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Lots of reasons for this. Actual generally-applicable critical thinking ability is an exceptionally rare skill. So rare that I think it'd be damn difficult to

Lots of reasons for this. Actual generally-applicable critical thinking ability is an exceptionally rare skill. So rare that I think it'd be damn difficult to find faculty who could even start teaching it. I don't think most faculty come close to being solid critical thinkers. Whereas most beliefs are life-long emotional self-indulgence parties (my tribe good! their tribe bad!) critical thinking is a life-long struggle against your own lazy and thoughtless mind. It's very low-entropy so it takes intense, endless, focused effort to maintain, especially in a group. -- Another big impediment is that teaching critical thinking would go directly against many professors' big goal, which is to spread whatever memeplex controls their mind, because they think that's the biggest moral command for an educator. Higher education is now a political orthodoxy. Free-thinking, questioning of accepted ideas, and consideration of "dangerous" ideas are now often considered not just factually incorrect but morally incorrect. e.g. In the social sciences, professors lean the same direction politically in a ratio of 15 to 1 now. Students who speak or write against the orthodoxy become the victim of outgroup psychology and are punished socially, academically, and professionally. People notice when the purity spiral goes totally insane like at Evergreen recently, but this is a universal phenomenon at this point. The quiet damage of self-censorship is constant and massive, and destroys critical thinking education not just by ignoring critical thinking, but by actively teaching students wrong critical thinking and tricking them into believing it is critical thinking. They'd be better served with a pile of books and an anonymous Internet forum. There is some pushback from organizations like Heterodox Academy [1] but it remains scattered and ineffectual. Until the academy re-embraces freedom of speech, diversity of viewpoints, it'll continue to be a moralizing seminary school and thus will continue to teach to moral conclusions instead of teaching thinking methods. -- And the final reason that seems obvious is that most of the people in university these days just shouldn't be there. They're not mentally prepared for higher education; they don't have the IQ. It's like sending a blind person to a school of visual arts. But they're sent there because it sounds good in politics, provides false hope that everyone can become high status (the Lake Woebegone dream), and provides for the endless expansion of a very lucrative government-money-milking educational establishment through subsidized tuition. Education is in a sad state and a growing number of people think the model has to collapse and be replaced by a more decentralized model aided by technology (e.g. YouTube lectures, etc). [1] heterodoxacademy.org

jstewartmobile 9y ago
I always like to look at the items at the bottom since that's where best and the worst clump together. Thanks for sacrificing some HN points on this. You nailed it!
mowenz 9y ago
Every(?) top-level comment in this thread calling for reformation of education through te tech and decentralization is being downvoted. Many invested in academia here on HN, and "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it. "
tstactplsignore 9y ago
Our education system isn't perfect, but I'd prefer it endlessly to whatever it sounds like you want to do with it. >Actual generally-applicable critical thinking ability is an exceptionally rare skill. This isn't really a statement that can be attacked, nor a statement that can be defended - it's a non-sequitur. Clearly you are defining "critical thinking" however you'd like, and clearly you have some standard that determines whether someone has "that skill", but none of that is relevant or even worth discussing unless it can be defined, quantified, and your extraordinary statement backed up by some sort of testing. Until then it's just a nonsense phrase that belongs on r/IamVerySmart. >Another big impediment is that teaching critical thinking would go directly against many professors' big goal, which is to spread whatever memeplex controls their mind, because they think that's the biggest moral command for an educator. I'm sure if you major in political science or sociology, you will encounter some professors who have some sort of overarching political agenda and hope to convince students to agree with them on it. Whatever. This has no relationship to the actual experience of actual students in the real world. You live in an Internet dream world where kids go to college and talk politics 24/7 with marxist faculty. This isn't the truth for 95% of students. >e.g. In the social sciences, professors lean the same direction politically in a ratio of 15 to 1 now. What is the solution to this problem besides extreme affirmative action for conservatives? In my STEM field I know that finding a conservative faculty candidates would mean passing up 10 more qualified liberal faculty candidates. If you want to find a faculty member who is actually representative of American conservatives as a whole (doesn't believe in evolution or climate chnage), you would likely not be able to find one at all. It's difficult to see this as anything but an attempt to decimate the quality of university education while simultaneously forcing institutions to promote whatever your whacky ideology is. >People notice when the purity spiral goes totally insane like at Evergreen recently, but this is a universal phenomenon at this point. No, it is not - there have been < 10 similar incidents at colleges across the entire country in the past 5 years. These incidents last for a day, and are not even a minor inconvenience to the students and faculty who don't wish to be involved. Almost every student who goes to college these days has 1 hour of diversity training freshman year that teaches the basics of how not to be an asshole. Sometimes a few students have peaceful protests about things. Sometimes a few students write op-eds in their local school newspaper that nobody reads. Sometimes a few faculty sign a letter. Some students join College Democrats, some join College Republicans, some join College Libertarians, some join J Street, some join pro-Netenyahu clubs. All of these clubs exist at almost every university and almost universally students are not harassed or discouraged from being a part of any one of them. The overwhelming majority of students are apolitical and are able to peacefully ignore those who wish to be. It is EXTREMELY disturbing to me that you think that this state of affairs is too politically extreme - students at universities are more apolitical than ever. It makes it extraordinarily obvious that you live in an Internet bubble where you read a few too many articles about how awful liberal kids are these days and constantly circlejerk about it instead of paying attention to any real political issue of our day. >They'd be better served with a pile of books and an anonymous Internet forum. Nobody with a pile of books and an anonymous Internet forum is going to succeed in most fields. These don't teach how to interact with people in the real world. These don't teach networking, bench lab work, practical engineering design, or presentation skills - in other words, they won't prepare people for biology, chemistry, most engineering, business, law, medicine, or politics. >And the final reason that seems obvious is that most of the people in university these days just shouldn't be there. They're not mentally prepared for higher education; they don't have the IQ. This is absurd. A positive of the college system is how it is academically tiered - the lower level and community colleges exist for people who "aren't as mentally prepared" (won't even get into how ridiculous it is to say "they don't have the IQ"). I don't think it is an unreasonable goal for a society to expect 60-80% of its young people to spend 22 years learning instead of 18. I'm just going to say it: nothing you said was of value. Your issues are completely detached from what it is actually like to be a student and go to university and learn the basics on the path to become a doctor, engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, or lawyer. You present a fictional universe that has nothing to do with the reality of universities today. It is clear that you are extremely upset that a large number of people who work at universities have different political beliefs than you, and that you want to either cripple academia and/or force universities to promote your political ideology as a solution.

jstewartmobile 9y ago

I always like to look at the items at the bottom since that's where best and the worst clump together. Thanks for sacrificing some HN points on this. You nailed it!

mowenz 9y ago

Every(?) top-level comment in this thread calling for reformation of education through te tech and decentralization is being downvoted. Many invested in academia here on HN, and "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it. "

tstactplsignore 9y ago

Our education system isn't perfect, but I'd prefer it endlessly to whatever it sounds like you want to do with it. >Actual generally-applicable critical thinking ability is an exceptionally rare skill. This isn't really a statement that can be attacked, nor a statement that can be defended - it's a non-sequitur. Clearly you are defining "critical thinking" however you'd like, and clearly you have some standard that determines whether someone has "that skill", but none of that is relevant or even worth discussing unless it can be defined, quantified, and your extraordinary statement backed up by some sort of testing. Until then it's just a nonsense phrase that belongs on r/IamVerySmart. >Another big impediment is that teaching critical thinking would go directly against many professors' big goal, which is to spread whatever memeplex controls their mind, because they think that's the biggest moral command for an educator. I'm sure if you major in political science or sociology, you will encounter some professors who have some sort of overarching political agenda and hope to convince students to agree with them on it. Whatever. This has no relationship to the actual experience of actual students in the real world. You live in an Internet dream world where kids go to college and talk politics 24/7 with marxist faculty. This isn't the truth for 95% of students. >e.g. In the social sciences, professors lean the same direction politically in a ratio of 15 to 1 now. What is the solution to this problem besides extreme affirmative action for conservatives? In my STEM field I know that finding a conservative faculty candidates would mean passing up 10 more qualified liberal faculty candidates. If you want to find a faculty member who is actually representative of American conservatives as a whole (doesn't believe in evolution or climate chnage), you would likely not be able to find one at all. It's difficult to see this as anything but an attempt to decimate the quality of university education while simultaneously forcing institutions to promote whatever your whacky ideology is. >People notice when the purity spiral goes totally insane like at Evergreen recently, but this is a universal phenomenon at this point. No, it is not - there have been < 10 similar incidents at colleges across the entire country in the past 5 years. These incidents last for a day, and are not even a minor inconvenience to the students and faculty who don't wish to be involved. Almost every student who goes to college these days has 1 hour of diversity training freshman year that teaches the basics of how not to be an asshole. Sometimes a few students have peaceful protests about things. Sometimes a few students write op-eds in their local school newspaper that nobody reads. Sometimes a few faculty sign a letter. Some students join College Democrats, some join College Republicans, some join College Libertarians, some join J Street, some join pro-Netenyahu clubs. All of these clubs exist at almost every university and almost universally students are not harassed or discouraged from being a part of any one of them. The overwhelming majority of students are apolitical and are able to peacefully ignore those who wish to be. It is EXTREMELY disturbing to me that you think that this state of affairs is too politically extreme - students at universities are more apolitical than ever. It makes it extraordinarily obvious that you live in an Internet bubble where you read a few too many articles about how awful liberal kids are these days and constantly circlejerk about it instead of paying attention to any real political issue of our day. >They'd be better served with a pile of books and an anonymous Internet forum. Nobody with a pile of books and an anonymous Internet forum is going to succeed in most fields. These don't teach how to interact with people in the real world. These don't teach networking, bench lab work, practical engineering design, or presentation skills - in other words, they won't prepare people for biology, chemistry, most engineering, business, law, medicine, or politics. >And the final reason that seems obvious is that most of the people in university these days just shouldn't be there. They're not mentally prepared for higher education; they don't have the IQ. This is absurd. A positive of the college system is how it is academically tiered - the lower level and community colleges exist for people who "aren't as mentally prepared" (won't even get into how ridiculous it is to say "they don't have the IQ"). I don't think it is an unreasonable goal for a society to expect 60-80% of its young people to spend 22 years learning instead of 18. I'm just going to say it: nothing you said was of value. Your issues are completely detached from what it is actually like to be a student and go to university and learn the basics on the path to become a doctor, engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, or lawyer. You present a fictional universe that has nothing to do with the reality of universities today. It is clear that you are extremely upset that a large number of people who work at universities have different political beliefs than you, and that you want to either cripple academia and/or force universities to promote your political ideology as a solution.