> It might be a good time to bring back critical thinking to the education curriculum. I see that as the only real solution
Contrary to the popular view, I don't think people in general lack critical thinking skills. When confronted with something that they don't want to believe, even the dullest and least educated among us are great at finding every single flaw in the argument. It's only when they're confronted with something that they want to believe that these skills fall apart.
What people are bad at is not critical thinking skills, but critical thinking discipline. It takes real discipline to apply the same standards to everything whether you want to believe it or not, and I don't know many people who are up to it. Unfortunately like most virtues it's not something easily taught.
> it is by no means clear that critical thinking is a coherent skill that is readily taught.
I agree with this...in so much as its not teachable in a traditional classroom setting. I think public pressure on universities is why there are so many programs that require a crappy 1 Saturday = 1 Credit Hour critical thinking course -- most of which amount to "think carefully about things".
I think teaching/learning critical thinking requires constant slow exposure to it and a commitment from the "teacher" to ferret out bad thinking over long periods of time. It requires exposure to hundreds, if not thousands, of real world scenarios so that the application of this kind of rational thought can be learned.
The hardest part is not falling back into the kind of irrational thinking that came before learning critical thought...it's a discipline and it needs to be cultivated and practiced over long periods of time.
> In my view critical thinking without constructive thinking is as big a problem as no critical thinking.
I disagree. I see critical thinking as a prerequisite for constructive thinking. Without the ability to identify problems, you can't offer solutions.
I and many fellow students in grad school went through exactly this evolution. First, you are taught to be critical and skeptical of everything. But at some point, you realize you can't get anything done in your own research if you are constantly skeptical of everything, so you learn how to find "good enough" solutions to tough problems.
So WRT society, I think it could use a healthy dose of critical thinking, because it suffers from the same problem. People can't identify good arguments, so they don't know they even need better ones.
>"invest in education, and give people the ability to spend 30 extra seconds critically thinking about the information they see and where it came from "
People have been demanding we teach critical thinking in education for decades. And it's not like teacher's haven't been trying to get people to think critically all this time.
The truth is, when we see information that conforms to our worldview, we naturally accept it. We only think critically when we see something we disagree with. Try it yourself, just start disagreeing with someone and watch how good they become at critiquing your arguments.
>Over time, I've come to realise that the most important gift we can give our children is formal training in critical thinking.
Assuming 'critical' thinking can be taught (I do not think so, though teachers/parents can be catalysts. There is an IQ barrier to contend with). What exactly do you propose for children of parents who themselves are not thinking 'critically' be taught? This constitutes the vast majority of deluded masses.
I have put 'critical' thinking in quotes, because if you ask a person who is not a critical thinker (in your opinion) if he/she is a critical thinker, you are most likely to get a response that he/she is indeed one.
I'm not saying that verifiable truths do not exist but people disagree on what the truth is while each vehemently believing that their version of the truth is the right one. Rarely will they progress to a point where there empirically verify if the view they hold is correct.
> It pains me to see the lack of real rigorous and critical thinking present in undergrad classes
This is not a new phenomenon. I went to university in the US 20 years ago. Very few students ever thought to question the narrative they were hearing. Critical thinking was not taught where I went to school unless you were in a hard science. And from what I see around me today, it’s still not being taught.
>The problem is that critical thinking is essentially a negative activity. It's a means of defending oneself against potentially harmful ideas or ideas that one simply doesn't like. It's also rather abstract. One can't learn to think critically until one has learnt to think. One can't learn to think at all until he has first learnt some ideas to think about.
> it depends on critical thinking and there seems to be a decline in that area recently.
Respectfully, I call bullshit. There has always been a lack of critical thinking, we just didn't have the internet to bear witness. I think people are complaining about a lack of critical thinking more now because there are more educated people around to think critically.
So I agree that we need critical thinking, but let's not be alarmists about it just because some people are dumb or voted dumb people in.
> I would suggest that this is change, not a norm in the last few decades.
I am not so sure that we changed so rapidly. It would also make sense that this is not new, and it has just become more apparent in the last few decades, as people have been increasingly communicating with with more other people than ever before.
I think the vast majority of people never had the reason/opportunity to acquire critical thinking skills. It has been discussed by philosophers hundreds (if not thousands) of years ago, so I think it's safe to assume it's not new.
But regardless, I believe the real issue here is that we are not doing much to teach people to think critically.
>The reality is, you cannot "educate" people to do critical thinking.
Critical thinking seems to me like a immune response, if stimulated with study and pratice (outside world knowledge), and -sane- social interactions.. get strong, and there are the danger of an over-response too, too critic can lead to -no-critic-.
And -probably- people is not rational, but has rationality aside others thing. When rationality is not needed, it weaken, and BS are not eliminated and accumulate.
> Is it possible to teach students critical thinking?
I doubt it. Universities claim to teach it, but I don't see it in the graduates.
Consider designing airplanes. (I.e. engineering.) If the result doesn't fly, no amount of rhetoric will convince anyone otherwise. This is not true of the humanities, where educated people can and do convince themselves of endless bad ideas.
I'll take the reality checks of engineering over "critical thinking".
> ps. I think the solution here is to teach more critical thinking in schools.
100% percent agreement. Specifically, as its own course. How this is not part of every democracy's required curriculum for at least 2 years (class in 5-8 grade range + class in 9-12 grade range) is mind-boggling.
Don't give me crap about "there's no objective critical thinking" or "such a class would be impossible."
Even a basic survey of logical fallacies, rhetoric, and source suspicion would be beneficial to society as a whole!
>Unfortunately, we don't really know how to do this.
Can't say I agree, Socrates figured it out thousands of years ago!
>Unfortunately, we don't really know how to do this. Longitudinal studies of critical thinking skills across 4 years of college show a modest improvement but there are caveats [1]. For one, the usual courses you'd expect to improve critical thinking (logic, philosophy, statistics) don't do very well.
I'd argue that these courses are, at best, tangentially related to critical thinking. We need to teach the Socratic Method of learning to children from day 1, in all areas of study. Teaching children how to think and how to be intellectually curious is ultimately far more effective than our current methods if your desired result is an informed and intellectually capable populace.
> Educating people on how to use different sources and do their own critical thinking is what we need.
It is, just like we need to teach kids not to drink poison. But we also don't use "we need to teach kids not to drink poison" as an excuse to leave easily drinkable poison in reach.
At some point, we'll have educated people better on how to do their own critical thinking. But we're not there yet, and acting as if we were isn't a strategy for success.
> Here are a few examples where it is assumed the existing education system / teachers claim to be teaching critical thinking.
> Are you willing to acknowledge educators / curricula commonly claim to teach critical thinking?
I'm not in denial of some sort ffs, I'm frustrated at watching our society coming apart at the seams because the vast majority of the population seems to be incapable of intelligently reading a newspaper article, and will fall for seemingly any trick in the book.
Of the examples of "critical thinking education" listed above, do any remotely approach the critical thinking specific education I'm talking about here?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16572861
People are absolutely inundated with propaganda nowadays, like no other time in history, with social media being the most powerful weapon by far. We are graduating our children and sending them intellectually defenseless into this new world, I don't know if the average human mind can be brought to a level sufficient to cope with the propaganda created by the world class experts in persuasion who are working for a variety of deep pocketed entities, but at least we could try.
>I should point out that it is by no means clear that critical thinking is a coherent skill that is readily taught.[1]
Critical thinking is domain dependent. Just because someone is good at breaking down CS problems doesn't mean they will be able to generalize those analytical skills to their relationships, politics, nutrition, etc... It's not enough to teach people to think critically. They need to think critically in a way that is domain independent or in the domains that are important for them as individuals and society at large.
> Do you think we've reached the absolute apex of having a well-informed citizenry?
Of course not.
> If not, if critical thinking doesn't work, what could we do to improve this situation?
I'm not sure "well-informed" and "critical thinking" are even relevant to each other, but putting that aside, I genuinely don't know. That's why I asked how you teach critical thinking.
It's possible people are bound to retreat to their biases and it's a futile effort. I'm just not convinced attempting to teach people "critical thinking" will work, because it hasn't.
> I should point out that it is by no means clear that critical thinking is a coherent skill that is readily taught.[1]
Possibly not, but the Form 3 and 4 Social Studies modules I did on analysis of the language of politics and advertising were very useful. I was shocked to discover as an adult that while Social Studies was a mandatory high school class in New Zealand, those modules weren't.
Contrary to the popular view, I don't think people in general lack critical thinking skills. When confronted with something that they don't want to believe, even the dullest and least educated among us are great at finding every single flaw in the argument. It's only when they're confronted with something that they want to believe that these skills fall apart.
What people are bad at is not critical thinking skills, but critical thinking discipline. It takes real discipline to apply the same standards to everything whether you want to believe it or not, and I don't know many people who are up to it. Unfortunately like most virtues it's not something easily taught.
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