Texas GOP Educational Platform Opposes Teaching Critical Thinking Skills 734
An anonymous reader writes "Texas Republican delegates met earlier this month to put together their 2012 platform. Much of this focused on the educational system. Alarmingly, they openly state that they oppose schools teaching critical thinking, on the grounds that it may challenge 'student's fixed beliefs' and undermine 'parental authority.' Page 12 of their official platform (PDF) discusses their thinking on teaching thinking."
it's easier to think what someone telks you to ... (Score:5, Interesting)
“Sometimes when faced with problems that are confusing and troubling it is easier to think what someone tells you to think, particularly something that touches a deep and dark nerve in your nature, rather than carry the burden and ambiguity of struggling with the facts and thinking for yourself. Repeating a party line is a shorthand way of avoiding real thought. And the predators are always there to take advantage of it. They welcome trouble and often foment crisis in order to advance their agendas.”
“Anyone can be misled by a clever person, and no one likes to readily admit that they have been had. It is a sign of character and maturity to realize this, and admit you were deceived, and to demand change and reform. But some people cannot do this, even when the facts of the deception are revealed. It seems as though the more incorrect that the truth shows them to be, the louder and more strident they become in shouting down and denying the reality of the situation. And anyone who denies their perspective becomes 'the other,' someone to be feared and hated, shunned and eliminated, one way or the other.”
This was cited here http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article35340.html from another website...
Lacking faith in their faith? (Score:5, Interesting)
They clearly don't have much faith in their faith if they fear that something as simple as thinking would put it in danger.
Re:Gov't for you (Score:2, Interesting)
The failure on your part to understand that the Romans only became as wealthy as they did because they allowed ... free trade. That's right, they had the most freedom in trade than anybody ever had before them, and that's what they derived all of their wealth from, which they stole from the private sector to grow an unsustainable government eventually. Does it remind you of anything?
Of-course a few thousand years from now, a similar clip will be made about USA.
What is it that USA ever did for us?
You know, except the production line used in car manufacturing, the airplane, the refrigerator, the sewing machine, the telegraph, the electrical grid.
Well, surely they'll include the Internet and the Bomb as fine examples of something that is a bit closer related to the research done by actual government, of-course all for war.
So no, it's not a response that is appropriate, it's a sad one, because it should point you at the exact problem and yet you think you have something that is helping your argument.
Re:Gov't for you (Score:4, Interesting)
The failure on your part to understand that the Romans only became as wealthy as they did because they allowed ... free trade.
In the reality that the rest of us live in, the Romans became filthy rich when they conquered the rich civilized nations of the eastern Mediterranean.
That influx of ill-gotten gain played a key role in the downfall of the Republic. (Private armies aren't cheap.)
Re:Breathless summary by the clueless (Score:2, Interesting)
"We KNOW what is going to happen if you let a bunch of lefty trolls loose indoctrinating K-12 kids on 'critical thinking' because we have seen it already in the colleges. Nowhere else do you find such an intolerant monoculture as the tenured elite in their ivory towers."
I work in those supposed "ivory towers". There's ample diversity of thought and activity. "Left" and "right" is way too simple to represent what actually exists there. It is anything *but* a monoculture when it comes to opinions about all matter of issues, political and not. Now, maybe I'm hopelessly biased myself, but I think the perception of some people that college/university is some kind of "intolerant monoculture" has more to do with their own political views being far out in one direction or another than any lack of diversity of thinking in colleges. The range in a typical college or university seems much wider than the norm to me. I also think it's funny that you include "tenured" in that "ivory tower" phrase, given that tenure is supposed to offer university professors the opportunity to freely state substantially different opinions from the norm without worrying about being fired because they don't happen to align with whatever the "norm" happens to be at that institution. Tenure protects diversity of opinion. It does not suppress it.
In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with challenging "student's fixed beliefs", because it's something they will inevitably experience their entire lives with their friends and coworkers. If your beliefs aren't challenged, then you need to get out of your own little niche a bit more. They should get used to the possibility their expectations and assumptions about the world will be challenged all the time, because that's normal unless you live as a hermit. Well, unless you want to train them to be mindless, conformant drones that uncritically believe everything anybody in authority tells them (be they parents, bosses, politicians, or whoever). You'd think that people who think colleges are an "intolerant monoculture" would want to send students off to college better prepared to challenge that very "monoculture" by sending students well-trained in critical thinking. To not want this seems rather contradictory.
I don't care what they apply critical thinking to. But isn't it important to a democratic society for citizens to be critical of what they are being told or how they are being governed? How else can they wade through the rhetorical fluff that politicians of any stripe and other people try to use to control them?
Also, if students never challenge parental authority, they might never move out of the metaphorical "parents' basement". At some point they have to become an adult on their own. Again, unless you want them to be mindless, conforming drones, they need to realize that they are free to challenge authority within certain reasonable limits (i.e. ideally non-violently) *if* they choose to do so. Eventually children have to be empowered to be adults, unless you want them to rely on everybody else to do all the "responsible adult" stuff (this would be convenient for people in power, I suppose).
Look, leaving aside the political slant, can we at least agree that an education based solely on repetition of endless facts and an education based purely on development of critical thinking skills, each while neglecting the other aspect of learning, isn't a good idea? You need some kind of balance between the two to help children mature into adults that can fulfill their potential.
You people are missing the forest for the trees! (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep reading! You can find the PDF here [amazonaws.com] via the Texas GOP Convention site [texasgop.org]. I had to track it down myself because it was so unbelievable; it seemed like Huff Po had fallen for a juvenile prank.
I just goes on
and on
and on
It covers everything from banning red light cameras, opposing mandatory animal identification, and opposing Federal highways through Texas to rubbing salt in wounds like the restoration of plaques honoring the Confederate Widow’s Pension Fund to the Texas Supreme Court building. No wonder these people are so upset. They're beset on all sides by people who want to speak Spanish or burn American flags or say that gay bashing is bad or let African Americans and Hispanic Americans vote. You know, people who don't want to say "under god" in the pledge of allegiance, or who think that religious monuments shouldn't be erected on Federal land. Maybe they should feel under assault, people who think like they do are dying off because they just don't make bigots like they used to.
Re:Standing in the corner found effective. (Score:4, Interesting)
Make them explain what they've done wrong and why it's wrong in writing. A 1-on-1 session too easily becomes a coddling session, especially if the kid is clever and emotionally manipulative. Forcing them to write essays critiquing their own behavior and only returning privileges when the essay is not only complete, but of sufficient quality, teaches critical thinking skills, morality, and grammar all at once.
It amazes me how many schools think that a fifteen minute detention is an effective form of discipline, how many parents who think that a time-out in the corner will teach their children right and wrong. Of course, this nonsensical form of discipline extends to adults, too; just look at the prison system.
Re:Breathless summary by the clueless (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:READ MY POST (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree, if my kids don't rebel when they become teenagers, I'm doing something wrong.
Besides, school will teach my kids how to read and write. I will teach them how to communicate.
School will teach my kids how to add and multiply and I will teach them how to calculate.
School will teach my kids about the past. I will teach them about the future.
And school will teach my kids about natual history and science. Maybe not, I will have to teach my kids science.
Re:Breathless summary by the clueless (Score:2, Interesting)
unfortunately, the gop rejects science pretty much as an axiom...
No, they don't. You'll see tons of evidence that they do, this article for example, but most of the time, they are flat out misquoted or quoted out of context, or even misunderstood. See, libertarians and conservatives tend to have a distrust of government and a stronger trust on self reliance. These are the people you see living in the country, growing their own food, or digging bunkers, filling them with canned goods and ammo and buying water filtration systems. So when government comes along and says, "We have to take your truck away because it's global warming and we know best", you can understand why they might be a bit skeptical. When they ask for evidence, the best they can get is a UN report. The only thing a libertarian and a conservative trust less than government is a WORLD government!
Now, when I was in school, I was told that scientists ALWAYS ask questions and scientist ALWAYS challenge assumptions. Never take anything for granted, my 9th grade science teacher told us. She even pounding in the point by giving us an experiment to do from the book that was actually flawed. We were told to boil water, time how long it took to boil, and then have our partner do the same with salt water to see which one boiled first. The result... depended on the burner we used. See, the book never told us to use the same burner for both batches of water. Some burners were simply hotter than others. The point of the experiment? Challenged everything, even what we THINK we know.
So, again, when anyone at all challenges what the THINK we know, global warming, for example, they are instantly discredited and never heard from again as a reputable source. After all, no credible scientists challenges global warming. Any scientist that questions it is obviously not credible! How many times have you heard people that question man made global warming compared to "Flat Earthers"? These are people with PHD's who have made careers in scientific fields. They are NOT flat eathers, but they will be called that. So, you have to excuse those that approach the whole idea with a bit of suspicion.
Another quick example of scientific spending would be, a quick glance of NASA's budget over the past two presidents shows that Bush spent roughly the same amount of money that Clinton did on NASA.
Re:Breathless summary by the clueless (Score:5, Interesting)
The really fascinating issue in this submission to me is the part about schools doing things which challenge "'student's fixed beliefs' and undermine 'parental authority'"
Do we have to conceed that parents should have some control over the things their children are taught in public education?
Do we have to conceed that students should be allowed to have fixed beliefs which should go unchallenged by educators?
There is so much essence of civilization in these questions. On one hand you want to have some continuity in belief systems because they are an anchor for civilizations. If you completely throw them out and start over every generation it will be chaos. The Texas Republicans are advocating this continuity and its not totally unreasonable.
On the other hand, what happens when parents and students have belief systems that have gone totally rigid to the point of being dead or worst case gone, completely off the rails. Using education to maintain bad belief systems just because they are the prevailing belief system seems like a truly horrible idea.
I personally wrankle at the concept that this party platform seems to advocate locking children in to the belief system of their parents until they are 18. You ever wonder why kids tend to veer hard left when the hit college. Its because they are compensating for being locked in to the usually conservative belief systems of their aging parents, along with churches they were compelled to attend, and schools many of which are idealogically suffocating due to the often conservative tendencies of state and local school boards.
Seems to me there is a chance the idealogy being promoted in Texas might produce two divirgent sets of children.
A) Reactionary automatons who are going to go through life locked in to the ideaology they were indoctrinated in to as children and fear or hate everyone not adhering to it
B) Radicals who are going to reject everything the system attempted to indoctrinate in to them and probably try to blow up that system every chance they get.
The two group will eventually land on /. and proceed to troll the crap out of each other, like tonight.
Re:Breathless summary by the clueless (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Breathless summary by the clueless (Score:2, Interesting)
I disagree, I think we're giving him too much credit. I grew up in Texas and I can assure you that they do view, for instance, teaching children how to spot logical fallacies as an attack on Christianity. The issue here is very much whether empiricism and rationalism are legitimate philosophies or not. I've heard liberals be attacked on similar grounds as to what CajunArson was saying. It almost always boiled down to an argument against empiricism and rationalism and a suggestion that valuing such philosophies was liberal agenda.
There are also, because I was taught to think critically, several fallacies in CajunArson's post. There is a liberal use of ad hominen, the hint of straw man, tempus e locus peculiaris, red herring, and an appeal to common sense.
All in all, I see very little substance in his post other than "critical thinking" is a term used to describe something negative that we wouldn't want our children to learn that is different than what Slashdotters think of as "critical thinking". If we're liberal, we're thinking exactly what we think "critical thinking" is. So we must be ignorant republicans who would otherwise have good sense if it was only pointed out to us what evil was masquerading as critical thinking in the eyes of liberals. Otherwise, we agree on definition and want critical thinking taught. Or, maybe he allows for the fact that we're ignorant centrists or independents. Either way, there was no attempt at describing what these ineffective teaching techniques were and why liberals are attached to them. There was also a heavy implication of intent, and no discussion of how he came to understand that the intent exists.