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I'd slowly started to believe the cry that too many people are going to college. You've heard a lot of this over the last year, from people like Charles Murray, co-author of the Bell Curve. I'd started to believe, until I looked at the actual numbers. Of course I had to find them by accident instead of really looking, but the result is the same: I know now that too few Americans go to college, not too many. Massachusetts boasts a very high rate of BA or higher at 38% (22% BAs with 16% Grad or Professional Degrees and another 7% get an Associates degree). For the nation as a whole, that number is only 27% (17% BAs, plus 10% Grad or Professional Degrees).
So, that leaves two-thirds to three-quarters of our population undereducated. So, before we start erecting more barriers to education or looking for ways to get rid of the students who arrive unprepared for college because our public schools are failing our lower income students, why not see if we can actually do what we said we were going to do and have an educated population? That and more leisure time, much more leisure time, would be good.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
The Critical Thinking Shibboleth, or It matters what you think about
I've had a revelation: it matters about what you think critically. Maybe I'm slow to realize this and you, dear readers, knew it all along, but I find it to be a very profound insight. Or perhaps this is an act of translation from one way of thinking about a problem to another.
We all know what we in higher education are supposed to do to make the American economy competitive, to make the Massachusetts economy competitive: generate workers with the critical thinking skills and mental flexibility to be the high value workers of the future. That sounds good, but I've never really believed it. If an individual cannot turn critical thinking on and off, she will sink down a rabbit hole of despair. This is not some problem of false consciousness. It is a problem of mental exhaustion.
In fact, we want people who think critically about some things and not others. It is one thing to think critically about the current campaign to sell soap, but it is another thing entirely to think critically about the human experience, the nature of society, and the relationships of power within it. In other words, critical thinking is not a skill like being good with your hands; it is a skill that exists only in a context. Just as we cannot define life in the abstract -- we must point to examples -- we cannot describe critical thinking as an abstract skill because it is as much an attitudinal or emotional state as it is a rational one.
The chilling conclusion I have reached about the Massachusetts State Curriculum for History and Social Science is that we don't actually want students to think critically at all. The thrust of the curriculum is clear in the introductory remarks which state plainly that the goal is to acculturate students to a mythic America of "liberty, justice, and equality." The appearance of critical thinking within the curriculum is just that, an appearance with no reality.
Here, for example is one goal of the World History Curriculum that calls for students to analyze -- that is to examine in detail and draw conclusions about -- the causes and effects of Islamic expansion:
WHI.3 Analyze the causes, and course, and effects of Islamic expansion through North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Central Asia.
But of course the analysis is already done for them and the causes and effects are laid out simply:
A. the strength of the Islamic world’s economy and culture
B. the training of Muslim soldiers and the use of advanced military techniques
C. the disorganization and internal divisions of Islam’s enemies
D. the resistance and/or assimilation of Christianized peoples in the Mediterranean
So in fact the student's goal is to find out what ABC & D are and then put them into a coherent essay or identify them in a multiple choice test. That's an exercise in a certain kind of thinking to be sure, but critical it ain't.
We all know what we in higher education are supposed to do to make the American economy competitive, to make the Massachusetts economy competitive: generate workers with the critical thinking skills and mental flexibility to be the high value workers of the future. That sounds good, but I've never really believed it. If an individual cannot turn critical thinking on and off, she will sink down a rabbit hole of despair. This is not some problem of false consciousness. It is a problem of mental exhaustion.
In fact, we want people who think critically about some things and not others. It is one thing to think critically about the current campaign to sell soap, but it is another thing entirely to think critically about the human experience, the nature of society, and the relationships of power within it. In other words, critical thinking is not a skill like being good with your hands; it is a skill that exists only in a context. Just as we cannot define life in the abstract -- we must point to examples -- we cannot describe critical thinking as an abstract skill because it is as much an attitudinal or emotional state as it is a rational one.
The chilling conclusion I have reached about the Massachusetts State Curriculum for History and Social Science is that we don't actually want students to think critically at all. The thrust of the curriculum is clear in the introductory remarks which state plainly that the goal is to acculturate students to a mythic America of "liberty, justice, and equality." The appearance of critical thinking within the curriculum is just that, an appearance with no reality.
Here, for example is one goal of the World History Curriculum that calls for students to analyze -- that is to examine in detail and draw conclusions about -- the causes and effects of Islamic expansion:
WHI.3 Analyze the causes, and course, and effects of Islamic expansion through North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Central Asia.
But of course the analysis is already done for them and the causes and effects are laid out simply:
A. the strength of the Islamic world’s economy and culture
B. the training of Muslim soldiers and the use of advanced military techniques
C. the disorganization and internal divisions of Islam’s enemies
D. the resistance and/or assimilation of Christianized peoples in the Mediterranean
So in fact the student's goal is to find out what ABC & D are and then put them into a coherent essay or identify them in a multiple choice test. That's an exercise in a certain kind of thinking to be sure, but critical it ain't.
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