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Critical thinking is sadly lacking when it comes to education
A column in today’s Globe and Mail perfectly illustrates why our mission (to significantly improve student learning in Canada) is so hard. Usually sensible and well-informed, Gary Mason lauds the BC education minister’s plans to de-emphasize facts in favour of those more important problem-solving skills (a false dichotomy, if I ever heard of one).
It’s amazing. Most people appear to think that kids still sit in rows and are force-fed facts for subsequent regurgitation. But this hasn’t been the case for many decades. The emphasis on higher-order skills that Mr. Mason is so starry-eyed about has been in place since at least the seventies. It didn’t work well then, and it still doesn’t.
That’s because, contrary to Mr. Mason’s bromide that an emphasis on facts was put in place back in the days before it was understood how people learned, it would be more accurate to say that an emphasis on problem-solving skills was put in place back in the days before it was understood how people learned. Dan Willingham has written two important articles on the relationship between cognition and knowledge. here and here The bottom line: “The ability to think critically…depends on domain knowledge and practice.”