Catherine Little has published an interesting op-ed in the Toronto Star, urging teachers and parents to encourage children how to think critically. While one has no reason to disbelieve the sincerity of this writer, the notion that one of the most Left leaning newspapers in the country supports the idea of encouraging mostly Left leaning academics to teach critical thinking is like … fill in your own joke. For years now we’ve seen countless news stories of the rampant group think in the media and in schools. Ms. Little should be applauded for trying but her message will clearly fall onto deaf ears and severely closed minds.
Good for Ms. Little.
Academia, the media, etc, will however continue to push Critical Theory instead of critical thinking.
I doubt that what we consider critical thinking is what she considers critical thinking.
“Catherine Little is a Toronto-based educator and consultant who writes about parenting, education and diversity.” Diversity seldom means people who look alike who believe different things, it more often brings to mind (to me) people of many races, creeds, and colours all walking and thinking in lockstep.
“While one has no reason to disbelieve the sincerity of this writer, the notion that one of the most Left leaning newspapers in the country supports the idea of encouraging mostly Left leaning academics to teach critical thinking is like …”
… expecting BlackLivesMatter supporters to teach love and respect of your friendly neighborhood policeman.
If you can’t fix it, feature it. Libs are chronic group-thinkites who are now obviously trying to come to grips with all their failures. Rather than admitting to those failures and doing lessons learned they’re going the knee-jerk excuses route. Nothing will actually change as they will continue to rely on each other for affirmation of their moral and intellectual superiority with group hugs and communal tears.
“Catherine Little has published an interesting op-ed in the Toronto Star, urging teachers and parents to encourage children how to think critically.” Somehow I do not believe a word of it, as our society has gotten to the point, especially in the educational system, if you express a view or support a political stance that opposes the perceived “natural” governance in Canada you are told to shut up or not allowed to speak.
“Critical Thinking” or “Critical Feeling”??
The Left often confuses the two….
I discuss many issues with my kids where we take turns arguing the for and against positions. One of these is climate change.
Yesterday my grade 7 daughter came home and said they’re covering it in school. I asked what the teacher said and the main takeaway was that many people are deniers including Trump and we should be scared.
We laughed because my kids know all about Pleistocene ice ages, natural volatility and IPCC predictions, but the other kids are getting their social engineering in spades.
By the way, my grade 10 son’s socials class had a brief foray into WWII and themes included African-Canadian perspectives and a movie on dancing at the time. That’s when the teacher is also not talking about Trump. Most of these teachers seem a little nutty to me.
Well,first the teachers should think critically about their own profession and where it’s gone wrong. Personally I think listening to education “experts” has seriously degraded the education system. My personal peeve is the Math Makes Sense textbooks and curriculum. Math does make sense , but not teaching it with this muddled mess of Math-y gibberish. For instance, whomever wrote the bizarre section on alternate strategies for dividing fractions should bring required to go to the board and write invert and multiply at least one hundred times. Then there’s the feeble attempts to teach grammar and social science (instead of actual history). At least the science curriculum has not yet been completely dumbed down.
What I’m saying is public education needs to do a better job of teaching essential skills. I’ve had the experience of having to use libertarian critical thinking skills (very different than CTS of progressives) to get my children to understand the absurdity of things like cultural appropriation and other post modern social justice junk so ,frankly, I really don’t want to increase the amount of political/progressive B.S. disguised as learning.
Something to consider:my oldest attends a private, religious-based school and not only is it better at teaching academic subjects…it’s also less preachy. Even an atheist can see public schools are almost evangelical about teaching social justice as Truth.
The teacher sez:
School boards must ensure “fairness, equity and inclusion”……
Who decides what’s fair, what’s equity, what’s inclusion?
What are the criteria, would anybody that favors Trump be included?
Would that be fair? Would that be equitable?
And then the teacher sez:
….“challenge bias and promote and celebrate diversity.”
Who decides on bias?
What the hell is “celebrate diversity”?
Who decides who is diverse and who is exclusive?
The consultants are of necessity full of airy nonsense, it is the way they make a living.
Mostly a waste of oxygen in the era of carbon dioxide.
“Left leaning academics to teach critical thinking is like” …. ‘a fish trying to teach bicycle riding’ …. to warp a phrase from the old feminist handbook.
Further to … Lefties teaching CRITICAL thinking means teaching all the ways to CRITICIZE the right. … one’ persons critical-thinking lesson is another persons leftist indoctination class.
“Diversity” … as spoken by the left, really means divisive. Witness Obama’s legacy of racism and divisiveness in the name of “diversity”. E pluribus unum is a dead concept. It is not practiced by the left. The left HATES unity. The left LOVES division and conflict. The left has already launched their Civil War on Trump … and their RACE War on Trump voters.
There is my contribution to the “thinking” taught by leftists.
The problem is that it is assumed that critical thinking is a skill that is neutral and apolitical. I suppose in theory it should be but in practice it’s not. All sides think they’re being fair and unbiased but clearly political bias enters all such discussions. Just because one side claims absolute victory in all intellectual issues does not automatically make their argument an infallible critical thinking masterpiece, no matter how much they berate others for coming to a different conclusion. In my experience those who crow the loudest about their superior CTS tend to use all matter of logical fallacies: appeal to authority, ad hominem and claiming moral high ground being the most common. Asking them a couple of awkward, off script questions usually has them descending into a expletive-laden hissy fit or an angry silence and the evil eye. They tend to be the people least open to new ideas and non-conformity.
*If* they could teach CTS neutrally and apolitically without preaching social justice and progressive politics then there’d be value. But the odds of the curriculum sticking to proper techniques and tolerance for diversity of thought is slim to none. Rather than doing a bad job of social engineering they should focus on doing a better job of teaching factual knowledge and practical skills. There’d also be less animosity between non-progressive parents and the education system.
Yes, J. I taught for almost 30 years, and the constant verbiage devoted to teaching “critical thinking” was laughable. Generally critical thinking was tossed out as a deflection when parents asked why schools were not teaching facts. (Students would be encouraged to pontificate as to what the USA should have done with the Manhattan Project, but were provided with a paucity of facts to digest before the opining began. Frankly, not unlike many of their teachers.)
But as J said, critical thinking now means criticize the right. (and blanketly believe any others who do so, with no fact checking or opposing views allowed) Criticize Trump, your parents, your church, your country and the “out-dated” beliefs of those who built your country….. just lock right into step. Accept historical revisionism, because after all, your Grade 9 social teacher knows more about what “really happened” than you could ever get from the documents provided by those who were, like actually there.
Rather than produce true thinkers, it produces self-important little twerps who believe that their initial group induced emotional reaction is totally informed and righteous. And who believe that they have the right to judge their betters, who may actually be accomplishing something in this world (i.e. Businessmen.)
Public education is an integral part of the institutional left. Within such toxic hellholes of unionized monopoly domination, critical thinking could only exist in the classrooms of a few brave teachers staying under the radar of rabid union zealots or otherwise killed from lack of interest by the mediocrity and sloth of such a system. To suggest it be a part of the curricula, is naive or deceitful. Public education can’t be reformed. It must be replaced with technology and or societal preference for liberty, i.e. breaking the unions or eliminating them. Vouchers would be a good start.
Statistically, home schooling yields better results than public schooling. What does that say about the so-called professional educators and army of bureaucrats under the tutelage of the finest ignorance pimps that can buy votes and implement “policies”.
Critical thinking in modern school= Be critical of those thinking non approved thought.
No one at the red Star would know how to apply critical thinking to a question if their live’s depended on it. What they will institute will be more critical theory, or leftist group think as it should be known.
Let me translate the article from TORSTAR libspeak to english.
Ms Little is expressing her disappointment with Juthtin and may go back to voting NDP if he doesn’t follow through on what she thinks he promised.
My impression was that the author wanted to make it sound like she was saying something but really wasn’t.