1)馃УA Newsweek reporter once heard both Obama & a college spokesman say:
* "critical thinking is a "21st-century skill" American students lack", and need to be taught CT to "think like a journalist", which surprised him, as they:
* "...might be aghast to learn that I somehow managed to snag a desk in a newsroom without ever flashing my critical-thinking abilities, latent or otherwise, though I suspect knowing how to write a complex-compound sentence helped matters..."
Asking basic questions about 'Critical Thinking's claims reveals that it's 'Thinking Skills' aren't real, lead students to believe they know what they don't, and instills a confidence in getting easy 'logical' answers that makes them comfortable in their ignorance.
But that misses the real problem & danger inherent in such 'skills'.
@thepalmerworm @CourtenayTurner
@educatedandfree @coddlethis42
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2) In writing "You're 100 Percent Wrong About Critical Thinking", Alexander Nazaryan pointed out that 'Critical Thinking's pedagogy generates a thin veneer of 'answers' that encourages students to feel a sense of superiority without the knowledge to support it, & as a result:
* "...Our students, according to pretty much everyone, are crappy critical thinkers...."
'Critical Thinking's praxis of 'criticizing' leaves students unable to see that they amount to no more than sophistic 'gotcha-skills'.
But if 'what is seen' was the only problem with 'Critical Thinking', it would've been fixed in the last 70 years of its reforms.
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3) What goes unseen, isn't just that 'Critical Thinking' has edged out what depth a school's curriculum still had 50 years ago - if that were the case, drilling students in those 'answers' students gave in the 1890s, would 'fix things'. We've tried that & it fails.
The unseen problem is that John Dewey's maxim of:
* "We should teach How to think, not what to think!"
, has left us with nihil to think with... but answers bereft of meaning, and that is 'what' Dewey was after all along.
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4) Those who designed our modern schooling systems, wouldn't be surprised to find out "...Our students, according to pretty much everyone, are crappy critical thinkers..." - that was the point of their designs. They didn't want to educate America's students, they wanted to reform their schools to transform America.
Sep 21, 2026 路 10:47 PM UTC
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5) As classical educator Martin Cothran @MartinCothran pointed out years ago in "The Critical Thinking Skills Hoax", in the view of the 'Progressive Educators' of 'Critical Thinking':
* "...Knowledge is unnecessary, goes the thinking of progressive educators, because the only thing necessary is skills. And so we think we can divorce skills from knowledge..."
, and this isn't difficult to see in your local schools, as Dewey's emphasis on teaching 'How to think, not what to think!', has driven our cultural drift (plunge) away from our understanding of the West in general, and of America in particular.
And 'The Right' is ever eager to call for more 'reform!' with still more testing in 'How' to get 'answers!' that 'everyone knows!', and which ever fewer are able to understand.
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6) When 'educators' speak to you of 'education', resist the urge to think that what they mean by the words they use, is what you mean by them, and why.
Note the 'How' that neglects the 'What', in 'Bloom's Taxonomy Of Learning' pyramid, with 'Create' at its pinnacle:
"The peak of the domain is creating, where students synthesize various elements to form a coherent, original whole."
, and then looking at its base with 'Remember':
"Define, duplicate, list, memorize, repeat, state"
, and clarify by asking about the "What"?
Remember what? Define what? Memorize, repeat, state... what?
Committing lists of words & phrases that 'everyone knows!' to memory, and understanding what those words refer to and why it's important to remember them, are two very different things, and they are used to accomplish exceedingly different objectives, and if left unidentified, the unwary student's mind is easily subverted by that metaphysical neglect.
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7) What Knowledge is, cannot be contained by 'mere remembering' in the 'lowest level of the cognitive domain', and consequently those promoting 'Critical Thinking' must either avoid or ridicule any traditional materials that convey more than that, so that they can teach students 'How' to arrive at 'answers' which 'everyone knows!'.
The metaphysical vacancy of 'Critical Thinking' spreads such weeds as "criticizing '2+2=5' hampers creativity", and insisting that "2+2=4 is a means of imposing whiteness", and engineering society by 'investing' $9,000 in stay-at-home moms, are all ideological castles in the air, built by 'Critical Thinking's method of 'How' to get something from nothing.
The real wonder is not that 'Critical Thinking' builds castles in the air, but how people fail to see that those castles are being built 'up there', as a means to subduing us down here - believing that foundations can be built in the air, is 'How' they effectively take away the ground from under our own feet.
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