from Terry Haik
As a culture, we have a mental crisis – namely – a bad and lasting refusal and/or inability to think well and to think critically.
It’s just an opinion, but I hope it’s not radical. In order to clarify why this crisis exists – or even why I think it exists – an extensive analysis of cultural, public, political and other anthropological terms beyond the scope of training would be needed.
For starters, you skip almost every “discussion” on social media about any culturally critical issue. If you do not agree that such a crisis exists, the rest of this article will probably not be worth your time. If we can accept that this statement is at least partly true, we can see that as an industry, then we have a crisis in education, which is both the cause and effect of the above.
Education both causes and is a thought effect. Education and thought, at least conceptually, are as connected as the architecture of the building and the building itself.
In part, this “mental crisis” is also a crisis in the language and is associated with a parallel crisis in attachment. Deficiencies in usefulness, knowledge, patience, place and cultural memory are related. But for our purposes, let’s discuss a central crisis among crises: a deficit in critical thinking.
This is partly a matter of thought objects and the quality of thought: what we think and how.
At first glance, education – as – it’s not about teaching And more about content. This should not be controversial, really.
Education
Education is approximately arranged in areas of content and stratified by age. In a wide view, the overall structure can be considered as a large network: the columns are the areas of content and the rows are “age”. We can also consider it the opposite and that won’t change much.
In short, the official education system in the United States is intended for people to study (as a whole) four major categories of knowledge (mathematics, science, social research and linguistic arts) for thirteen years.
These areas of content tend to become more complicated, but they are only periodically specialized (“science” becomes “chemistry”, for example, although chemistry is still science; I am not sure for the protocol why we do not show at least a little vision and marry the sciences in “new fields”.
The point is that education is about content, and content mastery is related to points and evaluations that either do not lead to certificates (eg diplomas) that allow increasingly specialized training (business, law, medicine, etc.) in the after-education (such as a college/university) for the “pret career” (which I offer, which I offer, which the goal of the school).
Three of the Most Visible Components of Most Modern K-12 Public Education Systems: Teachers, Content, and Letter Grades, with the Two Former Components often Merged (Eg, ‘Matht Visible Education Components: Students, Tests, Computers, Books, Walls, Desks, Hallways, Groups, Bells, Calendars, Front-the-Rom Chalkboards and Whiteboards, Etc.
The above is not a comprehensive analysis and there are countless exceptions to the approaches and forms of learning, but they are still exceptions. In fact, this review is not, as far as I can say, misleading its characteristic of modern forms and spaces for public learning.
And if the above is more or less accurate miniature about how human beings study in official education, it must be at least a little clear that we have a problem.
Appearance deficiencyS
McDonaldisation of classroom
You cannot appreciate the quality of “something” without knowing what to do. It’s just about kitchen utensils and a challenge for art and attachment and people: to clarify education and what it should be is to convey what is ideally a very personal and “local” philosophy for everyone else. This is due to the nature of standardization.
In 1993, George Racer wrote a book – which is largely due to the previous work of many, including Max Weber – called The mcDonaldisation of societyS The book is a study of the reasons, effects and standardization of nature through the lens of the American chain of McDonald’s restaurants.
McDonald’s is hardly the first business to use such standardization. In fact, the industrialism itself-the 20th-century America-spine pillar finds the concept in many ways, introducing “popularity” by Henry Ford. Whether you find a “problem” with industrialism, it is first philosophical care.
George Racer has taken the central elements of Max Weber’s work, expands and updates them and presents a critical analysis of the impact of social structural change on human interaction and identity. The central theme in the analysis of the modern Weber society was the process of rationalization; A large -scale process in which traditional thinking regimes have been replaced by analysis of effectiveness and formalized social controls.
For Weber, the archetypal manifestation of this process was bureaucracy; A large, formal organization characterized by a hierarchical structure of authority, well -established division of labor, written rules and provisions, impersonality and concern for technical competence. Bureaucratic organizations not only represent the process of rationalization, the structure that imposes on human interaction and thinking, encourages the process, which leads to an increasingly rationalized world.
The process affects all aspects of our daily lives. Ritzer suggests that in the later part of the twentieth century, the socially structured form of the fast food restaurant became the organizational power, which is and expanding the process of rationalization further in the field of daily interaction and individual identity. McDonald’s served as a model of this process in the 1990s.
In the book, the book explains that an effect of endless rationality is irrationality: “Most substantially, irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable systems. Under that I want to say that they deny the basic humanity, human minds, to people who work inside or serve them.”
Which brings us back to education and our deficit in critical thinking.
Standardization of everything is trade. I talked about these dozens of times before –here for exampleS And hereS And dozens of other publications and tweets and articles, because, it seems to me, it is one of the inherent disadvantages in our design of contemporary training. Briefly, in EducationEvery student, regardless of origin, ethnicity, gender, passion, family history, local needs or family expertise, will study the same thing delivered in such ways – many as a kind of academic cafe.
The implied hope in the curriculum provided to such students (ie all of them) in such a way (ie the “approach of the network”, explained above), is that it will meet the needs of everyone. It is designed to be rational.
And the methods for providing such a curriculum (eg teachers, classrooms, books, applications, tests, etc.) are also designed to be rational. That is, both the curriculum (what is being studied) and the training models and instructions (how they are studied) are designed to be practical: tests, observable and delivering for each student, regardless of – well, all. In design, public education is (intended to be) for all students everywhere, no matter what.
But what about thinking? Can critical thinking – be supported and own by the thinkers – cohabitable in a standardized learning environment designed to promote the broadest number of students to master the most traditional academic content? Probably – but this may not be the best way to ask the question.
Is education intended to encourage affection, curiosity, research and critical thinking?
People compete with tractors and drive hot air balloons, but that doesn’t mean both is perfectly appropriate for the task. Outside of education it is in the mismatch of our fun and application of our fun. But within education? Generation after generation of students suffers from the deficit.
What about critical thinking?
In ‘What does critical thinking mean? I said:
“Critical thinking is among the first causes of change (personal and social), but it is a steam in schools – for another reason, it is not a condition to suspect the form and function of everything it sees, including in your classroom and everything that learns in it. In critical thinking, you are just a strategy for yourself. Arrival of an impartial, neutral and zero person.
And this brings us closer to our deficit of critical thinking culturally, which is partly due to a parallel deficiency of critical thinking in education.
Whether we can “learn” critical thinking or not, it is often arguing, but it seems lacking. Instead of asking if schools can teach critical thinking – or even if critical thinking can be taught – we can start by asking what we lose if we live in a world where this does not happen.
Although completely new forms and methods and reasons for learning are likely to eventually break Education Outside, if we feel nostalgic with the old healthy work of education, we can at least deal with this deficiency of critical thinking by incorporating into the architecture of education. This can be achieved in any number of ways, but some fruits look low hanging.
1. A curriculum that emphasizes critical thinking – a device, which is catalyzed through prolonged study and critical thought. (Similar to electricity.)
2. Create training models that require critical thinking models that cannot function if students (all students) do not think critically. (Like a beam where everyone has to row and stop if someone stops rowing; alternatively, divide the boats completely so that each student is arranged.)
3. Creating achievements in training, evaluations, certificates, etc., which illuminate the process, sequence, models, genius and results of critical thinking.
4. Establish cultural practices where critical thinking is evaluated on popularity. (Democracy can benefit.)
5. Champion teachers as leaders in helping to raise children who think of themselves by supporting teachers as professional designers of educational experience and opportunities.
6. Promote a constant dialogue between schools, families, communities, organizations, higher education, members of the local economy, etc., about the need and nature of critical thought.
7. Create training opportunities that take advantage of the respective genius of any child where the gifts and attachments of this child are clear and indisputable, especially for this student, as they see themselves.
We can continue and continue and worry that I am far too far from the point: schools as they are They are not “intended for” critical thinking, and at the moment, and as a culture (and planet) we suffer from the subsequent deficit.
This means that we can focus less on the iterative improvement of education and more on education As it may beS
