No only critical thinking (which is paramount) but also make sure that we are able to create an adult society.
The current POTUS choice shows the very real danger of electing a petulant teenager for the highest position in the governance of the United States of America.
If a nation of soft minded people is given such a person as the example to follow and emulate you can rest assured that nothing good will come out of it
The problem cannot be solved by treating adults like children or by imposing censorship. Education and increasing awareness of the problem is one way to solve it. But those in power probably don't want a population with good critical thinking skills, because those in power will lose their ability to manipulate or otherwise control the population.
And when I mean those in power, it's not just the government, it's those making the headlines in the newspapers, our managers in the workplace, and even our parents. All of them would, on some level at least, be against us having excellent critical thinking skills. Because to do so, is a threat to power in general, especially illegitimate power. And should be encouraged as much as possible.
I’m curious what you mean by this. Assuming you are American, do you think that Obama or Trump or Biden wish that the population was more compliant, and had weaker critical thinking? Why would that benefit them?
Most leaders think they are right, and I would think they would want enhanced critical thinking in the population so that the people would better appreciate the leaders rightness.
I agree 100%. The lack of critical thinking skills in this country is a national security threat. We need a national initiative improve the baseline education and critical thinking skills of the next generation.
The powers that be, haven't got the memo yet that it doesn't benefit them anymore to have a populous which is easily manipulated. In the past, old media acted as parameter control, though concentrated ownership. Sure they had vested interests, but they were generally alined with American values; capitalism, stable democracy, international leadership by America, etc. But now each of the 340 million brains in this country can be accessed directly by foreign adversaries. Parameter control can not work anymore, unless we shut down the internet. We must bring the security to each individual endpoint.
Some will argue that we should shutdown the internet or censor it. But is that the world we want to live in? That would stifle economic growth and i do not believe it is compatible with the ideals of liberal democracies.
Kids need to be socialized in the ideas and values that make their civilization successful. Critical thinking is one piece of that, but we focus too much on it in elite environs. We also need to teach kids to tend to the edifice of civilization we’ve built, not just how to tear pieces of it down.
Yep, and that's one of the main reasons I'm finding the political climate in the US so depressing. The answer would seem to be "marginalize people who lack critical thinking ability", but... that's not really a solution.
It's much easier to just pick someone to frame everything for you than it is to develop critical thinking skills. I would wager the majority of people from any generation wind up choosing the former, even if it's not a conscious choice. I don't think it's something people 'grow out of' by default.
That'd be great but you can't teach everyone to be awesome critical thinkers. There is a question of aptitude.
That focus also overlooks the fact that much of the propaganda is emotionally-driven and appeals to certain instincts. For even the most rational of human beings, emotion can overwhelm critical thinking.
So, while we can definitely do better in teaching critical thinking skills, we're just going to have a percentage of the population that is susceptible. And, given the fact that we're split almost down the middle politically (the election came down to 85,000 votes across three states), the ability to affect even a small percentage of the population can have a huge impact on the direction of the country.
A more effective root cause mitigation might be to break the two-party monopoly so that a broader set of ideas can flourish. This binary for-or-against system is also unhelpful to say the least.
Great article. I think critical thinking is the differentiator for the US compared to the rest of the world. I don't think we can afford to lose that edge.
> We need to teach children critical thinking skills and allow them to make their own decisions
The timescale of this process is ~15-20 years. "Critical thinking", "common sense" and "being an adult" all refer someone that has cultivated the ability to filter information independently.
I would argue that many 18+ people don't fully develop this skill. See cults, propaganda, conformity for datapoints.
I agree that we SHOULD teach children critical thinking.
But MAYBE if you give them a smartphone and social media you should expect this type of result.
In general, I think that the move from TV (where CNN had "authority") to the internet (influencers have the power) can explain some social trends that are going on. Ex. conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen these days with youtube videos slowly hypnotizing you.
Teaching kids about those things would make them less effective consumers, more effective voters, and much harder for parents to instill a given viewpoint in.
Critical thinking isn't going to take off in a country dominated by people who profit from its absence.
The problem is that educating people to do critical thinking doesn't scale. This should be taught in elementary school when children are learning to learn, but adults are mostly a lost cause. Psyops and information warfare work to a frightening degree, and today the internet is the primary weapon of delivery. It takes decades to destabilize a nation, but it also takes decades to bring it back on track. The latter to my knowledge has never been done. The affected nation is in a state of confusion and desbelief about its actual situation, and it takes time to even realize they're under attack. We've already seen the effects of this: unfit political leaders elected, breakdown of democratic processes, rejection of nationalism, increase in internal sociopolitical conflict and belief in conspiracy theories, etc. Modern warfare is waged online, not on the battlefield.
One thing we should be doing is supporting critical thinking at the high school and university level. Unfortunately, it seems we have been dedicated to the opposite of this for about 50 years, at least in the US.
Critical thinking is good, but we have a system that only applies it to ideas that it doesn't like and a culture of hostility towards applying it to it's own sacred ideals.
The result of this system is not truth.
The result of this system is propaganda successful disguised as objectivity...
which is exactly what you need in order to effectively manipulate a democracy.
Critical thinking is a must, besides we need some STEM knowledge also because you cannot do much of meaningful critical thinking without it, especially in today's world. So high school is definitely a must and college if you can.
> Perhaps encouraging better education and instilling critical thought in a population is better?
In a population of > 1 billion where access to schooling is spotty, and the quality of said schooling is spottier?
"Critical thinking" is a state of mind that takes generations of progress to develop, and can still be reversed. The US population in general may be more educated on average, but if presidential opinion polls are anything to go by, a minimum of 40% of the population arent' practicing critical thought.
reply