Critical thinking

I was hanging out on Daily Kos today, and saw someone's comment that the powers that be in the US fear an educated populace, because an educated populace thinks critically and asks tough questions, and is generally harder to control. She/he added that in the late 1960's education was working quite well, and look at the counter-culture that spawned.

I used to think this too, but when I read James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me I found out that higher levels of education were associated with more support for the Vietnam war, not less. In spite of highly publicized and televised college protests, more education generally made people more supportive of the government. I left this reply (in part):

Historian James Loewen once said in an interview:

I once did an exercise where I asked people about what kind of adults, by education level, supported the war in Vietnam. By an overwhelming margin-almost 10 to 1-audiences responded that college-educated people were more likely to be for withdrawing the troops, were more "dovish". When they explained their reasoning, they usually wrote that educated people are more informed and critical and therefore better able to figure out that the war wasn't in our best interests. Well, the truth was very different. Educated people disproportionately supported the war in Vietnam, were more "hawkish."

I went upstairs and got Loewen's book Lies My Teacher Told Me and found the old poll statistics. In January 1971, 80% of those with grade school education supported withdrawing the troops from Vietnam. 75% of those with high school education supported withdrawing, while 60% of those with college education supported withdrawing. (Loewen points out that polling consistently shows that those most likely to be sent to war tend to support it most strongly, as they feel compelled to find meaning in it. This makes the statistics by education level even more surprising.)

I support teaching children how to think, but this is very different from the kind of education we have now. Consider:

Only 4.2% of the homeschool graduates surveyed consider politics and government too complicated to understand, compared to 35% of U.S. adults. This may account for why homeschool graduates work for candidates, contribute to campaigns, and vote in much higher percentages than the general population of the United States. For example, 76% of homeschool graduates surveyed between the ages of 18-24 voted within the last five years, compared to only 29% of the relevant U.S. population.

...The current system was not designed by the citizens who attend public school, it was designed (largely during the robber baron era) by those in power, to ensure that they stayed in power (and made even more money). However hard dedicated teachers work today, I feel this history matters and that our pedagogy therefore requires massive reform before it will reliably produce critical thinkers and informed citizens.

The other commenter, in their response, suggested that schools needed to teach critical thinking skills early on because the potential to learn critical thinking might be lost forever. (My whole point was that schools don't teach critical thinking, but people are so used to harnessing all desirable mental functioning to "education" (meaning schooling) that I guess my comments didn't make sense to this person.)

The more I thought about the notion of "teaching" critical thinking, the sillier it seemed, because humans have surely evolved to utilize all sorts of beneficial thinking, no schooling required. We have an amazing ability to spot patterns, discover associations, test theories, and yes, "think critically" and skeptically. I certainly feel that hard thinking can be encouraged or it can be quashed, but this idea that it's up to schools to protect us from the irreversible loss of our opportunity to think is absurd. We are thinking from the day we're born (well, before that). If we're no longer thinking and analyzing the world around us at age 18, the question is not "Who failed to teach you to think?" but rather "Who destroyed your desire to use your brain?"

The message of regimented schooling is that children cannot learn on their own, cannot puzzle things out or make discoveries on their own, and that an authority figure will tell them what to believe and how to solve problems cookbook-style. Memorization doesn't promote thinking of any kind, and rewards systems dampen the intrinsic pleasure of learning. The hostile social climate of school is often anti-intellectual in nature, suggesting that using one's brain too much indicates a deficiency of character. Biased standardized tests and other inequalities tell most students, in various subtle ways, that they are inferior. I have no doubt that many teachers try to get their students to participate, to debate, to think, but it seems to me they are swimming against a hell of a tide.

The prevalent belief that we need school to help us think is incredibly frustrating. It would be great to see a school district try something radically different, like having small mixed-age schools which promote student independence and self-learning, as in Montessori schools (just to take one example). Give them democracy, give them autonomy, stop regimenting them by age or grade, stop insisting that all students learn exactly the same material, and kids will not lose their initiative nor stop using their minds. The students who emerged from such a school would be farther on their way to adulthood, much better thinkers, more likely to participate in politics and civil affairs, and harder to trick, seduce, bully, or stonewall than the students emerging from our current schools.

That, of course, brings up another of the sinister purposes of NCLB. You can'ttry a radical new form of schooling, because you have to pass those tests on a particular schedule. Thus government is safe from any true reform of our schools, and the politicians are largely safe from people who will investigate and form their own conclusions.

If you'll permit me a slight tangent: The government can, when the people have lost their interest in puzzling things out for themselves, simply "lose" the testimony of over 100 witnesses who saw a missile strike TWA 800 at the moment it exploded over the Atlantic. They need have no fear of a public clamoring for further inquiry. The FBI can casually dismiss the illogical selling of United and American airlines stock on September 10, 2001 (on the Chicago exchange) without even bothering to find out who was selling it-- because who is going to bug them about that? (Hardly anyone-- only a few widows from New Jersey who can't get any air time on cable news.) It can claim that Flight 93 flew straight into the ground in Pennsylvania, and not worry about the small handful of local people who ask, "Then why is the debris field 8 miles wide?" and "What about those fighter jets?"

It's not about whether people are "educated" or "uneducated." The question for those in power is: How can we get rid of the desire to investigate and think and research and theorize? How can we make thinking undesirable? Well, in the words of the US Commissioner of Education in 1889:

"Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent overeducation from happening. The average American (should be) content with their humble role in life, because they’re not tempted to think about any other role."

--William T. Harris

Or just not tempted to think-- period.