DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Texas GOP rejects ‘critical thinking’ skills. Really.

**fkjghfg** · 07-10-2012, 07:17 AM

It looks like they're objecting to the teaching of "critical thinking skills" rather than critical thinking. And of course as was pointed out by the site you linked to, critical thinking can't really be taught.

No, they said one researcher wrote an article back in 2007 saying public schools have not been very successful teaching critical thinking skills and he there for postulated that critical thinking might not be a skill easily taught. Then again it could be they've been using the wrong approach or have not been emphasizing it enough. BTW the definition (also from the article) of critical thinking skills is also pretty good:

Critical thinking consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth. Then too, there are specific types of critical thinking that are characteristic of different subject matter: That’s what we mean when we refer to “thinking like a scientist” or “thinking like a historian.”

07-10-2012, 07:17 AM	#4
fkjghfg Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 469 Senior Member	It looks like they're objecting to the teaching of "critical thinking skills" rather than critical thinking. And of course as was pointed out by the site you linked to, critical thinking can't really be taught. No, they said one researcher wrote an article back in 2007 saying public schools have not been very successful teaching critical thinking skills and he there for postulated that critical thinking might not be a skill easily taught. Then again it could be they've been using the wrong approach or have not been emphasizing it enough. BTW the definition (also from the article) of critical thinking skills is also pretty good: Critical thinking consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth. Then too, there are specific types of critical thinking that are characteristic of different subject matter: That’s what we mean when we refer to “thinking like a scientist” or “thinking like a historian.”
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