One would think if it were integrated with other studies it would be mentioned somewhere other than Edutopia and Walden adverts.
I did, in a very rural, very underfunded school district - all of those things are critical thinking.
It is integrated into other studies. But there tend to not be "This lesson is critical thinking" sorts of headers on the lesson plans.
Look for the phrase "lifelong learner". That tends to be where the "critical thinking" lives for many schools.
It’s been awhile, but would wonder how unbiased today’s history books are. I can’t see the State of Texas board being nuanced about the Alamo.
I can see a rural district where teachers/schools have much more control over curricula, so enlightment or indoctrination is easier to influence. I dont see this scaling to large administrative/measurement bound districts. How does one test to CT outside perhaps secondary effects of STEM or AP results? It does appear that higher percentages of students are taking AP tests though.
Being educated by Jesuits, we started with Socrates/Plato. But looking at my classmates FB feeds I don’t see any evidence of sober CT skills. Skepticism is a synonym of conspiricism in today’s generations. Biases are polar bound.
This is news to me. What countries are you referencing?
Teaching critical thinking skills is not some revolutionary idea and it's not like educators want to avoid teaching people how to do it.
"Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."
Page 13: https://web.archive.org/web/20120629111643/http://s3.amazona...
Since we're just comparing anecdata at this point (or at least I am), if you have any data/studies or anything like that it would be appreciated.
People claim that critical thinking is not taught in schools because it's an easy claim to make when you perceive that so many other people are thinking uncritically. But, make a claim they disagree with and watch how good they become at it. Everyone falls into a trap of thinking that society at large lacks 'common sense' or 'critical thinking' because we all assume our worldview is true and anyone who disagrees must have deficient thinking. Ultimately I think people are taught how to think critically, but the real problem is when they choose to think critically. And that, I think, is a result of human nature, not lack of education.
I remember when I was dating a doctor being appalled by her complete inability to think through a problem, and I later learned medical school is basically mass memorization. I am obviously cherry picking medicine here, but if doctors aren't even taught that by the time they're practicing in the United States I think it's fair to say critical thinking is sorely lacking in our education system. She was a neurologist who was unable to help me with my migraines, and I later figured them out on my own using ~drumroll~ critical thinking. I also saw at least a half dozen specialists at prestigious hospitals, all of whom were equally unhelpful in solving my problem. They were all very quick to prescribe pain medication though, in fact it seemed to be the only thing any of them were ever interested in doing. Some of them accused me of lying about my symptoms, and some told me I shouldn't even bother trying to get better.
If US doctors - some of the best educated and most highly trained professionals in the world - aren't good at thinking critically about medicine, I'm not confident that it's being taught in the US. In fact I'm quite confident it's not taught in the US (or at least it wasn't). I was never taught critical thinking in a classroom setting, and I have multiple degrees from the US.
Sure, it’s not every doctor. But throw a dart at a map and you’re bound to hit one who’s like this more often than not.