First, Violin The
Boston Globe
By Don Aucoin "At a time when some schools are cutting
back on performing-arts
education, this school has decided that music is the best way to
animate the
study of seemingly unrelated subjects. Jonathan Rappaport, the school's
executive director, is a longtime music educator and musician who
describes the
organizing principle of the school's curriculum as 'learning through
music.'
The goal is not to produce musicians, he says, but rather 'to use
music
as a way of educating kids in a very comprehensive way ... What is
different
here is that music is taught as a daily core curriculum subject,' says
Rappaport. ' The development of critical-thinking skills is so
important, and a
lot of that comes out of the music.' He points out that music has a
mathematical basis, with phrases divided into measures and measures
divided
into beats. ' Music has a very profound effect on the cognitive
development of
young people,' he says. ' I think we're proving it here.' -- Read
the Full Article ###
Religion
vs ReasonCasper Star Tribune -- May 29, 2007 by Rachel Zoll "The time for polite
debate is over.
Militant,
atheist writers are making an all-out assault on religious faith and
reaching
the top of the best-seller list, a sign of widespread resentment over
the
influence of religion in the world among nonbelievers ... Christopher
Hitchens'
book, 'God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,' has sold
briskly
ever since it was published last month, and his debates with clergy are
drawing
crowds at every stop ... Sam Harris was a little-known graduate student
until
he wrote the phenomenally successful ' The End of Faith' and its
follow-up, '
Letter to a Christian Nation.' Richard Dawkins' ' The God
Delusion
' and Daniel Dennett's ' Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural
Phenomenon' struck similar themes _ and sold ... ' There is something
like a change in the Zeitgeist,' Hitchens said, noting that sales of
his latest
book far outnumber those for his earlier work that had challenged
faith. ' There
are a lot of people, in this country in particular, who are fed up with
endless
lectures by bogus clerics and endless bullying' ... Richard
Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, a prominent evangelical
school
in Pasadena, Calif., said the books' success reflect a new vehemence in
the
atheist critique ... The war metaphor is apt. The writers see
themselves in a
battle for reason in a world crippled by superstition. In their view,
Muslim
extremists, Jewish settlers and Christian right activists are from the
same
mold, using fairy tales posing as divine scripture to justify their
lust for
power. Bad behavior in the name of religion is behind some of the most
dangerous global conflicts and the terrorist attacks in the U.S.,
London and
Madrid, the atheists say ... As Hitchens puts it: 'Religion kills' ...
' I
don't believe in conspiracy theories,' Mouw said, ' but it's almost
like they
all had a meeting and said, ' Let's counterattack.'" -- Read
the Full Article New
Program Students Focus Their Interests Critical thinking is a seminal concept and cadre of best practices that accompanies all inquiry, discourse, and learning. It isn't one of the fundamental disciplines but rather the fundamental cadre of disciplines necessary to understand anything, including "various literacies, problem solving, teamwork, "the three Rs," the stuff of getting by in the world," etcetera. You can't know what you haven't thought. Critical thinking is best taught, understood, practiced, and assessed across the curriculum in the context of other subject domains and disciplines. As such, it would be more appropriately represented in this model's graphic as the Sun itself. ###
Student Confidence
###
Why Teach Critical
Thinking? “I received the following email today.
‘Recently Marines
over in Iraq supporting this country in OIF wrote to Starbucks because
they
wanted to let them know how much they liked their coffee and try to
score some
free coffee grounds. Starbucks wrote
back telling the Marines thanks for their support in their business,
but that
they don’t support the War and anyone in it and that they won’t send
them the
Coffee … So as not to offend them we should not support in buying any
Starbucks
products’…Now to most of us this had “RED FLAG” written all over it ...
But the
person who forwarded it to everyone on our staff just saw a seeming
injustice
and wanted to help spread the word. To me this is a lesson on why we
cannot
just avoid teaching kids the tools and spaces of the net and how to use
them
effectively and ethically. This also points out why we must spend more
time on
teaching critical thinking and analysis - how to question what we see
and read
and hear." -- Read
the Full Article Here's a good example of
how misinformation is sometimes
intentionally created to manipulate competitive interests in the
marketplace.
It also demonstrates how bad information unexposed to critical thinking
leads
to inadvertent beliefs and how such beliefs — even among
best intentions — sometimes enable and perpetuate injustices
and immoral inflictions on others. On a larger scale, this
illustrates a moral question: Profiteering and the integrity
of people
who knowingly or unknowingly enable profiteering. In a society where
each of us
is free to believe, speak and vote as we choose, is it morally
okay for
anyone not to critically think about what they believe, say and do? ###
An
Education in Cooperation The Columbus Dispatch -- May 5, 2007 by Jane Hawes "From elementary to
college, schools are coming full circle to a
curriculum that stresses character and values ... On every channel,
there were
people fighting. Shrieking pundits punctuated their opinions with
glares and
finger-pointing. They yelled. They threw out accusations.
Administrators at
Bowling Green State University were tired of the bickering ... 'If you
watch
news-opinion television, you see that people can't talk to each other
without
raising the decibel level,' said Donald Nieman, dean of BGSU's College
of Arts
and Sciences ... 'Our goal is not to prescribe a set of values,' Nieman
said.
'It's to first recognize where value differences exist in a debate and
then secondly
develop the critical thinking skills to make thoughtful choices where
value
conflicts come into play' ... Introduce the word values in a publicly
funded school district and some people get nervous." -- Read
the Full Article ###
Republican
Candidates and Evolution
The Huffington Post -- May 4, 2007 by Jackson Williams "In the wake of this week's Republican
debate, the AP reports that former
Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has now further explained his lack of
belief in
evolution ... The story states that he feels students should be given
credit
for having the intelligence to think through various theories for
themselves
and come to their own conclusions ... Christianity is a
religious
'faith.' It's the faith in which I was raised. People 'take
things on
faith,' it is said, even without full knowledge of the truth of what it
is they
are taking. In a religious context, the definition of faith is
generally a
strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human
destiny.
Belief in the Bible, and in the Book of Genesis, is a matter of faith
... The AP story also quotes Governor Huckabee as saying,
'I'm not
sure what in the world that has to do with being president of the
United
States.' -- Read
the Full Story
As products of our
own traditions and social
conditioning, each of us has intellectual blind spots. While it is
always
easy to see inherent predispostions —"prejudices"— in others, we are
always the last to recognize it in ourselves. As aspiring
critical
thinkers, we learn critical thinking is not about the other guy. It's
about
yourself. We hold ourselves accountable to the same intellectual
principles that we would hold others. Yet, as voters, it is
about
the other guy. We have a decision to make and are
obliged to find and elect leaders capable of recognizing and
climbing
out of their own intellectual shortcomings. It's not always how a
candidate
stands on issues but the integral line of reasoning that gets them
to postions
that is most important. It's about their intellectual
integrity. So,
a politician's social and religious makeup is central to the
way
he/she sees and intellectually deals with not only their own
issues,
but the great issues of our day. Blind faith grounded in
religious
doctrine and imposed with "authority" on options and creative
solutions to real problems in secular governance is not a road
upon
which rational societies should be expected to follow. ### Seeing
No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops Liverpool,
N.Y. — "The students at Liverpool High have used their
school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download
pornography and
hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network
security, a
10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step
instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did)
... Scores
of the leased laptops break down each month ... So the Liverpool
Central School
District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops
starting this
fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that
adopted
one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as
educationally
empty — and worse ... Such disappointments are the latest example
of how
technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders
as a
quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate
the new
gadgets into curriculums. Last month, the United States Department of
Education
released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between
students
who used educational software programs for math and reading and those
who did
not ... In the school library, an 11th-grade history class was working
on
research papers. Many carried laptops in their hands or in backpacks
even as
their teacher, Tom McCarthy, encouraged them not to overlook books,
newspapers
and academic journals. 'The art of thinking is being lost,' he said.
'Because
people can type in a word and find a source and think that’s the be all
end
all.'" -- Read
the Full Article by Hunter Finch Most of us take thinking for granted. Here's an example of well intentioned philanthropists, political leaders, and school administrators wishing to make information technology available to students assuming IT, just by being available, would teach students to learn better in one "quick fix.." IT is a useful tool for researching and processing wider arrays of information in the learning process, but it can be a distraction from the fundamental pedagogical mission of teaching students how to think and learn better. Within the foundational grounding necessary to critically think deeper, broader and better, computers become powerful tools for the intellect. Critical thinkers with access to more and better information and information processes, learn exponentially better. ###
PopMatters -- May 3, 2007Credentialism
and Critical Thought
by Rob Horning "In discussing Marilee Jones, the former dean of admissions at MIT who resigned after it was discovered that she had doctored her own résumé more than 25 years ago ... Credentialism is when employers require things like college degrees (from preferred schools) for their own sake, not for any skills they guarantee. This prerequisite serves a filtering function to weed out superfluous people—those who can’t game the admissions system, or haven’t been docile enough to be trained from an early age to prepare for it, or lack the money or the know-how to get it out of the existing aid systems — and allows meritocracy to be undermined by the very act of trying to institutionalize it ... Anyway, this is to say aspirants are wise to learn how to think about processes rather than results and to consider how they can profitably do more than what they are told to do. I felt I could generally tell the best students by how far they were willing to go without explicit instructions, and I often was aware of the paradox of teaching 'critical thinking' as I often pretended to do — it basically means teaching disobedience, preparing students to ultimately recognize the limits of what you say." -- Read the Full Article Commentary by Hunter Finch Indeed, there are no better students than those who assume responsibility for their own learning. A critically engaged mind looks beyond authority to ask its own questions setting the initiatives to find and critically evaluate its own answers. There is no better teacher than one who recognizes this paradox. ###
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