Brain Punch
Today, too many people are ill equipped to fight the battle raging for their minds.
In 2011, I ran across two articles decrying the lack of critical thinking skills being taught and how little worth the first two years of college truly are (except to the loan company or bank funding the school loans, of course).
The first excerpt below is from a McClatchy article (now behind a paywall), the second, from a book review in USA Today (so old the link is broken):
Study: Many college students not learning to think critically
NEW YORK — An unprecedented study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of college found that large numbers didn’t learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education.
Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event, according to New York University sociologist Richard Arum, lead author of the study. The students, for example, couldn’t determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin.
From USA Today:
A new book, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” argues that’s the case for nearly half of the country’s undergraduates, who show almost no gains in academic performance in the first two years of college, several media outlets reported.
While the research showed that 45 percent of students showed no significant gains in learning after two years, it also showed students are spending 50 percent less time studying than they did a few decades ago, the USA Today reported.
As a long-time business leader, I’ve personally experienced these effects in the work world.
This is a problem I see in a large percentage of the population of job applicants. Once, it was not so much in people with technical degrees, because engineering degrees demand critical thinking and the use of rules, but today I find that recent graduates have been subjected to less rigor in the traditional courses and more inculcation in social issues.
I’ve always believed an understanding of basic math, geometry leads to higher math, physics and higher functions. All engineering work is built on a solid foundation of critical thinking and the application of rules.
The two greatest learning experiences in my life came from geometry in high school (geometry is built on “proofs” – using rules applied in new situations to solve problems, truth built upon truth) and the engineering curriculum in college. They taught me how to think logically. My work toward an engineering degree made all my business and law classes much easier because they taught me how to think critically.
In the technical world, there is no room for boosting self-esteem or “the answer is whatever makes you feel good”. The fact is 2+2 is not 3 or 5, it is 4, it was 4 yesterday and it will be tomorrow. Problems don’t get solved because we feel good about it. We must generate answers.
I think the problem can largely be attributed to an internet-based information bank where people can just google something and have it at their fingertips. Nobody must learn anything anymore. You don’t have to work through problems and learn how to do it right through your mistakes. I can remember sitting in my apartment in college, staring at a calculus problem for hours trying to figure out what I had done (or not done) to get the right answer. Making errors is an important factor in knowing what works and what doesn’t, what is true and what is false.
We have access to so much raw information, people no longer have the filter to sort relevant from irrelevant, and we have confused thinking with knowing, and knowledge with wisdom.
Those who have come of age in the internet age haven’t had the need to fail. I think failure and recovery, not just in math and science, but in social interaction, is the raw material for the filter humans need to build to separate relevant information from irrelevant, fact from opinion, truth from lies.
And now there are AI programs out there passing bar exams and acing the MCAT (medical school assessment), so it isn’t going to get better any time soon unless we make it better.
People need to fail in order to succeed.
When everyone is given a trophy for participation, win or lose...makes it hard to learn those lessons.
One of those things I've learned (the hard way) is that we seldom learn from successes but hopefully learn from our failures. Failures SHOULD teach us not to do the same thing again.
If no one wins and no one loses...how do we learn or process direction? 🤔
Geometry is not the same class as when you and I studied proofs and theorems. When Jack took Geometry, he had an amazing teacher. I asked him to show me what they were studying. The materials that our students are studying are not the same as we studied in the 70’s. Analytical thinking skills are now being taught more in vocational classes. I am so thankful for the teachers that you and I were fortunate to have.