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>"Teaching critical thinking at schools" This is everyone's go-to answer, probably because it seems like an obvious magic-bullet solution. If only we taught cr

>"Teaching critical thinking at schools" This is everyone's go-to answer, probably because it seems like an obvious magic-bullet solution. If only we taught critical thinking, people would actually act intelligently as adults! I must ask, is it really the case that critical thinking isn't being taught in schools today? The idea of teaching people how to think critically isn't some revolutionary new concept, this has been around since antiquity. I suspect the answer is that despite trying to teach critical thinking skills, we are all still human and fall back to relying on our cognitive biases. I sense the problem of "making" critical thinkers is just as hard as teaching kids to be healthy. "If only we taught children to eat healthy and exercise in schools"

jl2718 5y ago
Yes; it is. Teacher tells students something. Student is physically restricted from continuing on their life path until they memorize and repeat it as a belief, over and over again. Critical thinking would be like: - how can this be disproven? - what is inconsistent about this story? - what physical evidence would exist if this were true? - what sources can you find that contradict this explanation? - is [historical character] a believable person? Could this have happened with the normal people that you know today? But this is probably not what they have in mind. It seems they want everybody to accept what is written in their textbooks, and ignore other sources. Unfortunately, nearly everything in them is objectively untrue, greatly exaggerated, or over-simplified. How do I know this? Do I know the ‘real’ truth? I don’t, and that’s precisely why it works, but somehow every expert in every field will be the first to tell you that the textbook got it completely wrong for their discipline, and of course it was correct everywhere else. Oh and by the way, the other experts from the slightly-differentiated field are even more wrong.

jl2718 5y ago

Yes; it is. Teacher tells students something. Student is physically restricted from continuing on their life path until they memorize and repeat it as a belief, over and over again. Critical thinking would be like: - how can this be disproven? - what is inconsistent about this story? - what physical evidence would exist if this were true? - what sources can you find that contradict this explanation? - is [historical character] a believable person? Could this have happened with the normal people that you know today? But this is probably not what they have in mind. It seems they want everybody to accept what is written in their textbooks, and ignore other sources. Unfortunately, nearly everything in them is objectively untrue, greatly exaggerated, or over-simplified. How do I know this? Do I know the ‘real’ truth? I don’t, and that’s precisely why it works, but somehow every expert in every field will be the first to tell you that the textbook got it completely wrong for their discipline, and of course it was correct everywhere else. Oh and by the way, the other experts from the slightly-differentiated field are even more wrong.