Critical thinking: what the ruling class fears most
Abdicating reasoning: Surrendering the debate over teaching, testing and assessment to the constables of obedience training
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education confronts the issue of whether students are really learning in college classrooms and if so, how they might be able to assess learning (September 5, 2010,Why Teaching Is Not Priority No. 1http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Teaching-Is-Not-Priority/124301/).
Of course this is all part and parcel of the new ‘evidentiary’ based learning that the Obama administration says it wants. Secretary Arne Duncan and his business cohorts, on the other hand, see ‘evidence of learning’ in test scores based on the anorexic bulimic learning model of memorization and ‘thought starving’ – tube feeding and chamber pot results.
The issue of assessment and thus testing is important. Those educators that teach ‘reasoning’ or critical thinking need to know if their students are learning. How can they do this? The answer really goes back to the work done in the 1980’s and early 1990’s as the Reagan administration began the decimation of the Department