[Civsoc-mw] On Critical Thinking 🤔

[Tony Thontholani]

@ Johann writes:

Everywhere we turn these days, we hear that colleges are not teaching “critical thinking.” Employers want critical thinkers, but they cannot find them. Entire books conclude that colleges have failed to increase students’ critical thinking. Nicholas Lemann, former dean of Columbia’s School of Journalism, urges colleges to foreground method, not content, in their general education programs. Many high-profile reformers agree that professors too often focus on “content” over “skills,” thus failing to prepare students to be learners.

Advocates of critical thinking contrast thinking critically with learning knowledge. College professors, they proclaim, teach a bunch of stuff (facts, dates, formulae) that students don’t need and won’t use. Instead, students need to have intellectual and cognitive skills. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has proclaimed, “the world doesn’t care anymore what you know” but “what you can do.”


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