Eric Wilson - 2013
This past year we had the joy (and terror) of taking our youngest daughter to her first day of daycare. We sent the little one off to school for all the usual reasons of developing social skills, learning, and giving mom three hours of time to herself. At the same time, we had the usual concerns and reservations.
This past year we had the joy (and terror) of taking our youngest daughter to her first day of daycare. We sent the little one off to school for all the usual reasons of developing social skills, learning, and giving mom three hours of time to herself. At the same time, we had the usual concerns and reservations.
One of my wife’s greatest joys has been watching our baby learn and grow. Babies seem wired to learn and given the freedom will discover. Give a baby a rattle and let them go. I did not begin our baby’s journey into the reproduction of audio-phonic brilliance with a lecture and facts. One day, I showed her a rattle. She picked it up, dropped it a few times, and then finally – on her own – successfully learned that shaking it (not dropping it) caused it to make noise that she controlled. Before you know it, she was banging on toy keyboards, singing pop songs, absorbing everything around her, and expressing creativity in interpretive dance.
Then at some point, we take this eager little princess who wants to discover and loves to learn and take her to school.
There, they begin to teach her to sit orderly and recite numbers, letters, colors, and shapes. While she continues to thirst for self-discovery, we teach her to memorize. Any child that constantly asks all those questions (why, who, how?) the teacher likely considers annoying and a disturbance. Meanwhile, the child who stays in her seat, never colors outside the lines, recites her colors back perfectly, and never questions the teacher is considered exceptional and rewarded.
I know the cliché is begging to be used here, and I can no longer resist the urge. It almost seems true that “everything we know we learned in kindergarten.”
We are trained:
- To look up to authority for they are always right
- That it is more important to recite facts than learn concepts
- That everyone is a winner, so you don’t really have to try
- That the people in power will provide everything you need
- To never get out of line and don’t ask too many questions
- That girls have cooties (at least that is what I was told
After that, things go from bad to worse; they go on to high school and college. The “conveyor-belt” education system – aimed at tackling the difficult task of taking those unruly and independent-minded children and transforming them into rule-following, forelock-tugging employees – is something our schools have championed and (unfortunately) had some measurable success implementing. Unfortunately planting seeds of learning and inspiring critical thinking they have been far less prosperous.
According to a study that followed 2,322 traditional-age students from the fall of 2005 to the spring of 2009, forty-five percent of students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during the first two years of college. After four years, thirty-six percent still showed no significant gains in these so-called "higher order" thinking skills.
New York University sociologist Richard Arum – author of the book "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses" as well as other studies – found that a large number of college students never learned the critical thinking, complex reasoning, and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education. The students, for example, could not determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin.
The famed government-sponsored study “A Nation At Risk” done in the 1980s showed that five percent of 17-year-old high school students could not read well enough to understand basic remedial information, such as medication instructions or job descriptions. Only six percent of 11th grade students could solve multi-step math problems.
In a more recent study of corporate employers, over seventy percent of those surveyed indicated a very “high need” for either critical thinking and/or creativity. (The Ill-Prepared U.S. Workforce: Exploring the Challenges of Employer-Provided Workforce Readiness Training, The American Society for Training and Development)
I firmly believe that – if we are to correct the problems we face today or (even more importantly) those of tomorrow – we must restore critical thinking skills. The answer is not politics or money or class size or discipline or new methods. If we are to reclaim and restore principles and values and achieve national success, we must restore a liberal arts education and empower students’ critical thinking, and encourage them to “learn” – not to just “be taught.”
As we dropped our child off for school, I could not help but think of her future. I am thankful my wife and I have made the decision as parents to send our littlest one to a pre-school that encourages creative play and self-discovery. It is our choice where she goes and more importantly the education she will receive. Weather we eventually home school or seek out an education for her that enriches critical thinking and learning we embrace our responsibility to foster her thinking and provide the foundational principles. Are we worried yes, are we concerned defiantly – but looking at our two older Middle and High School children as parents we are proud that we have independent thinkers that follow their passions.
