Republicans in Texas What to Ban Critical Thinking in Classrooms

Having such large books on a topic doesn't constitute critical thinking. How big are the books on being a police officer, military officer, firefighter, or anyone else, whose job, it is to constantly assess the situation, with no availability to research notes done by others? Doctor's although very important in society, do not have to critically think at all time. A lot of times, it is a procedure, that is followed.

My question to you is, who is smart? The book smart, or the street smart? Be cautious here....

 

A typical, and way off response. They are not teaching how to find good evidence, they are teaching that PARENTS ARE WRONG! They do not support what the family ideals are. And if you are the type of person who thinks that what they are currently teaching is ok, with your children learning how to back talk, cause their rights are more then yours, and that the make believe utopian world out there will protect them, then you need a reality check. This isn't Star Trek, where the good morals, and camaraderie wins over the evils in this world. It does not exist, and cannot exist. Why? Because if it could, it would have been done by now, at least once.

I have children, and I will not have my children taught these very dangerous ideas, that are getting them killed, or having them commit suicide, that are making them weak minded, and have NO OPINION, NO THOUGHT, NO GOAL, NO DREAMS. I will not tolerate it from any government, any agency, or any person who thinks they know my children better than I, and since it is my RIGHT, to protect my children, from harm, at any and all costs. I will CHALLENGE any and all DANGEROUS activities to MY CHILDREN. So until someone steps up to the plate that will die, and kill for my children, they can keep their useless, and ridiculous ideas for their own. Not mine.

That is what the Republicans want removed. Taking children away from the only thing in this world that will keep them safe. Their family. And before some liberal nut job says it, there are always exceptions to that statement. There are people out there who have no idea what it takes to be a parent. Or love something so much that you would sacrifice everything for, to ensure, their survival.

 

The amount of hyperbole in this thread is truly remarkable. Almost as remarkable at the pathetic attempts to spin this as anything other than anti-education. We all know exactly what this really is, an attempt by religious organization to prevent kids from learning anything that might challenge those beliefs, even if it means undermining their education in the process.

 

lol... a Thesaurus, eh? Dictionaries work too, and tend to have better definitions. Some thesauri just list other words that have the same, or opposite, meanings.

In any case, I think what you're trying to say that what we call "understanding" is based on *premises*.... right?

Do you feel that premises are threatened by critical-analysis?

 

How do you interpret statements like that as being "dishonest"? They're not "dishonest"... they are *retorical questions*.

When I was five I figured that the reason what I saw had dimensions was because of shaddowing. I didn't yet understand the concept of binocularity; that it was humans having two forward-facing eyes spaced apart that enables the perception of dimensionality. I got that idea from watching a black-and-white TV. Would it have been wrong for an adult to explain to me how it really works?

When I was six, I believed that hydrogen and water were the same thing. I got that idea from asking my mom what water was made of, and she said "two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen". Because we had a fish-tank, and because I knew animals needed oxygen to survive, and because I knew that two was greater than one, I presumed that hydrogen would be the dominant part of the mix, and that the fish were breathing the lesser oxygen part, and that what I was feeling when I stuck my hand in water was the major hydrogen part. Do you *really* think it would have messed up my head for someone to explain molecules to me?

Okay, give me one solid example of something vital to a child's belief-system that would be messed up by teaching him how to think.

 

I don't think this reform is based entirely on religion. It's been designed to hamper children thinking even at the most basic form, all the way up to senior years of high school. Turn people into sheep, feed them bull sh!t, they'll toe the government stance and making them easy to govern.

 

If you don't approve of the curriculum, you have the right to home-school or send your kids to parochial school, where they can be taught whatever it is you believe is proper for them. But you do not have the right to inflict your insecurities and depriving others of a more meaningful learning experience.

 

What are some examples? I don't remember any of my teachers trying to tell me that my family's values are wrong.

Plus, I showed this post to my parents, *both* of whom are educators (one at middle-school, the other at college-level) and neither of them has a clue what you're talking about.

So please, at least one example of where your child's teacher told you that your family-values were wrong.

Is it because your family-values include teaching your kids that treament for mosquito-bites is to let a rattle-snake bite the itchy part?

If it's something like that, your issue is not going to be with the school system... it's going to be with social-services as they haul your kids to safety.

Ahh... so you want your kids to go to the kind of school where they're taught to speak only when spoken to, where they're strapped for missing some home-work, where they're marched through morning prayers and oaths to the flag, etc. etc... like how Nazi's and Dutch Reform organize schools. You do know, of course (if you read history), that it's people from educational-systems like that who become the most radical anti-establishment rebels when they grow up.

Actually, it has been done, on a number of occasions. Hutterites, for example. They're very stable, very Christian, very socialized, and so productive that farmers around them are jeolous because nobody can compete with their efficiency (they use high-tech, unlike Amish).

You really need to provide some tangible examples.

Tangible examples please. Exactly *what* is being taught that you think would be making your kids disfunctional.

The public school-system exists because it's the most cost-effective way for the majority of us to get our kids educated by professionals. What most of us want is for the kids to get the best education we can collectivlty afford.

I *don't* want my kids to be dumbed-down for the sake of a few who fear free-thinking.

If you want your kids to be raised in a Dutch Reform type school, then get together with others like yourself and set one up, but stop trying to dumb mine down.

 

And where oh where are the examples of Texas Republicans attempting to ban critical reasoning skills? Its not much a debate when one poster after another makes the delineation between teaching critical thinking and critical thinking designed SOLELY to challenge a persons preconceptions.

Having raised the points and concerns several time, I am disappointed, but hardly surprised that rebutting side has simply chosen to avoid them in is what can only be termed as deliberate mockery, i.e. you side rejects critical thinking.

Well, so much for actually discussing the points.

 

It's the party platform.

So we shouldn't challenge how kids think about things? That's exactly what critical thinking is. There is no need for disambiguation between them.

 

There are several posters who described their issues with the prospect, feel free to actually engage them.

Once again, what you advocate is what the Taliban do to children. They bring them in, and 'challenge their preconceptions' as children. No matter what those preconceptions are ... they are wrong, stupid, belittled ... challenged. No worries, because Islam, their warped version thereof, is always offered as a solution. Always. It can do no wrong, and when you are 'teaching' critical thinking skills about preconceptions and challenge all of them but Islam ... what you get is not a challenge based on critical thinking, but an indoctrinated youth trained by an adult.

But heh, you call it critical thinking, so from now on, anyone not in line with the Texas Republican Party should just be dismissed as being in favor of brain washing. Its clearly what you all believe, correct?

Good for the goose and all.

 

Describe some specific examples.

Explain exactly *what* "family-value" principal you've seen a teacher target to get out of the head of a kid that was achieved by teaching the kid how to think rationally.

 

What Taliban do is teach kids to *stop* thinking and to just accept, without question, what the religious teachers are saying.

That implies that the kids' families *had* been teaching the kids how to think critically, but now Taliban teachers are over-riding the family teachings by telling the kids to stop doing that.

What you are saying is that in Texas, it is the *family* teaching things that the kids are supposed to simply believe because they were told to, and that the threat is teachers telling kids to *start* thinking, because it might threaten the programmed beliefs taught to the kids by their parents.

Which means, you're saying that in Texas, it is the *parents* who are using Taliban-style educational tactics on their kids' heads, and those parents don't like it when someone comes along and shows their kids how to see that what they've been taught is bunk by showing the kids how to look at the information available and think for themselves.

If I was you, I'd stop using Taliban as your analogy.

When you take over a Taliban town, do you set up schools and tell the kids to keep accepting by rote what they're told, only replacing the words "Muhammed" with "Jesus" and "MacDonalds", or do you start teaching them how to think analytically and creatively for themselves?

 

Absolutely incorrect. Religious authoritarian regimes discourage any thinking that's counter to long held beliefs, not the opposite. To try and make the opposite case is first and foremost ludicrous but more importantly requires an unthinkable amount of ignorance in regards to their socio-political environment.

No, they radicalize their existing world view, never inciting them to challenge that which their being taught and have been taught.

No, anyone in line with the thinking supported by the Texas GOP ought to be called out for endorsing a close-minded education system that shelters children from topics that might run counter to their existing and preconceived notions about the world.

 

The reason i didn't respond in any meaningful way, is that some statements are soooo loony they're not worth arguing about. Characterizing religious extremists who take religious texts literally as advocates of critical thinking is an assertions best shrugged off.

 

OK, since we are now avoiding something clearly written to defame others, my rebuttal is that you CLEARLY support the Taliban and their methods of education.

 

What the Taliban does in reality is looney because it undermines your argument is it?

Well, glad you have a malicious streak a mile wide and would invite the Taliban to come in and instruct our students and children. Good thing we have you to stand up to the Texas Republican Party. Clearly, its a discussion that you are after now isn't it?

Do you appreciate being told that you are an adherent of the Taliban's teaching practices? Neither do you adversaries enjoy being told they are stupid and reject critical reasoning even as you pointedly ignore the reasoned cases that are set forward. Something, coincidentally, the Taliban does quite a bit.

 

Bingo! Trying to label an extremist religious organization as a group who endorses critical thinking is so far removed from reality it's hard to even address. If anything they are the endorsers of anything and everything that is consistent with critical thinking, opting for dogma instead of analysis. It's blatantly dishonest to describe it as anything else, the argument is completely without merit.

 

That's just it, they don't.

Anyone who was actually using critical thinking or analysis would have been able to pick up on that. THis is nothing but a bunch of young boys pointing fingers at strawmen, and violating the one principle they supposedly support - using critical thinking skills ... which apparently means, never being able to get your opponents argument right.

Oh, and you support the Taliban too boot.

 

Yeah so.....Answer the question.

Children are much more adept at thinking 'outside the box' mainly because they haven't had the years in the liberal public education system that PUTS them in a box like most adults.

OK...What are the 'right' questions children should be asking with regard to say...global warming?

 

If "reality" undermines your belief system (teaching of science, history and so forth) .. then perhaps you should change your belief system rather than trying to change reality.

 

When you selectively pull something out of context, ignoring the preceding case entirely, all you ar doing is being dishonest.

And excusing what the Taliban does to children.

How can ANYONE do that?

And these guys call this debate, eh?

 

And as a result your silly analogy is just that, silly and inaccurate to boot.

And virtually everyone did, you made a ludicrous comparison and got called on it, that's all that happened.

Which obviously means that we all though critical enough about it to realize it was completely and utterly without merit.

Says the guy opposed to teaching critical thinking skills, the irony is palpable.

 

Sounds like they want to ban propaganda. Only thing is one man's propaganda is another man's truth. Probably all depends on WHAT they're teaching the kids. Not everything should be taught.

EXAMPLES ? >>>

http://www.politicalforum.com/polit...m-indoctrination-schools-important-video.html

http://www.politicalforum.com/polit...ding-one-these-38-textbooks-better-check.html

 

Let's see some examples.

Present ONE example of a case where a kid's faith and/or world-view was messed up by being taught the principals of critical-thinking.