Comment on 2/10 people on Lemmy, is that you?
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 6 days agoIf the American Republic survives I suspect one long term change we’ll need is to introduce classes on political and rhetorical life to schools. Train people on how to have constructive discussions and how to recognize bad faith rhetorical tactics. We’re seeing now just how effectively bad faith tactics can undermine critical thought. This of course will have to be paired with teaching emotional intelligence.
If the goal of our education system is to produce good citizens of a republic and effective stewards of democracy, we need to be putting more time and effort into that. If my schools could fit religion classes in and still be a better education than public schools they can find the way to teach these things. Philosophy classes every year would probably have done me much better than religion classes.
notwhoyouthink@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
You’ve put a long form version of a theory I also have been thinking of: we need to do better for future generations by teaching and actually supporting critical thinking skills. I’ll also add empathy, which supports critical thinking and is not always hard wired in every human brain. Both are skills, much like emotional regulation and resilience. Personally, I would have benefited greatly by learning critical thinking and interpersonal skills at the age of 16 vs. whatever ‘algebra’ is supposed to be.
Essentially, and TLDR: We need to teach young developing minds how to think, not what to think. We can do even better by teaching said minds that while we are not defined by our thoughts, we have much to learn by observing them instead.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 days ago
See I actually think math is one of the things that absolutely shouldn’t be cut, but it needs to be framed better. Algebra is logical thinking and in some ways can be thought of as mastery level arithmetic.
I think a lot of teachers are really bad at explaining why certain topics are included in education and this results in the “when will I ever use it?” And then these teachers will respond with a few real world examples if they can think of any (and let’s be real, a major portion of why you learn algebra is because it’s a prerequisite to high school level science classes, most everyday algebra is minor). But when you explain to people that they’re learning algebra because it’s a manifestation of logical thinking and it is a means of understanding how numbers interact with each other which will come up in science classes as well as business classes and will convey a generally useful background of understanding that will be useful at various points in life, then they’re more likely to be receptive to it.
And therein lies the additional thing. If you don’t explain to students why philosophy, rhetoric, and emotional intelligence are important for them to learn, many will slack off and not absorb it. I know I resisted in literature and writing classes because I didn’t understand that those are meant to be teaching critical thinking, analysis of media, and effective communication. They managed to beat it into me thanks to some good teachers, but I took the attitude of “I’m going into STEM why do I need this.” Hell my government teacher was the only high school teacher that actually presented an effective argument as to why his class mattered for every student: that we were on the verge of inheriting the government and we needed to learn how it works in order to be good shareholders of it.
But yeah, I generally agree we need to teach kids how to think, but also we need to teach them why we’re teaching them what we teach them. And we need to commit the resources to it.