{"id":759,"date":"2015-08-16T13:19:37","date_gmt":"2015-08-16T18:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=759"},"modified":"2017-01-31T08:22:16","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T13:22:16","slug":"why-dont-we-teach-our-kids-critical-thinking-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=759","title":{"rendered":"Why don&#8217;t we teach our kids critical thinking skills?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.quora.com\/66-of-US-citizens-dont-believe-in-evolution-What-does-that-say-about-them\" target=\"_blank\">this thread on Quora<\/a>, and one of the comments included the observation that we teach American schoolchildren scientific facts (if even this), but rarely teach the scientific method, which would better enable them to figure things out for themselves.<\/p>\n<p>I have thought about this off and on, and my conclusion is that there are many institutions, not just religious ones, that benefit from a population that doesn&#8217;t think critically about the world. I&#8217;m not saying there&#8217;s a coherent strategy to keep people uneducated (there&#8217;s no need to imagine a plot), but there&#8217;s no<em> push<\/em> to make it happen, so it doesn&#8217;t happen. Here are a few such organizations or institutions that I thought of off the top of my head:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Marketing: you would prefer it to be easy to convince people to buy your stuff<\/li>\n<li>Politics: easier to get people to vote for you if you can use emotion and not logic<\/li>\n<li>Military: people with good critical thinking skills might see that military action is usually not your best first option (probably a sub-category of politics)<\/li>\n<li>Religion (of course)<\/li>\n<li>Professional team sports (probably a sub-category of marketing)<\/li>\n<li>Parents who want their kids to grow up believing in the same things they do<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was reading this thread on Quora, and one of the comments included the observation that we teach American schoolchildren scientific facts (if even this), but rarely teach the scientific method, which would better enable them to figure things out for themselves. I have thought about this off and on, and my conclusion is that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=759\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Why don&#8217;t we teach our kids critical thinking skills?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-philosophizing","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgY3e-cf","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":218,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=218","url_meta":{"origin":759,"position":0},"title":"Why lobsters aren&#8217;t food","author":"Jorah","date":"March 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Why lobsters aren't food:BY DAVE BARRY(This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on Jan. 26, 1996.)I am pleased to report that the scientific community has finally stopped wasting time on the origins of the universe and started dealing with the important question, which is: Are lobsters really just big\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1007,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1007","url_meta":{"origin":759,"position":1},"title":"You never know what&#8217;s going to happen at Knit Night","author":"Jorah","date":"December 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"...you leave your unfinished knitted bag lying around and some madman starts wearing it as a hat...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Knitting&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"goofing around wearing a purse on my head","src":"https:\/\/jorahlavin.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/12\/knit-night_folly.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1053,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1053","url_meta":{"origin":759,"position":2},"title":"Confused idealist to guarded optimist","author":"Jorah","date":"November 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A friend asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s the one issue you\u2019ve changed your mind on significantly since you were younger?\u201d I couldn\u2019t stick with just one issue, so I wrote this up. Below are a few of the things I can name as having changed positions on. Nearly all of them have been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Philosophizing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Philosophizing","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=59"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1004,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1004","url_meta":{"origin":759,"position":3},"title":"Glove dreams","author":"Jorah","date":"December 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Something fun happened today; fun for me, anyway! I had one of those internal events that happen sometimes when I've been studying a new subject really intently; a whole bunch of disparate information twisted around and turned into ...well, I guess you could say \"understanding.\" I've been thinking about how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Knitting&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"A scan of my hand with grid lines drawn on it","src":"https:\/\/jorahlavin.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/12\/glove-hand-lines.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1024,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1024","url_meta":{"origin":759,"position":4},"title":"&#8220;You must be very patient&#8230;&#8221;","author":"Jorah","date":"May 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"For some reason, people who don't knit will often say something along these lines: \"Wow, you knit, huh? You must be very patient\" or \"I don't have the patience to do that.\" This may be code for\u00a0boy, that looks boring,\u00a0but let's take it as an honest statement. The fact is;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Knitting&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1386,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1386","url_meta":{"origin":759,"position":5},"title":"Risk Transference","author":"Jorah","date":"May 31, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I read an interesting article on risk this morning. \"When Safety Proves Dangerous.\" It mentions one idea (risk transference) that feels to me as if it might be related to problems we're seeing in policing in America. I believe that rich (and frequently white) people have used the police to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Philosophizing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Philosophizing","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=59"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":762,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}