When a couple finds they are expecting, a mixture of exuberance and concerns of adequacy develop. In response to these feelings and to give their child the best start in life, the parents do what they’re told to do: buy all the latest gear and educational material, and send their child off to daycare or school to ensure proper socialization and education. From conception to birth and through childhood, parents seek the advice of, and relegate important decisions to, the authorities because they know how to give a child the best start or advantages in life. What parents do not realize is this course of action will not make their child a smarter, more creative problem solver; rather it will relegate their child to the hands of mediocrity. How could this be? Gwen Dewar, PhD, (2010) in discussing modern education says that, “we often [inadvertently] train our kids to think in illogical and fallacious ways” that promotes “conformist thinking.” The lack of critical thinking in education affects problem-solving skills, knowledge application, self- efficacy, and creates a failure to reach cognitive potential and mastery.
The word “educational” has become a catch phrase in the current marketplace. Products across the board are jumping on the “educational” bandwagon and touting the benefits of early cognitive assistance. Toy aisles inundate a person with toys which possess catch phrases detailing a plethora of educational benefits. Experts tout that classical or instrumental music has benefits toward assisting in concentration and making one smarter. Education experts pander curriculum adjunct or advancing material, like flash cards or workbooks, to entice worried parents that their children need more assistance to succeed. Scientists fortify some infant formulas, and other foods, with chemicals like docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA), which naturally occur in breast milk, for alleged brain development and cognitive advances.
This is just a sampling of the push for early education, but it is enough to see the sheer degree to which “educational” has invaded the marketplace. Does this entire educational array have true benefits or is it just marketing hype? Why is all this pushed; is it a portender of a deeper problem? What is this deeper problem? Why does it exist? And what can be done?
Christine Woodrow and Frances Press, each university professors, collaborated on a paper called Positioning the Child in the Policy/Politics of Early Childhood. The purpose of the paper was to identify how education and childcare in Australia have become for profit businesses that have deviated far from the turn of the century philanthropic ideals. “At the turn of the 21st century [people] have been witness to an acceleration of privatization and commercialism in many aspects of everyday life” (2007, p. 315). They further discussed “that values such as trust, respect, good will, sincerity and fairness…are likely to be transformed [into] supplier-consumer relationships built upon profit motives” (Woodrow & Press, 2007, p. 318), where the bottom line and responsibility to the shareholder profits take precedence over public welfare and accountability. Advertising peddles daycare and education as providing the child an ideal childhood. This is an example of experts suggesting that they can rear a child better than the parent at home (Woodrow & Press, 2007).
The collaborative paper titled, The Gift Paradigm in Early Childhood Education, by Genevive Vaughan and Elia Estola, another pair of university teachers, explores a similar problem in childcare. The pair discussed that two different motivations, or paradigms, exist for conducting commerce. The first paradigm, called the gift paradigm, is most often observed in the mother who gives the child what he or she needs without expectation for recompense. The second paradigm, called the exchange paradigm, occurs when one expects payment or compensation for a performed service. The exchange paradigm currently dominates commerce even of such “need satisfying good[s]” (2007, p. 246) as water, food, education, and other necessities that nature freely provides. Education must therefore operate like a business: with a focus on profit, cost efficiency, and remaining competitive. They further discussed that offering education and childcare for exchange robs the innocence of the child; removing his or her abilities to achieve self-efficacy, become self-directed, and develop values (Vaughan & Estola, 2007).
These teachers all agree that the ideal environment for childcare and education would mimic the early 20th century models like Maria Montessori’s Montessori Method. The Montessori Method placed the child in an environment that encouraged self-actualization, self-control, and self-mastery. This was achieved through the exploration of various activities and materials designed to develop fine motor skills and sensory acuity. Woodrow and Press labeled this self-mastery as the ideal environment in which to encourage the development of citizenship to encourage the development of true democracy, something our world is in dire need of (Vaughan & Estola, 2007, & Woodrow & Press, 2007).
The Foundation for Critical Thinking also addresses the declination of education and the roll of an educated society. The Foundation, consisting of five highly educated members, identifies a concept called critical thinking as the cornerstone to a meaningful education. A meaningful education allows the child to become a proactive citizen who can solve society’s problems (2009). The Foundation’s definition states that critical thinking is:
“…[ An] intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness (Foundation for Critical Thinking, 2009, Defining Critical Thinking).”
The Foundation delineates that a critically thinking society would lead to the preservation of the species by solving the major and minor problems of the world, including: injustice, bias, criminal behavior, deception, manipulation, hypocrisy, righteousness, pain, suffering, hunger, homelessness, and even environmental, geological, and climatic concerns. “Critical societies can and will emerge only to the extent that human thinking becomes a primary interest… [which is] routinely… discussed and critiqued in every… [home, classroom, workplace, etc.]” In addition people must take these problems seriously and work together to solve those problems with logic and clarity (2009, Critical Thinking, The Educated Mind…).
Is it not the responsibility of the school to prepare students to solve problems? The push-pull ethical battle previously detailed carries heavy consequences that prevent, or fail to assist, the student in achieving his or her potential. The Foundation for Critical Thinking presents ideas from Albert Einstein’s 1954 book Ideas and Opinions, for consideration. Einstein discussed that the modality of education needs to encourage the young person to develop skills for “independent thinking,” or critical thinking, rather than trying to push the student to obtain “special knowledge.” He also cautioned that the lack of critical thinking in education leads the student to become a good factory worker and “kill[s] the spirit of which all cultural life depends” (2009, Critical Thinking, The Educated Mind…). In other words, this factory worker will not be able to solve society’s problems.
So what exactly does the school system do wrong? An education that is conducive to teaching critical thinking would require a complete overhaul of the current educational system. Norman Munn from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee in evaluating education said that, “In order to approximate complete… learning in children, one must take cognizance of conditioning, acquisition of motor skill, memorizing and related mnemonic functions, and problem solving” (1946, p.370). Most education centers upon rote memorization and picking only one answer; excluding discussion of alternative possibilities. For example, a math textbook may ask the student to find the correct box for a series of different sized objects. The problem exists when the student is told there is only one correct answer with complete disregard for alternatives or creative thinking. It says a small object should go into a small box, but the critical thinker would also recognize that the small object could also go into the medium and large size boxes as well. Also stuffing, folding, disassembling, or otherwise manipulating a large object would make it fit into a small to medium box (Dewar, 2010).
With learning disorders and behavior problems seeming to be on the rise in schools, one must consider if there is a casual connection between such disordered behavior and the lack of meaningful education. Donald Ford and Hugh Urban, of the Division of Counseling at Pennsylvania State University, state that ineffective patterns of behavior, or those that cause distraction of fellow students, can find cause in inappropriate conditions for learning as well as how the teacher presents him or herself to the child (1963). “Teachers must ask themselves what their words and actions are teaching [the] children” (Schidler, 2009, p. 1). Language acquisition is natural and mimics the pattern of the role models (Kimble, 1981). Teachers will often present materials from deeply flawed and bias perspectives because: they usually do not know how to reason; do not know how to recognize proper reasoning; and they usually just pass on what they were told (Foundation for Critical Thinking, 2009). This lack of effective communication is absorbed by the student as normal methodology for communication. The lack of critical thinking in learning will “lead to lowered motivation and diminished cognitive ability” for the child (Kimble, 1981, p.32).
Researchers Sverker Silkstrum, Department of Cognitive Science of Lund University, and Goran Solderland, Department of Psychology of Stockholm University, (2007) confirmed this when they discovered that the type of learning environment will have a significant impact on the degree to which Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), a disordered behavior, will present itself. They found that a more stimulating environment will produce better results for cognitive functioning and problem-solving. In other words, a stimulating environment would allow the child to overcome the handicap of ADHD to position him or her to excel academically. On the converse, stimuli-impoverished environments will cause a decline in knowledge retention and learning. Silkstrum and Solderland also attributed student distracters as contributing to a stimuli-impoverished environment; if the student cannot concentrate then he or she cannot learn, regardless of the environment. This research, when paired with the research of Mayer (1989) who defined the line between meaningful and unproductive learning, contributes to a complete picture of a stimulating environment.
Meaningful education, as defined by University of California Professor Richard Mayer, means that the student can take what he or she is taught and applies the subject material to new situations; in other words, expand their knowledge. Mayer conducted a study to measure learning: the student’s retention was tested by offering similar problems to solve and then by testing application of that knowledge to new situations. If the student failed at both tests, then “no learning” occurred. If the student did well on the retention test but poorly on the application test, then the learning was “non-meaningful”. Finally, if the student did well on both, then “meaningful learning” occurred. The list below, adapted from Mayer, provides a quick summary of the conclusions.
Learning Outcome/Retention Performance/ Transfer Performance
No Learning/Poor/Poor
Non-Meaningful Learning/Good/Poor
Meaningful Learning/Good/Good
Education in general is not meaningful because it relies on rote memorization and retention, not on application. Case in point, standardized tests. According to The Foundation for Critical Thinking (2009), Standardized Tests and modern education ask a child to solve problems in ways that run counter to critical thinking’s approach to solving problems. The results are different also: standardized tests promote conformity and lead to unproductive learning, while critical thinking promotes creativity and meaningful learning.
The next question one may ask is what would a curriculum that teaches critical thinking look like? Mayer (1989) suggests that the discombobulated method of teaching thinking is ineffective. Thinking should be taught as integrated within the various subjects; not off by itself once the student reaches college. He makes a point that well documented research, as well as a whole hearted, committed partnership between the educators and those researchers of human cognition must precede any change to the academic profile. This partnership would be necessary to understand, “the conditions that allow the transfer of problem-solving skills and challenge educators to develop a curriculum that has a place for thinking” (Mayer, 1989, p. 162). The comparison below is adapted from Mayer’s paper and delineates how a curriculum may look.
Issue: Critical Thinking Education vs Traditional School System
What to Teach: Thinking should be learned by the pieces it represents in various subjects; vs Thinking is to be isolated from other material.
How to Teach: Student's need process to model where the solution is the reward; vs Correct answers are rewarded; wrong answers are punished. The student does not understand why.
Where to Teach: Each subject should include critical thinking skills. These skills, once mastered, can be carried over to new areas and learned in different ways; vs Thinking is to be taught in a course by itself; usually at the college level.
There are also other approaches to teaching critical thinking skills. Oftentimes in communication metaphors are used for clarification or to offer a frame of reference to bring communication to a common ground. Metaphors allow a person to look at something differently, or as Vaughan and Estola, put it, “Metaphors in education are tools for thinking; they are bridges between the known and the unknown; they facilitate communication and focus the gaze…” (2007, p. 248).
In additon, art, while not typically considered to be a teaching medium, may also help to facilitate the transition to critical thinking instruction. The creative process allows the student to bring the creative vision to life by viewing materials from multiple perspectives, multiple outcomes, and different paths of progression. This also occurs in the creative exploration of materials not normally thought of as art materials; in other words, recycling materials, like milk cartons, into something new, allows something to be seen from a new perspective. Seeing ideas or objects from different perspectives is the cornerstone of creative thinking (Tarr, 2008). Still another approach, while not teaching critical thinking, eliminates the major problem in education that leads to conformist thinking. Vaughan and Estola stress that the gift paradigm needs to be brought back into focus while phasing out the exchange paradigm from education. This movement, they say, “will not only allow children to develop better values in their individual lives but will help to validate those values in the society at large so that choices and policies can become more consciously life-affirming” (2007, p. 250).
Teachers who express the concern that education is not what it should be, argue that the their focus should not be on paperwork, busy work, or other things that distract from them giving their complete attention to the child. The public often eschews these teachers, labeling them as “old-fashioned” (Vaughan & Estola, 2007). Is it time this opinion is re-evaluated? Is the opinion “old-fashioned” or exactly what it needs to be?
Society is at a critical time, as decisions have to be made to solve problems that threaten existence. Without critical thinking, problems will become rampant and unsolvable, society will fail, and humanity will eventually become extinguished. Solving these problems will require teaching the children to solve problems critically and creatively. To do that, though, students need to have meaningful education. This may seem like a logical request; however, the road to implementation is long.
The problems our educational system faces are looming and, therefore, not easy to solve. The school system, being a business, does not care about the well being of the student if that well being interferes with profit. Critical thinking is not taught because it would be too time-consuming and expensive to overhaul the entire system. Besides, this overhaul would interfere with the primary goal: to create workers not thinkers. Identification of the problem is the first step. The next step is for parents to realize that the “authorities” do not know best. Parent’s need to answer the question of whether to continue to allow the child to be handicapped or give him or her the opportunity to make the world a better place? The answer to that question will determine the degree to which the school system will be forced to change.
References
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Einstein, A. (1954). Ideas and Opinions. Crown Trade Paperbacks. New York, NY.
Foundation for Critical Thinking. (2009). Retrieved from
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Kimble, G. (1981). Biological and cognitive constraints on learning. The G. Stanley Hall lecture
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