I also have 2 young children, 1 in a catholic primary school.
I have been disappointed with the materials available to parents (and I suppose teachers too) to encourage critical thinking.
I bought a couple of Dan Barkers' books (Maybe Right, Maybe Wrong and Maybe Yes, Maybe No) which start to go in the right direction, but I didn't think they would "engage" with my children enough to draw them to critical thinking.
I think there is a gap in the market for good material, be it books, TV or film.
Does anyone else agree?
What resources have people found that they have actually used with young (primary school) children and found them engaged and enthused about?
Obviously the best direction for my children comes directly from me, but resources are helpful ......
Andrew
It is some years ago now, so I do not know if they are still available, but my kids engaged very well with the 'Horrible science & Horrible History' books. This trained them in the value of having information that though surprising could be backed by evidence, also had debunking sections introducing them to the notion that myths can be disproven - sometimes.
I used two good books for my kids, books by Edward De Bono on critical thinking and some great home experiment stuff like making vinegar and baking powder cannons to demonstrate recoil. Look at his website it's really interesting.Originally Posted by afd
Tony Buzan and his mind mapping ways to remember stuff is great for cramming for exams and lots of good thinking stories too.
Mind mapping is brilliant, and not just for cramming. There is something about the approach that seems to work for long term memory. More importantly, though, it seems to work to help evaluation and connection making. I have no idea why, but I'm a huge fan.
I'd like to point out that there is an A-Level in Critical Thinking, and I taught the version from the OCR board. My experience of it was not altogether positive, in that unless you overload the course to make it useful, the core of it does not address CT usefully. It has been described as a "pseudo-qualification", and one commentator has written:
But what I found most disheartening when reviewing the figures for A-levels was the increase in subjects such as "critical thinking" - especially as there were fewer than 1,000 students taking Latin or ancient Greek this year. Why is critical thinking even a subject? I can understand why A-levels come under flak when you need to be given a certificate telling you that you have the capacity to think.My preferred approach would be for critical thinking to be split into various domains, with the government working with clever people like whats we can finds on this here forumboard. Then we weave these into specifications for all courses appropriately. All this is backed up by regularly focus on critical thinking issues that arise in news, media, politics, advertising etc. However, this would lead to an education system that educated people, and that's not exactly the point of it at the moment.
As an aside: I don't trust De Bono. His bullcrap, like 'thinking hats', is too often used by "blue sky thinkers" to provide a sheen of scientific legitimacy. Also his lateral thinking exercises, I have read, has not shown any effect on cognitive skills in empirical tests. Sorry I can't provide a reference for this, though.
I also don't trust Buzan. He somehow makes money teaching people how to mind-map... surely one book and you're done? He also claims to have invented it when really such techniques go back to the Ancient Greeks. The Ancient Greeks rocked and I'll have anyone that prefers the Romans!
In short, I am 'ornery and like to complain.
They did indeed rock, though I'm not aware of any evidence for their invention of mind-mapping ...
I went through the AS Critical Thinking course a few years ago and my experiences were terrible. We studied it for one 40 minute session every week in a class of 40ish, taken by a history teacher. We were given a textbook at the start of the year, and in class he'd mention what a non-sequitor was. That's literally the only thing I was taught in a whole year, and since everyone took the piss out of the class (after all it was treated like a joke by the school, I don't see how they expected a bunch of teen boys to take it seriously), I didn't read the textbook and neither did anyone else. Unable to name fallacies or anything, I came out with a C and IIRC that was the best mark in my class.
I do think it could be genuinely useful. The criticism by the commenter that people should take Latin and Greek instead of Critical Thinking is absurd (sorry for going OT a bit). I study Spanish and Portuguese at university and I've studied various languages in the past to some degree or other, including 5 years of Latin from 11 up until 16. Although the common argument is that it's good for learning other languages, particularly romance languages like the ones I study, that's not exactly true. The grammar has been simplified considerably since then, getting rid of declensions, of two whole genders, and really the most useful thing about Latin is the vocabulary. That's also kind of outdated, there's no Latin for 'Internet' or 'climate change', and really I could have picked up the same kind of vocabulary by studying another modern romance language like Italian. Studying Latin as far as A Level is largely useless unless you intend to study ancient history.
Back on topic, critical thinking is not so much about learning how to think as the commenter seems to think, but more about making a good argument and identifying bad ones. This is crucial to learning about all kinds of things right across the humanities and into science, particularly as students go onto university. I think it would also lower considerably the readership of the Daily Mail, which can only be a good thing.
If a course on Critical Thinking addresses only argumentation, not stretching deeper into changing the way you think, then it is in danger of becoming a course on sophistry and persuasion.
It's called Critical Thinking, and as a teacher, I was desperate to address how to think critically when I taught it.
It is fashionable to think that everyone can do anything, given sufficient high quality education. In my experience, some people think in creative ways naturally and others simply don't. Teaching can develop such abilities, if they are already there, but some will just never get it (the kind of people who ask authors 'where do you get your ideas from') no matter how much they are taught.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks