6 ms·

People aren't going to learn to be skeptical or think critically because we've been literally removing that from the curriculum in schools. How can someone be s

People aren't going to learn to be skeptical or think critically because we've been literally removing that from the curriculum in schools. How can someone be skeptical of something if they don't even know how to be skeptical? Social media runs rampant with a form of skepticism, but I would call that closer to paranoia than critical thinking, and I don't think it's really being helpful in the same way.

skeeter2020 1y ago
>> Social media runs rampant with a form of skepticism, but I would call that closer to paranoia than critical thinking For my generation this was always refered to as a "healthy skepticism", but lately I've noticed many don't necessarily see this as a good trait - an example: any sort of measured, full-picture response to the impact of AI on software development.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  As usual, it's a spectrum. The pettiest example is one of Reddit, where you see some random cat video, and the comments all go "this is fake" or "this is posted by a bot" or "how could you do that, you're torturing the cat!". 1. They may all be true, but yiy gotta pick your battles at this point. If you think all of reddit is bots, what use is there complaining in every post 2. Healthy skepticism is supported by observation and findings. The internet as of late has grown lazy on that overall and people just throw out accusations without explanation. That definitely comes more off as paranoia at best, or bad faith at worst.
RankingMember 1y ago
I see this as directly correlated with the gradual denigration of liberal arts education, a core tenet of which is critical thinking.
- nradov 1y ago
  Liberal arts education leaders haven't been doing themselves any favors. During the recent COVID-19 pandemic we saw many college administrations abandon all critical thinking to enforce blind obedience and mandatory compliance with pointless and counterproductive policies around lockdowns and mandates. Scientists were condemned for daring to even discuss alternative views. I absolutely see value in classical liberal arts education. But popular denigration is inevitable when people see hypocritical academics casting aside true liberal thinking and using their platform to promote pernicious ideologies.
  - RankingMember 1y ago
    I think it's very easy to Monday morning quarterback administrative decisions about COVID-19 mitigation now that we're past it, when, at the time, we had very little information which led to a ton of hysteria. I'm not going to relitigate the COVID-19 pandemic response, but I will say I don't think it was inconsistent or ill-advised at all to err on the side of following national health guidance in an emergent situation like that. Even from a purely legal/lawsuit-aversion standpoint, you'd ignore federal guidance/mandates at your financial peril.
    - nradov 1y ago
      You're really missing the point. Many liberal arts college administrations went far beyond any sort of federal government guidance, and imposed lockdown and mandate policies with zero scientific basis. Or look how the Stanford University administration and fellow academics treated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya; that story was repeated at colleges all over the country. The level of hypocrisy and inconsistency makes it clear that they don't deserve any sort of benefit of the doubt. Classical liberal arts are wonderful, and have been a great benefit to all of humanity. But sadly many academics no longer live up to those ideals in thought, word, and deed. Instead they're more focused on indoctrination and political advocacy then a search for higher truth. If they want to restore public trust in liberal arts education then they need to start by reforming themselves. Otherwise no one will take them seriously, and many taxpayers will oppose public funding.
mrguyorama 1y ago
> because we've been literally removing that from the curriculum in schools Do you have any actual evidence of this or is this just more parroting of vibes based history? Most of the people I know who say things like "School didn't teach me X" were just not paying attention. Turns out, if your society doesn't care about or value education, kids aren't going to pay attention. Like, some states definitely have mediocre education in a lot of ways, but people will say shit like "Why didn't school teach me how to balance a checkbook" as if school didn't teach them basic arithmetic and the ability to read a single paper of instructions included in your checkbook by middle school. Or you have people saying "Why didn't school teach me how to understand a loan" as if they didn't learn algebra and how to plug a couple numbers into a calculator right next to me in class.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  The "vibes" are that the US government has been cutting funding from education since the 80's. I feel this is very well established, but if you really want a source I can fish up a few charts. As a fun fact, today we still spend about as much per student as we did in the 80's for university. The main difference is that funding cratered, so colleges need to make up for that out of pocket. >people will say shit like "Why didn't school teach me how to balance a checkbook" as if school didn't teach them basic arithmetic and the ability to read a single paper of instructions included in your checkbook by middle school. Not sure I agree with this interpretation. It's like responding to "why didn't they teach CS" with "well they taught you discrete math and binary". Specialized instruction on applied mathematics is well worth pursuing. It's arguably the big reason Al many students end up thinking "I'm bad at math". They get no context on what it's really used for.
  - Whoppertime 1y ago
    https://www.cato.org/blog/new-k-12-productivity-chart https://www.cato.org/blog/new-k-12-productivity-chart It's hard to believe that education is getting less funding. There seems to be a perception that spending more money on education will result in smarter students or higher test scores but that doesn't seem to be the case. Obviously if you spend $0 on education results will suffer, but there's a point of diminishing returns where $1 more in spending doesn't seem to have any impact on key metrics
Whoppertime 1y ago
I think contemporary events force people to be skeptical. For one generation it was the Vietnam War, the dissonance between what generals were saying and what was happening on the ground. Another generation had that happen with WMDs in Iraq. I think many in this generation had it happen with "2 weeks to flatten the curve" and the dissonance between promises made about COVID, the efficacy of lockdowns or the efficacy of vaccines.
jerf 1y ago
The system will never tell you how to escape from the system. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen. "Critical thinking" was never really taught in schools. It was always just training in how to dismiss any proposition by "criticizing" it selectively, with a heavy bias towards criticizing anything outside the system, and a token zone of approved disagreement to convince yourself that you really are free to disagree with things.
- lurk2 1y ago
  This is conspiratorial nonsense.
  - DHPersonal 1y ago
    It sounds very familiar to a fundamentalist Christian, taught in either private or home schools that fostered that sort of thinking.
    - nobody9999 1y ago
      >>This is conspiratorial nonsense. >It sounds very familiar to a fundamentalist Christian, taught in either private or home schools that fostered that sort of thinking. That's as may be, but it doesn't make it any less "conspiratorial nonsense," does it?
      - DHPersonal 1y ago
        Maybe. For some reason it seemed like a more poignant reply at the time, but now I see it doesn’t add much to the conversation. :)
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  Something I'd stumbled across a few years back: First, the universities were given the task of providing an unceasing supply of ideologically correct candidates for vital positions in government, church, and business. The state was able to make the faculties of the "venerable institutions" of higher education, or rather indoctrination, assume this duty because it controlled appointments and held the purse from which "emoluments" flowed into the coffers of academics. Hence the members of the university "hierarchy" made it their "business, the business for which they ... [were] paid," to "uphold certain political as well as religious opinions," namely those of the "ruling powers of the state" (J.S. Mill, Autobiography and Literary Essays, p. 429 (1981), J.S. Mill, Journals and Debating Speeches, p. 350. (1988) ). Thus the universities pursued with vigor their assignment to inculcate in their students those political and ideological views that were cherished by the power elite. The graduates of the ancient universities were, therefore, well prepared for employment in, and by, those institutions that were instrumental in perpetuating the existing maldistribution of income. All of this might come to naught, however, if the masses of the underclass should achieve anything approaching success in potential attempts at throwing off their fetters. The state devised a second educational strategy in order to prevent such a calamity from occurring. According to Mill, the "elementary schools for children of the working classes" were given the task of ensuring that the poor would continue to accept docilely their dismal station in life. It was very easy for the state to force the public schools to assume this role. It did so simply by failing malignantly to allocate sufficient funds for the operations of what Mill identified contemptuously as "places called schools" (J.S. Mill, Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, p.200; emphasis in original). These places were therefor understaffed. Moreover, the few teachers who were actually employed were completely "unfit for their work." The pupils therefore were so "wretchedly ill-taught" that they "did not ... even learn to read." And, said Mill with disgust, no attempt was "made to communicate ideas, or to call forth the mental faculties" of the children". (J.S. Mill, Public and Parliamentary Speeches, November 1850 - November 1868, p. 322 (1988). J.S. Mill, Essays on England Ireland, and the Empire, p. 200 (1982)). Hans E. Jensen, "John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution" <https://web.archive.org/web/20190828233020/http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110081599 https://web.archive.org/web/20190828233020/http://www.tandfo...>. Review of Social Economy. Pages 491-507. Published online: 05 Nov 2010. Previously noted: <https://web.archive.org/web/20190828233020/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_role_of_universities_and_primary_education/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190828233020/https://old.reddi...>

skeeter2020 1y ago

>> Social media runs rampant with a form of skepticism, but I would call that closer to paranoia than critical thinking For my generation this was always refered to as a "healthy skepticism", but lately I've noticed many don't necessarily see this as a good trait - an example: any sort of measured, full-picture response to the impact of AI on software development.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
johnnyanmac 1y ago
As usual, it's a spectrum. The pettiest example is one of Reddit, where you see some random cat video, and the comments all go "this is fake" or "this is posted by a bot" or "how could you do that, you're torturing the cat!". 1. They may all be true, but yiy gotta pick your battles at this point. If you think all of reddit is bots, what use is there complaining in every post 2. Healthy skepticism is supported by observation and findings. The internet as of late has grown lazy on that overall and people just throw out accusations without explanation. That definitely comes more off as paranoia at best, or bad faith at worst.

RankingMember 1y ago

I see this as directly correlated with the gradual denigration of liberal arts education, a core tenet of which is critical thinking.

nradov 1y ago
Liberal arts education leaders haven't been doing themselves any favors. During the recent COVID-19 pandemic we saw many college administrations abandon all critical thinking to enforce blind obedience and mandatory compliance with pointless and counterproductive policies around lockdowns and mandates. Scientists were condemned for daring to even discuss alternative views. I absolutely see value in classical liberal arts education. But popular denigration is inevitable when people see hypocritical academics casting aside true liberal thinking and using their platform to promote pernicious ideologies.
- RankingMember 1y ago
  I think it's very easy to Monday morning quarterback administrative decisions about COVID-19 mitigation now that we're past it, when, at the time, we had very little information which led to a ton of hysteria. I'm not going to relitigate the COVID-19 pandemic response, but I will say I don't think it was inconsistent or ill-advised at all to err on the side of following national health guidance in an emergent situation like that. Even from a purely legal/lawsuit-aversion standpoint, you'd ignore federal guidance/mandates at your financial peril.
  - nradov 1y ago
    You're really missing the point. Many liberal arts college administrations went far beyond any sort of federal government guidance, and imposed lockdown and mandate policies with zero scientific basis. Or look how the Stanford University administration and fellow academics treated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya; that story was repeated at colleges all over the country. The level of hypocrisy and inconsistency makes it clear that they don't deserve any sort of benefit of the doubt. Classical liberal arts are wonderful, and have been a great benefit to all of humanity. But sadly many academics no longer live up to those ideals in thought, word, and deed. Instead they're more focused on indoctrination and political advocacy then a search for higher truth. If they want to restore public trust in liberal arts education then they need to start by reforming themselves. Otherwise no one will take them seriously, and many taxpayers will oppose public funding.

mrguyorama 1y ago

> because we've been literally removing that from the curriculum in schools Do you have any actual evidence of this or is this just more parroting of vibes based history? Most of the people I know who say things like "School didn't teach me X" were just not paying attention. Turns out, if your society doesn't care about or value education, kids aren't going to pay attention. Like, some states definitely have mediocre education in a lot of ways, but people will say shit like "Why didn't school teach me how to balance a checkbook" as if school didn't teach them basic arithmetic and the ability to read a single paper of instructions included in your checkbook by middle school. Or you have people saying "Why didn't school teach me how to understand a loan" as if they didn't learn algebra and how to plug a couple numbers into a calculator right next to me in class.

johnnyanmac 1y ago
The "vibes" are that the US government has been cutting funding from education since the 80's. I feel this is very well established, but if you really want a source I can fish up a few charts. As a fun fact, today we still spend about as much per student as we did in the 80's for university. The main difference is that funding cratered, so colleges need to make up for that out of pocket. >people will say shit like "Why didn't school teach me how to balance a checkbook" as if school didn't teach them basic arithmetic and the ability to read a single paper of instructions included in your checkbook by middle school. Not sure I agree with this interpretation. It's like responding to "why didn't they teach CS" with "well they taught you discrete math and binary". Specialized instruction on applied mathematics is well worth pursuing. It's arguably the big reason Al many students end up thinking "I'm bad at math". They get no context on what it's really used for.
- Whoppertime 1y ago
  https://www.cato.org/blog/new-k-12-productivity-chart https://www.cato.org/blog/new-k-12-productivity-chart It's hard to believe that education is getting less funding. There seems to be a perception that spending more money on education will result in smarter students or higher test scores but that doesn't seem to be the case. Obviously if you spend $0 on education results will suffer, but there's a point of diminishing returns where $1 more in spending doesn't seem to have any impact on key metrics

Whoppertime 1y ago

I think contemporary events force people to be skeptical. For one generation it was the Vietnam War, the dissonance between what generals were saying and what was happening on the ground. Another generation had that happen with WMDs in Iraq. I think many in this generation had it happen with "2 weeks to flatten the curve" and the dissonance between promises made about COVID, the efficacy of lockdowns or the efficacy of vaccines.

jerf 1y ago

The system will never tell you how to escape from the system. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen. "Critical thinking" was never really taught in schools. It was always just training in how to dismiss any proposition by "criticizing" it selectively, with a heavy bias towards criticizing anything outside the system, and a token zone of approved disagreement to convince yourself that you really are free to disagree with things.

lurk2 1y ago
This is conspiratorial nonsense.
- DHPersonal 1y ago
  It sounds very familiar to a fundamentalist Christian, taught in either private or home schools that fostered that sort of thinking.
  - nobody9999 1y ago
    >>This is conspiratorial nonsense. >It sounds very familiar to a fundamentalist Christian, taught in either private or home schools that fostered that sort of thinking. That's as may be, but it doesn't make it any less "conspiratorial nonsense," does it?
    - DHPersonal 1y ago
      Maybe. For some reason it seemed like a more poignant reply at the time, but now I see it doesn’t add much to the conversation. :)
dredmorbius 1y ago
Something I'd stumbled across a few years back: First, the universities were given the task of providing an unceasing supply of ideologically correct candidates for vital positions in government, church, and business. The state was able to make the faculties of the "venerable institutions" of higher education, or rather indoctrination, assume this duty because it controlled appointments and held the purse from which "emoluments" flowed into the coffers of academics. Hence the members of the university "hierarchy" made it their "business, the business for which they ... [were] paid," to "uphold certain political as well as religious opinions," namely those of the "ruling powers of the state" (J.S. Mill, Autobiography and Literary Essays, p. 429 (1981), J.S. Mill, Journals and Debating Speeches, p. 350. (1988) ). Thus the universities pursued with vigor their assignment to inculcate in their students those political and ideological views that were cherished by the power elite. The graduates of the ancient universities were, therefore, well prepared for employment in, and by, those institutions that were instrumental in perpetuating the existing maldistribution of income. All of this might come to naught, however, if the masses of the underclass should achieve anything approaching success in potential attempts at throwing off their fetters. The state devised a second educational strategy in order to prevent such a calamity from occurring. According to Mill, the "elementary schools for children of the working classes" were given the task of ensuring that the poor would continue to accept docilely their dismal station in life. It was very easy for the state to force the public schools to assume this role. It did so simply by failing malignantly to allocate sufficient funds for the operations of what Mill identified contemptuously as "places called schools" (J.S. Mill, Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, p.200; emphasis in original). These places were therefor understaffed. Moreover, the few teachers who were actually employed were completely "unfit for their work." The pupils therefore were so "wretchedly ill-taught" that they "did not ... even learn to read." And, said Mill with disgust, no attempt was "made to communicate ideas, or to call forth the mental faculties" of the children". (J.S. Mill, Public and Parliamentary Speeches, November 1850 - November 1868, p. 322 (1988). J.S. Mill, Essays on England Ireland, and the Empire, p. 200 (1982)). Hans E. Jensen, "John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution" <https://web.archive.org/web/20190828233020/http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110081599 https://web.archive.org/web/20190828233020/http://www.tandfo...>. Review of Social Economy. Pages 491-507. Published online: 05 Nov 2010. Previously noted: <https://web.archive.org/web/20190828233020/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_role_of_universities_and_primary_education/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190828233020/https://old.reddi...>