Beware of Claims for Critical Thinking and Lifelong Learning When Emanating from the Education Establishment--- or from Putative "Progressive" Education Advocates

You must always be careful to judge with circumspection any testimony on the part of members of the education establishment or putative "progressive" advocates for change in education when they appear to advocate an approach to K-12 education based on "critical thinking" and "lifelong learning."


This jargon originates in the lexicon of education professors, who for at least the last 35 years have ruined generations of teachers and others taking courses in departments, schools, and colleges of education. 


Education professors as a group devalue knowledge as a basis for K-12 education.


I hope that you are taken aback by that statement, which bears repeating:


Education professors as a group devalue knowledge as a basis for K-12 education.


Know first of all that education professors are devoid of any unique field to justify their own university positions:  All courses taught by education professors would be better taught by those identified with solid academic disciplines:  mathematics, biology, history, economics, English literature, drama, and the like;  even courses in pedagogy would be better taught by professors of philosophy, psychology, and neurobiology.


So education professors have tried to maintain some position for themselves in a university setting by maintaining degree mills for K-5 teachers and certification schemes that serve as "cash cows" for colleges and universities, which are deeply culpable in churning out poorly trained teachers.


And for at least 35 years the core message of education professors is that one can always look up facts when one needs immediate information, so that the transmission of knowledge is not an important aspect of the role of teacher.  Rather, teachers should turn themselves into "guides" or "facilitators" in any student search for information, and in discussions through which students learn to think critically.


This has an immediate sound-good quality that fools many people, most disastrously most of those who now teach our children.  Resort to the jargon of critical thinking and lifelong learning is just an excuse for laziness on the part of teachers.  This approach to education has left our children, and indeed our citizenry (most people graduate form public schools---  and even many private schools have this intellectually impoverished approach to education) knowledge-deficient and skill-deprived.


Thus high school graduates (and the existence of so many students who cannot even meet our low academic standards for graduation is a travesty) claim a piece of paper that is a diploma in name only.  They often cannot figure percentages or grasp the essentials of statistical probability.  They could not tell you the difference between a Sunni and a Shi'ite, or which nations in West Asia (Middle East) are dominated by one or the other of these Muslim schools of thought and practice.  They cannot tell you how the Federal Reserve System works, or the philosophical differences among Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.  They cannot tell you about the genesis of the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation---  and how the inherent issues affect our world today.  They could not compare the drama of Arthur Miller with that of August Wilson.  They could not explain what distinguishes the painting of Renaissance masters from those working in the European medieval era, nor could they tell anyone anything about the work of the Song Dynasty landscape painters, or about the influence of Nigerian Ife sculptors on Picasso.


Critical thinking is only meaningful when conducted in the context of a strong knowledge base, which makes, for example, judgments about the wisdom of American military commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria---  or about Federal Reserve bond-buying programs---  possible.


Lifelong learning is only likely to continue or to have any discernible quality when one has learned to love knowledge in the first place.


So do not be fooled by testimonies to critical thinking and lifelong learning, both of which are excuses for laziness when mouthed either by members of the education establishment who parrot education professor-speak;  or by advocates for such an approach on the part of so-called "progressive educators" who want to embrace the failure of the last 35 years by trying to do more of what has failed our children and our citizens so miserably.


Any excellence in education proceeds upon the provision of distinct knowledge and skills sets in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years, imparted by teachers who are themselves knowledgeable and skilled.


Knowledge-intensive education is the foundation for critical analysis and for the love of learning one's whole life.  One must start from knowledge, not from testimonies to critical thinking and to lifelong learning on the part of intellectual prevaricators who think very little and know nothing much themselves.