6 thoughts on “Teaching Students To Think”

  1. It should take far less time to teach young people to think than to warehouse them for 12 years. Plus kindergarten, plus pre K, plus whatever college they are conned in to. Really unhappy with degreed engineers that I have to argue with because they don’t know their job.

    1. It should take far less time to teach young people to think than to warehouse them for 12 years.

      Keep in mind that there’s a lot of stuff out there for people who want to think for themselves. My take is that there is at least some disinterest or resistance to thinking for oneself out there for most people. It’s hard to do, much less do well. And humans have all kinds of exploitable cognitive shortcuts hardwired into their brains. I think it’s actually a hard, life-long project. Warehousing kids for 12 years may well be easier. Of course, the outcome isn’t so hot – depending what you’re looking for.

    1. A big influence on how I view learning and teaching was seeing Public Television give a forum to philosopher Mortimer “Aristotle for Everybody” Adler.

      According to Aristotle as interpreted by Adler, education and learning are of much value. And things that are of great value are difficult to acquire. The aphorism “no pain, no gain”, even in becoming physically fit is thoroughly overused, but Adler claims Aristotle is telling us that learning indeed involves struggle, pain and discomfort, even if it is of the kind resulting from mental, not physical exertion.

      I regard it as a fallacy that anyone can learn anything without experiencing the struggle to understand something beyond one’s immediate cognitive grasp, if only all instructors were gifted in how they imparted knowledge on students.

      As to the students who have an intuitive grasp of the square root function as a result of an inspired teacher putting a lot of effort into putting weights at the ends of different lengths of string, to paraphrase the doubting apostle Thomas’ encounter with Christ, blessed are the students who suffer through boring, less-inspiring instructors yet are able to develop a mental model of the square root function.

  2. Many school districts can’t even produce more than a small minority of students at the end of 12 years that can read and do simple arithmetic at anywhere near grade level, what are the odds they can teach them to think?

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