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Wrong Education

blakehaydn

Thinker
B
Joined
Oct 11, 2005
Messages
148
Application of critical thinking and psychological awareness need to be the top priority in teaching devoloping children.
 
Okay, what age group are we talking about and in what capacity?
 
Hey, lay off! I teach critical thinking to three year olds! You want to know one of the hardest groups to do magic for? Little kids!

Primary age children, ages 3-5 are GREAT at learing critical thinking. It's easy and fun too.

I teach the kids about the Big Bang, so how much harder can critical thinking be? You teach to the age, but working in a Montessori school has taught me that we WAY underestimate what a young child can do and learn. The parents bring them in, and in less than a week we have them putting on their own coat and fixing their own snack. After a month we just sit back and let them do all the work...

A doctor at planned parenthood was once asked when sex education should begin. He replied it began at BIRTH! You ARE teaching your child about critical thinking, or NOT critical thinking from birth. You may not know it, but you are.
 
Hey, Lay off!?! Excuse me!! Could you be more rude!?!
I never said I disagreed. I just want some clarification for specifics and some dialogue.
 
I'm sorry.....

but I have a terrible time convincing any skeptic groups that we need to start them YOUNG.

Here is one of my favorite tools. The book , "The Emperors New Clothes" Perfect skeptic book, and the "hero" (or skeptic) is a child!
 
cbish said:
Hey, Lay off!?! Excuse me!! Could you be more rude!?!
I never said I disagreed. I just want some clarification for specifics and some dialogue.
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Oh I am sorry....

but yes I could be more rude

Your mother wears Army boots! so there....(and I a moderator, it's really sad)

but totally a fair cop on the rude part!
 
Actually, my mother does wear army boots. She said they're the best for butt-kickin'. I blame my brothers.

I'm for starting education young. The only concern I have is that it is developmentally appropriate for the age group. When I think of critical thinking, I think of Carnap's Analysis and Synthesis modes. These require the abstract thought which normally doesn't develop until the teenage years. However, I'm sure there are exercises that are appropriate for primary and elementary education. That's out of my breadth. That's why I'm curious as to what blake had in mind. I'm also curious to what 'psychological awareness' is. Is that a textbook term that I'm not familiar with or is it a term blake uses to describe some phenomena?
 
hmmmm, well I use books and talk to the kids. We had a big talk about ghosts. MOst 3-5 year olds think there ARE ghosts. when I showed them photographs of "ghosts" they all commented about how that sure didn't look like a ghost! We then talked about what could ghosts be! It was fun. When I talked with the parents they were kind of shocked that their kids thought there were ghosts of the type just walking around going "Boo". sadly many of the parents believe in ghosts, but not of the Caspar type.
 
cbish said:
I'm also curious to what 'psychological awareness' is. Is that a textbook term that I'm not familiar with or is it a term blake uses to describe some phenomena?
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I mean we should teach society to understand human psychology to a basic degree so we know why we do things for the most part. Especially psychological defense mechanisms because they can be manipulated on in so many ways and they are very common.
 
blakehaydn said:
Application of critical thinking and psychological awareness need to be the top priority in teaching devoloping children.
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On the basis that civerlization is able to function without this but would struggel to function without people haveing tha ability to read I'm going to dissagree.
 
kittynh,

I have a three year old son and I would appreciate more advice on teaching him logical thought but I do not want to take the fun out of things for him.

For example, I pull quarters out of his ears all the time. I am not sure whether he really believes it but he laughs hysterically about it. I am not going to teach him otherwise. I am a little worried when he puts pennies in his ear. ;)

Another example is dinosaurs. I tell him that dinosaurs are extinct but he insists he saw one yesterday. He asked me if dinosaurs would eat monkeys because the movie Dinosaur has both dinosaurs and monkeys. I told him that the dinosaurs went extinct before there were monkeys but he won't believe me.

CBL
 
cbish said:
I'm for starting education young. The only concern I have is that it is developmentally appropriate for the age group. When I think of critical thinking, I think of Carnap's Analysis and Synthesis modes. These require the abstract thought which normally doesn't develop until the teenage years. However, I'm sure there are exercises that are appropriate for primary and elementary education. That's out of my breadth. That's why I'm curious as to what blake had in mind. I'm also curious to what 'psychological awareness' is. Is that a textbook term that I'm not familiar with or is it a term blake uses to describe some phenomena?
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Yes, we definitely need more people thinking along these lines like cbish. I'm not at all for taking the fun out of being a kid, I'm all for feeding their true interests before they become socialized by media, and I'm all for teaching them about objective thought as their mind develops. When I speak of "psychological awareness" I am referring to the education and consciousness of our own psychology and how it ties in with society. This of course can come a bit later.
 
It seems to be getting more difficult to teach critical thinking in school. There are so many mandatory tests that schools are being forced to implement that teaching anything “off” curriculum is almost impossible. No child left behind makes that a bit worse. Test scores are held up as indication of the ability of the school district to educate students. Your student can be brilliant critical thinkers which would mean nothing to the district if their test scores weren’t good.


Since I teach a science elective, I am able to teach critical thinking skills, but I get students in 11th and 12th grade. Many students have already established witch-wiggler beliefs or won’t even try to use or understand scientific method for its intended purpose. It can be impossible to dislodge such entrenched neural pathways during the limited time I have to teach critical thinking. However, many of them really start to change the way they think about certain items.


An additional problem is that teachers may harbor strange beliefs and lack the needed skills. A few years back, a new teacher claimed to be a certified palmist. (I shared a room with this teacher and we had some colorful discussions.) I have known teachers to believe that the "awards” are all true, etc. the list goes on. Parents can also have some limitations in the critical thinking arena. Middleschool would be the best place to start teaching students critical thinking in science--as an extention of the scientific method. (rather than just memorizing its steps)


glenn
 
Critical thinking almost wouldn't have to be a seperate issue, but just more the way you taught everything else. At home I mean. In schools I believe probably science class would be the best way to do it,and it should be the first lesson of the year EVERY year.
 
glennmr78 said:
...I have known teachers to believe that the "awards” are all true, etc. ...

glenn
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This should have said "Darwin Awards" referring to the website. I actually use the Darwin award website to show how convincing stuff on the web can still be very wrong.

glenn
 
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