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In my experience yes. Any time someone holds up a major and uses terms like 'critical thinking' or 'widens horizons' and they're not talking about a logic class

In my experience yes. Any time someone holds up a major and uses terms like 'critical thinking' or 'widens horizons' and they're not talking about a logic class they really mean hard left indoctrination.

gmarx 10y ago
Ha. Yeah, it's amazing how often people use this phrase when they mean "I find it illogical that people disagree with my politics". Actual critical thinking, a skeptical examination of assertions and data, tends to be called something else.
ghayes 10y ago
Wait, are you being serious? Can you explain that.. very broad statement?
- thescribe 10y ago
  So my experience is anecdote not data, but by the end of my time going to college any time a professor said "This class might be about <subject> but it is really about critical thinking" or "The point of education is to widen your horizons" the class was just chalked full of the same unchallenged, easily repeatable Marxist or hard left ideas.
  - coliveira 10y ago
    What do you mean by unchallenged? Marxist ideas are challenged every day, almost everywhere you go. Now, even if they are wrong (I am not going to enter into this discussion), studying them would increase your critical thinking abilities in trying to disprove them. So, the professor was right all along!
    - throwawaysocks 10y ago
      That largely depends on the depth of the engagement. Reading Das Kapital should be an exercise in critical thinking, regardless of one's political persuasion. For example, where in the software industry is the labor theory of value a reasonable model? Where is it not reasonable? Why? Answering these questions requires what any reasonable person would call critical thinking. Conversely, hearing a bunch of passionate lectures about worker's rights movements is considerably less enlightening...
      - coliveira 10y ago
        I don't see any problem with passionate lectures about worker's rights movement. In college I also heard passionate lectures about the marvel of free markets, and had to endure them. Different professors have different persuasions and that is all right, they're not trying to fool anyone. It is up to each one to form his or her personal views of the world, and use the information they get from history and philosophy to enlarge these views.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      By "unchallenged", I presume thescribe means that the professor gave only the pro-Marx side of the story, and gave it as if it were The Truth. They called it critical thinking, but it was really just propaganda.
      - coliveira 10y ago
        I understood exactly what he said. But any college student knows fully well that there's nothing that is The Truth in a class, after all this is not a church. I believe that if the professor presented only the pro-Marx side of the story this is just fine, after all, this is America, everyone knows the other side of the story. For the professor to present the arguments anti-Marx in his class would in fact be just the opposite: capitalist indoctrination, where you would be lead to believe that Marx was really wrong and capitalism is the only "correct" system.
        AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        > I believe that if the professor presented only the pro-Marx side of the story this is just fine, after all, this is America, everyone knows the other side of the story. That's probably true. > For the professor to present the arguments anti-Marx in his class would in fact be just the opposite: capitalist indoctrination, where you would be lead to believe that Marx was really wrong and capitalism is the only "correct" system. Also probably true. The problem, though, is that the professor is only presenting the Marx side, while claiming to teach critical thinking. That's not critical thinking! Critical thinking means criticizing both sides. Now, if the professor wanted to teach the Marx side "as a balance to what everybody else says", that's OK too. The problem is the one-side-only combined with the claim of "critical thinking".
  - cortesoft 10y ago
    So a handful of professors at a single university lead you to make a statement about "any time someone" does something? I think you probably need to take a few more courses that will help your critical thinking ;)
    - thescribe 10y ago
      That's completely fair I was too broad.
cortesoft 10y ago
I don't think my Philosophy degree was hard left indoctrination.... and not all of my philosophy classes were logic class.
- thescribe 10y ago
  That's fair I was far too broad.
wutbrodo 10y ago
It's not clear from your comment whether you're assuming history is like this because of your experience with other majors or whether you have experience with history in particular being like this. If it's the latter, can you give some concrete examples? I'm genuinely pretty curious because all my experiences with post-secondary academic history have been unusually non-partisan (compared to many/most other social sciences). If it's the former...well honestly that's just silly. Just because it's a favorite tactic of the left to claim that anything contrarian is critical thinking doesn't mean the converse is true (i.e. that anything labeled critical thinking is on the hard left). I find the claim particularly dubious for history: if you really squint and try to label it as partisan, it seems just as likely to me that it would seem right-ish than that it would seem left-ish. The discovery students make in the postsecondary study of history that historiography exists is one of the linchpins of history's alignment with critical thinking: instead of reading sources (and historians) as bearers of incontrovertible truth, you realize that they make up a best-effort account of facts subject to things like lack of information, blind spots, etc. This is fundamentally similar to not blindly trusting academic and scientific authority, a view which dovetails neatly with both the contemporary and historical right[1] (the latter case including opposition to things like high modernism on the left). It's true that a level of distrust of status quo knowledge exists on the left as well (e.g. post-modernism), but that just reinforces my point that it's not fundamentally partisan. [1] This isn't a commentary on which approach is better, but I hardly think it's controversial that the idea that scientific facts are set hard in stone and you're simply flat wrong if you question them is far more common on the left at the moment than on the right. Skepticism of academia and the scientific establishment consists both of 1) anti-intellectual "scientists are all scammers" and 2) a sober-minded recognition of the limitations of the scientific method and the attendant belief that progress based on scientific knowledge should have some brakes built in.
- thescribe 10y ago
  Sorry, I think my statement appeared a little too broadly. I'll try to re-state it. In my experience, outside of hard science every one of my professors who was fond the phrase 'critical thinking' was pushing marxism hard, including several history professors I had. I'm not trying to state that history is hard left overall. Just that if I heard the phrase 'critical thinking' I should prep for a long lecture on worker alienation or class struggle.

gmarx 10y ago

Ha. Yeah, it's amazing how often people use this phrase when they mean "I find it illogical that people disagree with my politics". Actual critical thinking, a skeptical examination of assertions and data, tends to be called something else.

ghayes 10y ago

Wait, are you being serious? Can you explain that.. very broad statement?

thescribe 10y ago
So my experience is anecdote not data, but by the end of my time going to college any time a professor said "This class might be about <subject> but it is really about critical thinking" or "The point of education is to widen your horizons" the class was just chalked full of the same unchallenged, easily repeatable Marxist or hard left ideas.
- coliveira 10y ago
  What do you mean by unchallenged? Marxist ideas are challenged every day, almost everywhere you go. Now, even if they are wrong (I am not going to enter into this discussion), studying them would increase your critical thinking abilities in trying to disprove them. So, the professor was right all along!
  - throwawaysocks 10y ago
    That largely depends on the depth of the engagement. Reading Das Kapital should be an exercise in critical thinking, regardless of one's political persuasion. For example, where in the software industry is the labor theory of value a reasonable model? Where is it not reasonable? Why? Answering these questions requires what any reasonable person would call critical thinking. Conversely, hearing a bunch of passionate lectures about worker's rights movements is considerably less enlightening...
    - coliveira 10y ago
      I don't see any problem with passionate lectures about worker's rights movement. In college I also heard passionate lectures about the marvel of free markets, and had to endure them. Different professors have different persuasions and that is all right, they're not trying to fool anyone. It is up to each one to form his or her personal views of the world, and use the information they get from history and philosophy to enlarge these views.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    By "unchallenged", I presume thescribe means that the professor gave only the pro-Marx side of the story, and gave it as if it were The Truth. They called it critical thinking, but it was really just propaganda.
    - coliveira 10y ago
      I understood exactly what he said. But any college student knows fully well that there's nothing that is The Truth in a class, after all this is not a church. I believe that if the professor presented only the pro-Marx side of the story this is just fine, after all, this is America, everyone knows the other side of the story. For the professor to present the arguments anti-Marx in his class would in fact be just the opposite: capitalist indoctrination, where you would be lead to believe that Marx was really wrong and capitalism is the only "correct" system.
      - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        > I believe that if the professor presented only the pro-Marx side of the story this is just fine, after all, this is America, everyone knows the other side of the story. That's probably true. > For the professor to present the arguments anti-Marx in his class would in fact be just the opposite: capitalist indoctrination, where you would be lead to believe that Marx was really wrong and capitalism is the only "correct" system. Also probably true. The problem, though, is that the professor is only presenting the Marx side, while claiming to teach critical thinking. That's not critical thinking! Critical thinking means criticizing both sides. Now, if the professor wanted to teach the Marx side "as a balance to what everybody else says", that's OK too. The problem is the one-side-only combined with the claim of "critical thinking".
- cortesoft 10y ago
  So a handful of professors at a single university lead you to make a statement about "any time someone" does something? I think you probably need to take a few more courses that will help your critical thinking ;)
  - thescribe 10y ago
    That's completely fair I was too broad.

cortesoft 10y ago

I don't think my Philosophy degree was hard left indoctrination.... and not all of my philosophy classes were logic class.

thescribe 10y ago
That's fair I was far too broad.

wutbrodo 10y ago

It's not clear from your comment whether you're assuming history is like this because of your experience with other majors or whether you have experience with history in particular being like this. If it's the latter, can you give some concrete examples? I'm genuinely pretty curious because all my experiences with post-secondary academic history have been unusually non-partisan (compared to many/most other social sciences). If it's the former...well honestly that's just silly. Just because it's a favorite tactic of the left to claim that anything contrarian is critical thinking doesn't mean the converse is true (i.e. that anything labeled critical thinking is on the hard left). I find the claim particularly dubious for history: if you really squint and try to label it as partisan, it seems just as likely to me that it would seem right-ish than that it would seem left-ish. The discovery students make in the postsecondary study of history that historiography exists is one of the linchpins of history's alignment with critical thinking: instead of reading sources (and historians) as bearers of incontrovertible truth, you realize that they make up a best-effort account of facts subject to things like lack of information, blind spots, etc. This is fundamentally similar to not blindly trusting academic and scientific authority, a view which dovetails neatly with both the contemporary and historical right[1] (the latter case including opposition to things like high modernism on the left). It's true that a level of distrust of status quo knowledge exists on the left as well (e.g. post-modernism), but that just reinforces my point that it's not fundamentally partisan. [1] This isn't a commentary on which approach is better, but I hardly think it's controversial that the idea that scientific facts are set hard in stone and you're simply flat wrong if you question them is far more common on the left at the moment than on the right. Skepticism of academia and the scientific establishment consists both of 1) anti-intellectual "scientists are all scammers" and 2) a sober-minded recognition of the limitations of the scientific method and the attendant belief that progress based on scientific knowledge should have some brakes built in.

thescribe 10y ago
Sorry, I think my statement appeared a little too broadly. I'll try to re-state it. In my experience, outside of hard science every one of my professors who was fond the phrase 'critical thinking' was pushing marxism hard, including several history professors I had. I'm not trying to state that history is hard left overall. Just that if I heard the phrase 'critical thinking' I should prep for a long lecture on worker alienation or class struggle.