can agree on appreciation and comprehension but not to the extent of reverence.