“But, as are with most things in academia, their championing of “critical thinking” is not merely an intellectually-void, navel-gazing, masturbation exercise to falsely validate handing out worthless doctorates and self-importance in a field that provides no value to society. It is to provide them authority over the rest of society. And it is here their nefarious and malicious intent is exposed.”
critical thinking: neo-Liberal word meaning “a veneer of common-sense for those without it”
A Captain Capitalism rant.
I bet it felt good to get that off his chest though.
I listened to “critical thinking” educators for longer than I like to remember. As with other disasters like “student-centered learning” and “collaborative learning” etc ad nauseam, the cute sounding terms were a cover for a leftist philosophy hijacking the curriculum. However, when the Captain says a liberal arts degree is worthless, I wonder what he means. Of course, much teaching in the academy could make that true – worthless in that the courses have been converted into social justice courses. Perhaps the Captain means that the courses will not make the graduate as much money as other degrees. I suppose that is true too. But, if he means that a true liberal arts degree, taught through the right books and by the right people (such do still exist), then the Captain knows not of what he speaks.
critical thinking…if it follows the pogrom…then it is correct. Think of “people” teaching their pet budgie to “speak”, and then stating it understands what it is saying. Actually,the bird is properly smarter then they are.
It’s important to understand where political correctness came from:
– Marx to
– the Frankfurt School to
– the Columbia School (refugees of the Frankfurt School) of
– critical thinking – where western imperialism is the only deemed cause of instability, injustice , inequality or suffering, to
– political correctness aka cultural Marxism, thus the phoenix of the failure and depravity of socialism.
It’s employed in all progressive thought. Look at CAGW: the IPCC was formed to look exclusively at human input into global warming (other inputs such as the sun, currents and oceans are supposedly considered but actually ignored or minimized), aka critical thought, which of course is anything but.
Another example is the “idea” capitalism widens the “gap” between rich and poor, when it’s clear on examination of history & other evidence it’s the tax system, thus government which is responsible for the widening “gulf;” though it’s like arguing you’ve bought a bigger house, but the rich guy down the street bought an even bigger house, so you’re “falling behind.” If we are it’s not due to the greedy rich, but taxation, statism and corrupt rent seekers.
Bill Whittle explains the links between PC, progressivism, identity politics and now CAGW corruptocracy. If evil rich white male capitalists are the only considered cause for cultural depravity, like climate, obviously they must be the “problem;” good cover for the smoke & mirrors of irrational envy politics.
This is known in philosophy and logic circles as “begging the question.” Enjoy Bill’s excellent presentation. It’s important to know the genesis of some of the idiotic schools of “thought” out there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6c_dinY3fM
I heard all that rubbish while I was teaching at a certain post-secondary institution. (You can add “outcomes-based education” to your list of bogus concepts.)
Most of my students were fresh out of high school. Unfortunately, many of them were lacking in fundamental skills. I found that I spent much of my course time teaching them things that even I was required to know in order to graduate from Grade 12 (which was back some time in the Jurassic Era, or so it seems). Basic algebra seemed beyond them. Few could read, let alone compose, a simple comprehensible sentence. I even had some that didn’t know what the index of a textbook was, let alone what its purpose was.
Ah, but they knew all about their *rights* and their self-esteem, never failing or hesitating to remind me of that or to complain about them if I didn’t comply with what they wanted.
People are confusing critical thinking with critical theory. They’re not the same.
Speaking of critical thinking – have you had your daily dose of hair boy on the news yet ? One thing that comes to mind is the cost to the taxpayers of being in a different place in the world or country on a nearly daily basis. But I think there is something more nefarious going on here. The Liberals are driving the media agenda and like the complicit puppies they are they happily follow along. They are so busy trying to keep the sunshine out of their eyes, they don’t even have time or resources to look at what is really happening ( not that they want too ) . What am I talking about ? New regulations that could well make your bank deposits at risk. Legislation was introduced in the budget that will allow banks in financial distress to convert debt to common ( likely worthless ) shares. Redifining the rules and tax rates that small businesses and corporations operate under. I suspect I know , but has anyone really heard a commitment to construct pipelines ? Today I heard that many of the cabinet offices are not fully staffed. The reason – the oh so smart ministers are being extra careful to get extremely qualified people. It is more likely it’s not that easy to find people garenteed to drink the cool aid they are serving. To me the whole thing reeks of the ultimate bait and switch. The worst part is I suspect there is much more going on , the fox is in the hen house and most of the people believe he’s there to protect the chickens !
Critical thinking? I’m pretty sure that you used to need a good bit of that simply to graduate from high school. Of course that was more than just a few decades back.
Read my post above, so-called critical thinking arises out of the school of fallacious critical theory.
Critical thinking is an important skill, covering logical fallacies and other rhetorical devices. It is a branch of logic and philosophy. However, it has popularly become a broad brush for painting a muddy anti-western civilization opinion.
Critical thinking is teaching people to rationalize, and completely believe, the irrational.
It strips reality from the equation and becomes a vehicle to push progressive propaganda. It is being used particularly well throughout the public education system.
An example would be Global warming causes global cooling.
Exactly right, Robert.
Capn’ once again knows nothing about a subject and expounds on it as though he does, pompous prat that he is.
critical thinking is used when designing the wing of an aircraft, not when you are figuring out if some chalk on the sidewalk offends you.
If they really had been taught “critical thinking”, they would know why capitalism is good and socialism isn’t.
Correct D Ream
just plain thinking would be a very good start for millions of people.
The Captain is starting to be my hero. I don’t know that this is a great piece, it is certainly not really well written, but as usual, the Captain has a point. I blame him for making me aware of all of the idiocy I tolerate in my daily life from drivers who can’t think their way through a lane change to the inane babbling of morning radio DJs when all you want is to hear music. On that score, Pandora and Spotify have been such a blessing.
Capn’ once again knows nothing about a subject and expounds on it as though he does, pompous prat that he is.
That would have been a great opening for an evisceration of his little post, yet none was forthcoming. Just a denunciation. I guess that is good enough for “right thinking” people. At least you don’t suffer from “the curse.”
I see the public school curriculum tries to teach thinking with providing a firm background of basic facts. That’s why we have that idiot Trudeau as PM. I did well with rote learning.
Those who tout the virtues of capitalism don’t actually mean capitalism at all. They really mean a vigorous free market economy which isn’t quite the same thing. If you “believe” in capitalism, you’re not a capitalist. That’s because capitalism is an activity, not an ideology. The true capitalist doesn’t much care where they are (the People’s Republic of China is full of capitalists) as long as they can accumulate capital – preferably by eliminating all competition and cornering the market.
I doubt very many people who frequent this blog would really like to live in a world where capitalist activity was entirely free of all constraints. Been there, done that. Why do you think the union movement got started in the first place?
Unless of course they could be one of the (note my adjective) successful capitalists.
You are correct. The progressives intend people to confuse the two. “Critical Thinking” is good. “Critical Theory” is bullshit.
from Robert of Ottawa’s comment:
“Critical thinking is an important skill, covering logical fallacies and other rhetorical devices.”
I would add to Robert’s comment: understanding statistics and the mathematical structure of logical argument.
Seriously, if you’ve never taken a real course in critical thinking then it’s difficult to decide where to begin with someone who really doesn’t know(ie. the bottom of their ignorance) what critical thinking is.
Again, like the Capn’s earlier post attacking Charity, what he does here is attack the Left’s co-opting of a concept without discerning or stating that it is the Left’s twisting of the concept that he is against.
Why does he do this? Because he doesn’t understand the basic concepts themselves and the proper place/usage that these concepts have within civilization.
JJM: “..capitalism is an activity, not an ideology.” Well said. Capitalism seeks no market or government or power for itself, as ideology does. It’s simply a clearing system for economic activity, the silent hand; until government steps on it.
Anyway Marx coined the term, having zero clue about technology which freed the slave workers of the industrial revolution, who now hold sway over markets. His dialectic nonsense about class hasn’t panned out either in GB or other “capitalist” economies, except in fantastical watermelon agendas.
Perhaps Marx meant crony capitalism, which is more consistent with his and others’ ideas.
The new ideological front exists to ask how much coercion the state should employ, to taxation, to regulation, to establishment credibility.
Did we really built that? Aren’t we all a part of government, instead of civil society utilizing ordered liberty, the cultural Marxists ask. Never having run a business themselves or even worked in the private sector, most can only shrug at any other notion but statism.
No off message ideas are acceptable for critique by the uncritical thinkers because their minds are made up, anchored in statism, whose belief system they’ve uncritically accepted without evidence. So much for their self-congratulatory PC intellect. Thinkers uncritical of progressivism.
So, like a con man hiding the pea, they react violently when their “ideas” are challenged, normally consisting of parroting inaccurate and irrelevant talking points, while projecting their anti-intellectualism on those with whom they “disagree.”
And possibly pepper spraying them. Alinsky says we must all recognize why do-gooders commit violence. Common sense is not part of this debate folks.
It’s all they’ve got. The went all in with the press buddies in Canada and prevailed. Then again we have a swatch of ignorant disengaged political masochists, aka southern ON, who passed to them the torch.
“Perhaps Marx meant crony capitalism, which is more consistent with his and others’ ideas.”
Marx, who wrote during the horrors of the industrial revolution where child labour worked in the coal mines with lost limbs and lives in the shuttered factories, had a vision of production returning to a cottage industry pre-industrial revolution state where a shoemaker’s sons were shoemakers too and they made their shoes in a shop where they lived over the shop or in back.
For Marx, any factories or enterprises that required capital to build and coal fired steam power to run, with hundreds of workers leaving home every day to go to work at a penny per week, these were on his list of evil things which had happened to his vision of what a pre-industrial world ought to be.
If Marx were alive today with the child-protection/labour-safety laws that exist and the better wages, he’d probably be content with the state of things and have nothing to write about.
Marx should be satisfied with today’s world, it was better than his time or the utopia he envisioned, where we all lived in communal, pastoral poverty.
The truly sad part is those who take their bastardized connotations of flawed Marxism, socialism and progressivism to not be satisfied, to drive us all into poverty to achieve Marx’s goal of an anarchic stateless society. Not them of course in their gated communities, safe from the revolting ones.
Except for the religious and police states, pipsqueaks starving their people while pursuing nuclear weapons, and the family public execution outings.
WRT contemporary western socialism, aka progressivism it’s simply the iron fist of Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism hidden by the velvet glove of statism and PC, directing the ludicrous deconstruction of the citizen into libertarian socialists, where they can do their own thing within the apparatchiks’ approved (party) activities, where they’re all free to say what their leaders think.
Coercion, economic decline, unrest, more coercion, bloodletting, then repeat with increasing brutality and depravity until everybody’s dead.
The people, economy & freedom – all for the greater good, but only for party types. (ie-USSR languished in misery while Brezhnev lived in opulent luxury.)
Yes. As it turned out Marxism was a conjured ideology which was tailor-made to cater to the driven sentiments of malcontents and the perpetually aggrieved.
Divorced, as it were, from reality and what the future path of western progress was sure to be, given the rise of democracy and the waning of feudal powers which those who invented Marxism had an unslakable vengeance toward.
Human nature is such, that this co-opted ideological twist had already happened while Karl Marx was still alive.
“If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.”
~Karl Marx
disclaimer: I am not a fan or follower in any way of Marx or his writings, I have only read and understood them and what those writings implied of Marx’s world view