Response To "get A Life!"

[Ro-bear]

Schools never teach critical thinking. All they want to do is teach kids to regurgitate the supplied facts and push on into the work force. North American education isn't about actually making the world a better place.

 

Please not this shit again. It is untrue and offensive to make such a generalization. Just because the stupid bitch is a teacher is no reason to tar educators in general.

[Grandpa Harley]

Teacher = The new 'Gay'

[Ro-bear]

It often seems so around here and in conservative media.

[R. S. Martin]

Schools never teach critical thinking. All they want to do is teach kids to regurgitate the supplied facts and push on into the work force. North American education isn't about actually making the world a better place.

 

Please not this shit again. It is untrue and offensive to make such a generalization. Just because the stupid bitch is a teacher is no reason to tar educators in general.

 

 

Ro-Bear, let me make my defense. People who talk like that do not sufficiently appreciate the opportunity to get an education. Anybody who had to fight as hard as I did just to get inside a classroom, and for whom education did as much as it did for me, does not talk like that.

 

Even the worst teachers imparted information I didn't know. And they signed the forms that needed to be signed to get me one step closer to my degree. If the graduating students don't make this world a better place it's not the teacher's fault.

 

It has been my experience that you can't teach critical thinking. A person either has it or doesn't have it. A person can be taught to memorize all the arguments for and against a certian issue. And that passes for critical thinking. But that same person does not apply that level of critical thinking across the board of life. The person who does is out of favour with society. I speak out of experience.

 

Grandpa Harley said:

 

I do respect some Ph.D. but only from schools I recognise...

 

That's not good enough. You recognize people because of their labels. That is not good enough, to put it mildly. Every single individual human being deserves recognizion for his/her own merit. If you cannot learn from someone there is something wrong with you, not the other person.

 

Good-hearted people like Ro-Bear make a difference. You've made a difference in my life, Ro-Bear.

 

None of this detracts from anything I said about Alana Cooke. Her tantrum and arrogance were immature in the extreme. However, I am sure she fills an important role in this world. She probably teaches rote memory very well. That has its value. Critical thinking is not the end all be all. If nobody derived satisfaction from mopping floors and bathing ill bodies (which probably require a bare minimum of critical thinking), this world would be a lot worse off. Period.

[Grandpa Harley]

Ruby,

 

I wasn't talking about people, I was talking about the qualification... Most Ph.Ds I know worked hard and understand their subject I'd give body parts to have their profundity...

[GraphicsGuy]

Schools never teach critical thinking. All they want to do is teach kids to regurgitate the supplied facts and push on into the work force. North American education isn't about actually making the world a better place.

 

Please not this shit again. It is untrue and offensive to make such a generalization. Just because the stupid bitch is a teacher is no reason to tar educators in general.

 

My apologies for generalizing...something I do far too often...

 

I suppose I've just had bad experiences with my own education and seeing my children come home spouting their teacher's religious/political beliefs instead of deciding for themselves.

[Ro-bear]

My apologies for generalizing...something I do far too often...

 

I suppose I've just had bad experiences with my own education and seeing my children come home spouting their teacher's religious/political beliefs instead of deciding for themselves.

 

That's OK, graphicsguy. Perhaps I am overly sensitive, having parried similarly sweeping criticisms so many times before. It must be extremely difficult for parents not to generalize when the effects of bad education is often more pronounced than the effects of good education. I tend to take credit for my children's good qualities, like most parents, but I am slow to blame teachers for their shortcomings because I know that in our children we see only a circus-mirror view of what goes on in the classroom. I know because I am a teacher who deals with parents who readily accept their children's explanations for poor marks. Fortunately, I document everything and save all work; I can easily coorect flawed assumptions.

 

However, abuse of the kind you reference is all too real. A history teacher at my school imparts a rather skewed view of politics. That is all I wish to say about that, though. I still look a lot like my picture, if you know what I mean.

[Ro-bear]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ruby.

 

It has been my experience that you can't teach critical thinking. A person either has it or doesn't have it. A person can be taught to memorize all the arguments for and against a certian issue. And that passes for critical thinking.

 

I think I know what you mean. Critical thinking cannot be taught didactically like mere factual information; it is more a process, like statistical analysis or scientific method. It can be taught, but the learner cannot be made to learn. Horse to water sort of thing, you know. To teach critical thinking requires more of the "guide on the side" and less of the "sage on the stage". It can be done, but not without effort on the part of both teacher and learner. I fail often enough to admit that I am still learning to teach. Doctors of the twentieth century lost patients that would survive today. I would like to see similar progress in education, but I'm skeptical. Education requires more of the "patient" than surgery does. As the doctor in Macbeth says, "Therein the patient must minister to himself".

[Grandpa Harley]

There's a stream of the prejudice in the 35-45 age group that 'Those that can't, teach.' It's mostly from very bitter experience. However, the lessons have been learned (pardon the pun)...

 

Unfortunately, the teachers now are playing Cnut against a rising tide of politicised method, content and needless administration (at least here in the UK), while being accused by the general public that things were 'harder in our day' while not realising that shit like calculus was for high school (UK 6th form) students, not 13 year olds...

 

The way teachers are treated always reminds me of Kipling's 'Tommy'...

[R. S. Martin]

Ruby,

 

I wasn't talking about people, I was talking about the qualification... Most Ph.Ds I know worked hard and understand their subject I'd give body parts to have their profundity...

 

Thanks for the clarification. Not sure what you mean, though. Over the years I have talked on the internet with others in the world who were studying in programs with similar titles to my own and we could barely talk. So different was the content of their program from mine. I guess that is where your quip about schools comes in. I agree.

 

Example A: One student of theology said if I don't know who Stringfellow is I am not in theology. Truth be told, I don't know who Stringfellow is but I am definitely in theology. I did a bit of research and found out that Stringfellow is a real name of a real theologian. It sounded more like a movie character to me, or screen name, than a real live (or historical) human being.

 

Example B: One person in biblical literature claimed: 1. She is not fundamentalist. 2. That Paul Tillich was not a Christian.

 

I had read quite a bit of Tillich's work and I KNEW he identified as a Christian. Not to mention that my school built on Paul Tillich's theology. And his followers (my teachers) are the nicest, kindest, most polite Christians I have ever known. They are firm, too, and will put me in my place if I move too far afield. Fairly balanced people, I would say. No excuse not to call them Christian.

 

The name of that person's denomination was something like American Reformed, related to COG, I think. On here I have learned that COG is considered very fundamentalist by most people.

 

So anyway, I would guess the same difference applies from school to school in other areas of education.

[R. S. Martin]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ruby.

 

It has been my experience that you can't teach critical thinking. A person either has it or doesn't have it. A person can be taught to memorize all the arguments for and against a certian issue. And that passes for critical thinking.

 

I think I know what you mean. Critical thinking cannot be taught didactically like mere factual information; it is more a process, like statistical analysis or scientific method. It can be taught, but the learner cannot be made to learn. Horse to water sort of thing, you know. To teach critical thinking requires more of the "guide on the side" and less of the "sage on the stage".

 

Thanks for at least making sense of what I wrote. I was asking myself if I know what I'm talking about. I guess I was seriously disappointed when I found out that my profs could conduct deep discussion only in one field, esp. when I heard one respected prof put another equally respected prof down for no other reason than that they were not in the same discipline. In looking back I realize it was comradly competition. At the time I was still fairly well anchored in the horse and buggy community where family feuds could simmer and sporadically boil over for generations. Thus, it looked to me like the type of disagreement that could escalate into open conflict.

 

What I concluded about those profs' banter was that while each one had deep knowledge of his own field, he didn't know much more than lay knowledge in the other field. So it seemed to me that perhaps critical thinking was reserved only for their own area of expertise. Then there are the professionals in whatever field who perform excellently in their professions but when it comes to religion they buy into or justify the contradictions right along with the high-school drop-outs. I, on the other hand, have gotten into serious trouble with authority figures all my life because I naturally and instinctively cross-question every blanket statement no matter what area of life.

 

I don't know if that clarifies where I'm coming from.

[Grandpa Harley]

I tend to know mostly 'Hard' Science Ph. Ds (classing maths as Hard Science)... there's a bit less variance in the basics than more 'Arts' based disciplines like Philosophy and Theology.

 

With things like Physics you have to have the same basics to do the job. In Philosophy, which Theology is, IMO, a subset of, there are numerous paths, with some schools having very wide pre-reqs. Some don't even need a solid spit at the Greeks, yet without understanding, even on a limited level, the major Greek schools, you're floundering until after the enlightenment, and even than the roots of post enlightenment 'schools' rely pretty much on Grecian logic. It's not until Freud, Jung and Nietzsche that there was much novelty in the field...

 

All just my opinion as an interested observer...