Long before I got into the education business I would hear lots about critical thinking, and how there is seemingly a dearth of thought on high school and college campuses. To be honest, I imagine that there are a lot of small initiatives (by individual teachers) all over the country which are making some progress, but taken as a whole, we don’t seem to have made any real progress.

As you might be able to see from the links below, there are plenty of very good reasons for us to focus upon developing these skills. As with the plagiarism post I put up a few days ago, there is quite a lot of buzz and discussion in the education community on these sorts of issues, which could be better described as a lot of heat and very little light.

There are those who think that a ‘classical curriculum’ will solve our seeming cognition gap. There are those who think that we need to make what we teach more rigorous, that we should be impelling students to take logic classes, or more math classes, or any other apparent ‘quick fix’.

I find this topic correlates to the growing number of articles covering the apparent fact that incoming freshmen are less and less prepared for the intellectual rigors of taking undergraduate classes.

This is looking like middle and high schools across the country (taken in the aggregate) are failing to accomplish what we all assumed they could (i.e. to teach our children).

The education establishment seems to spend most of its time wallowing in victimology or educational psychology as the core with which we can fix out predicament. I find this a bit disingenuous, since on other topics, when pushed, these same spokespeople push many of these same problems back upon the families of the students.

There is a lot of truth in this. This is also quite unfortunate, since it doesn’t allow for easy fixes (such as throwing money at the problem).

In any case, the idea that students should learn how to think is something which I can see as a central focus to many of the shortcomings in our schools. You might note that I didn’t use the terms critical thinking, creative thinking, or problem solving ability. Maybe you could consider this a personal vagary, in that these terms have been so over used, and applied to so many misbegotten initiatives that I merely think that students should learn some of the basics of thinking.

There are some basic directions that this could go (i.e. learning how to think…). For instance, some of the directions which might have some validity would be:

· Take mathematics (logic classes)…sadly a big turn of for most of today’s students

· Use the Socratic method of focused questioning of students. This is more effective in smaller groups.

· Teach classical Rhetoric (it worked in the middle ages, and was part of the Trivium!)

All of these methods require a lot of teacher involvement and direction from the teacher…To be honest, this sounds like a weak link, in that there are profound differences in teachers and their methods. But, luckily, I’ve found another method which might have some real value…thunks .

British author Ian Gilbert has a number of books out which deal with ‘thunks’ (this is his term for ‘questions which make your brain go “ouch”). In essence these questions form what might be seen as Zen Koans for learning how to think. The interesting thing for me is that thunks are about the questions instead of the answers (an idea near to my heart), this means that the answers aren’t so important as the process with which you came to the answer.

Here are a few:

· Is there more future or past?

· If I switch the lights off does the wall change color?

· Can you touch the wind?

· Is a broken down car parked?

· Is there more happiness or sadness in the world?

· Can you feel happy and sad at the same time?

· If we borrow every single book from a library is it still a library?

· If we move the entire school and everything and everybody in it to Africa would it still be the same school?

· Does lined paper weigh more than blank paper?

Some teachers have described these thunks as thought hand grenades… In any case, simply presenting one of these questions to a middle school class would allow the students to try to think through their own answers, without the teacher having to wade into Socratic methods or to have to impel students to learn Rhetorical terms…just try to think.

Thunks

http://www.independentthinking.co.uk/Cool+Stuff/Thunks/default.aspx

Drop GCSEs. We should be teaching our children to think | Peter Hyman | Comment is free | The Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/16/peter-hyman-education-teaching-exams

Do we really only need to teach rhetoric and critical thinking?

http://wordmunger.com/?p=421

Why Teach Thinking? – education system

http://www.education-system.tk/983980-Why-Teach-Thinking.html

How To Teach Thinking, by Jean Edwards – ThinkShop: thinking skills resources

http://www.thinkshop.org/howto-freepage.html

Rethinking thinking / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1014/p18s01-lehl.html

How To Teach Students Critical Thinking Skills | How To Do Things.com

http://www.howtodothings.com/education/a2923-how-to-teach-students-critical-thinking-skills.html

An Introduction to Critical Thinking

http://www.freeinquiry.com/critical-thinking.html

How Can We Teach Critical Thinking? ERIC Digest.

http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9218/critical.htm

Amazon.com: Thunk: Books

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3AThunk&page=1

Ian Gilbert – Authors – Ewelike

http://norr.is/authors/Ian+Gilbert

Letters – How to Restrain Soaring College Costs – NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/opinion/l21college.html?_r=1

Letter – Critical Thinking in Schools – NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/opinion/lweb21schools.html

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