Republicans Unite to declare WAR on Critical Thinking Skills

I don't think you understand what mastery learning is.

 

Please quote the part that makes republicans not sound insane as a party.

 

And yet you've still failed to find a connection between OBE and "teachers medicating kids with Ritalin" (which isn't possible).

 

A list of objections to OBE:

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/dumb/dumb3.htm

(I'm not making up that url.)

 

That is insane especially the part about undermining the partents authority. I am a staunch conservative but this is crazy. OBE sounds a lot like teaching the test to you can get the outcome you are looking for but no intelligence on the other end.

 

Yeah, I am not even remotely interested in conspiracy theories that have no relation to the art of critical thinking. I suggest a Critical Thinking class, or perhaps just the text book?

Wait until the Scientific American Bookclub has it on sale.
http://www.sciambookclub.com/genera...inking-by-jamie-carlin-watson-1072597798.html

 

Uh...no? It focuses on the output of students as proof of what they've learned, not the input of "putting the text/material in front of them and then not caring what happens afterward."

 

Do the conservatives have a defense of this platform that doesn't involve a massive conspiracy to feminize our young boys with critical thinking abilities?

How many of these said conservative have actually cracked open a critical thinking text?

LOL

 

I understand what outcome based education means, but that doesn't mean that a program centered around that purpose is automatically good. Look, we hear about anti-terror programs every day, but are programs designed to protect against terrorism automatically good? Does not supporting the TSA in it's efforts to grope small children and old ladies mean that you support terrorism and want terrorists to win?

The article by the Texas GOP specifies program names. They do not say "we are against critical thinking skills." So, I am asking, are the programs that they are complaining about good programs that lead to better outcomes, or not?

If we are going to discuss the idea that some of the GOP is against critical thinking, then I think it's appropriate to actually exercise critical thinking and try to fully understand what was written and why.

 

For progressives, the state is the replacement for religion and they are as unlikely to question the legitimacy of government power as a conservative is likely to question the legitimacy of the Bible.

 

This is amusing.

I guess you are unaware that the GOP is just as the bad as the Democrats when it comes to government.... ?

 

Thank you.

I agree that kids should be helped to explore the worlds they live in rather than succumb to rote memorization, however, it would be nice if they also had sufficient knowledge to give them a base understanding of cultural literacy and international awareness.

 

I am not unaware of this, but I am also glad that you can admit this about the Democrats. Admitting you have a problem is step 1, ...

Next up detoxification and recovery.

 

"Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

Okay, slow down for a minute. One of the links above arguing against OBE is from 1993. Outcome Based Education grew into standards based education, which is the basis for NCLB and most all current education accountability schemes. OBE is about deciding what students should know and be able to do and then figuring out how to get them to learn it. Mastery Learning is about making sure students actually master the skills and content rather than just giving a D or an F to a kid and moving on. The fact that Republicans in Texas are even concerned about these decades-old ideas and practices is laughable. Behavior modification - are you kidding me? What is detention but a form of behavior modification? What is a test of any kind but an attempt to influence a student's behavior - that is - to take a kid who couldn't pass the test before instruction to a point where they would excel on the test after instruction? All education is behavior modification. Demonstrating learning is a BEHAVIOR. What's more, HOTS and values clarification are not one and the same, though they are related. Values clarification can serve to solidify moral beliefs. For example, a values clarification activity could be to ask students to discuss whether it would be okay to tell a lie in order to save an innocent person's life, or whether it is okay to say and do nothing when you know someone has been bullied to the point of contemplating suicide... The fear is that such discussions could lead to questioning rigid, possibly irrational beliefs.

 

I find it funny that someone is criticizing another group by labeling them as 'anti-critical thinking' while the same person (perhaps deliberately) keeps posting only a fragment of their position as some kind of 'proof.'

Nice.

 

That's not the way they wrote it, though.

 

Regardless, the statement is so broad as to be absurd. There are MANY programs that focus on critical thinking skills, and some are better or worse than others.

 

So post the version of their position that makes them sound sane.

 

No doubt. But they aren't talking about programs, not the way they wrote it. They're complaining about the teaching of critical thinking itself.

 

Why would Religious Right Republicans (RRR) want to keep the raging masses stupid and ignorant ?

 

No, they're actually complaining about schools trying to usurp parental authority and steer their children away from religion and blaming the critical thinking programs. If those same programs were taught in a Christian school--and they are--they would not have a problem with it, I don't believe.

They are just suspicious of Democrats.

 

The same reason that Democrats do, because they are afraid they will realize what's going on with the United States and want to take their freedoms back.

 

I wouldn't argue with them, or find them as crazy, if they just came out and said that.

 

Nobody is against actual critical thinking skills, but those programs have nothing to do with teaching critical thinking. If you want to have kids learn critical thinking, you don't need a special course, you simply need to do two things. First, teach facts about the subject at hand, and second, require students to extrapolate from those facts to their conclusion. What's behind the loss of critical thinking in schools is not the fact that we haven't yet adopted the right program, but the fact that for the most part, we no longer require students to spend time writing about those subjects.

I often post this test (http://www.barefootsworld.net/1895finalexam.html) as proof of how far we've fallen in education, but as I compare this test to a modern OBE or NCLB test, I notice that there are no multiple choice questions. The student isn't being asked to recognize a correct answer, he's asked to provide the correct answer. He isn't asked to simply add or multiply, he's asked to use his knowledge of weights and measures to calculate a value for a commodity based on the size of the wagon -- and then deduct the weight of the wagon. He isn't asked to recognize the people involved in the American Revolution, he's asked to name several causes of the American Revolution. In most modern testing, you simply don't ask questions this way. You are mostly asking the student to recognize the correct answer, or to at minimum recognize the types of answers that make sense. Kids taking those tests very quickly learn to recognize signal words (always never and sometimes) so they can guess the right answer rather than knowing it outright. In fact, schools are going so far as to literally teach kids how to do just that -- recognize answers "likely" to be wrong -- as such practices raise test scores whether or not the child has actually mastered the material.

My answer to the problem of teaching critical thinking is to return to the way we used to teach and test students. Require them to explain phenomena, require them to take known facts and use them to solve a problem. Give them research papers. Have a kid write 5 pages on the causes of the Civil War, and to back up his assertions with proper citations. Make them explain the Krebs cycle, make them explain the method for determining the distance of a home run hit at a 30 degree angle. That's what teaches kids to think. Giving them "outcomes" that are more about attitudes than education is counter-productive.