Comments on: Are you a critical thinker?

By: Dan Willingham

Dan Willingham — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:58:43 +0000

That's not ot exactly what I said. What I said was that teaching critical thinking in the abstract–i.e., divorced from content–is fruitless. Teaching critical thinking is not only possible, but essential, but it has to be done in the context of domain-specific content.

By: Richard_Collins

Richard_Collins — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:00:53 +0000

That's good to hear, maybe you can give us your impressions when you come back. I try to promote this web site as much as I can. They have provided teaser PDF files of some of their books which contain good information.

By: john_smith12

john_smith12 — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:46:18 +0000

My wife & I are going to the 29th intrn'l conference on critical thinking this July which is run in part by Linda Elder: http://www.criticalthinking.org/Conference/2009_C...

By: Richard_Collins

Richard_Collins — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:46:03 +0000

Noreply:
Do you have something more substantial than an ad hominem? What specific points are weak? What exact help does your generation need? What is your generation?

By: Danny Boy, FCD

Danny Boy, FCD — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:14:38 +0000

I don't know but I think your spelling teacher has already failed you.

By: noreply

noreply — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:42:34 +0000

In which ways are you refering to students contributing (on a small or large scale) to society? Aslo, all of your support is very baised and weak. You need to do some more thinking before you write another article. Other than "reseach" are yu actually doing anything to help my generation use there intellect?

Thank you.

By: Richard_Collins

Richard_Collins — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:37:58 +0000

Daniel T. Willingham, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia basically throws up his hands and claims that for all the work put into teaching critical thinking there is little to show for it:

http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator…

I think Willingham is wrong and even if it is difficult to teach kids to think doesn't that simply mean we have to find better ways to educate them. Perhaps the schools need to get parents on board with the program and involve them more directly. Religious people are probably a big drag on teaching kids to think, they don't want them questioning their religion, after all.