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Did I somehow imply that it is unimportant for people to be able to think critically? On the contrary, if one knows no facts, then one cannot think critically, as critical thinking requires something to think about.
This, exactly.
I don't remember much trivia from school, but the practice of learning it, thinking about it, writing about it and considering how all the bits connected made me able to, ya know, think, write, consider connections. Rote memorization of facts is as useless as doing nothing, but it is really impossible to learn how to learn and learn how to think critically and creatively if you know nothing.
And perhaps worst of all is that some people just don't want to learn anything. Some say the art of conversation is dead, with texting on phones and all. Maybe all they can manage is a 'wut u up 2 lol" and a picture of their lunch because there's simply nothing else there.
Basically a conservative lamenting that students do not learn a sufficient amount of American and Western Exceptionalism, particularly the products of the culture he thinks are important.
The only part I agree with is the hyper-focus on testing. Students today have drilled tests incessantly.
Did I somehow imply that it is unimportant for people to be able to think critically? On the contrary, if one knows no facts, then one cannot think critically, as critical thinking requires something to think about.
Nobody enters any situation having all possible facts about it; the person who thinks he does is a fool.
We continually and necessarily make decisions based on a few facts and a great many presumptions. Critical thinking begins with distinguishing between one's facts and one's presumptions, and seeking to replace those presumptions with facts whenever feasible.
Well I am familiar with all of the references in the article. Have read the Illiad, Odyssey and Thucydides plus many others. I think it was fine when young and your brain is as a clean slate and memory retention prodigious and reading capability voracious. If one could integrate the lessons learned into our Modern World then of course the better.
The information is useful for some occupations. Not for others. I do not think you folks need examples. Too sharp for that.
I recall when Humanitites was standard in Fresh/Soph year and many of these were taught and the inevitable response to why we were being taught these subjects was "So you will not end up as Nazis".
What universal truths? And what do you mean by content-free?
Once upon a time, in our school, students read literature and analyzed it for themes relating to the human condition. There was a common canon, so that one could include references to works without seeing a sea of blank faces that requires an explanation of the reference and how it relates to the issue at hand. Literature allows an individual to walk around inside another frame of reference without having direct experience. The conflicts that are addressed in literature used to be used to teach young people about the conflicts they were likely to face in their lives or to understand the conflicts of people very different from themselves.
Once upon a time, students could count on reading a common body of literature, including the basics of drama and poetry. Every year, students would read novels that comment on and help to shape our society, like Animal Farm and To Kill a Mockingbird. Shakespeare had a major role, as students studied Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and numerous sonnets. The curriculum was rich and varied. In four years, reading and studying this canon of literature produced students with a broad vocabulary who could understand and analyze complex writing. All teachers knew the canon and could refer to its works when appropriate in their own disciplines.
Nowadays, the ELA curriculum for the 9th and 10th graders is limited to a very narrow set of tested standards prescribed by the state. Reading passages come from test prep materials, and vocabulary lessons are isolated from content-based reading which would allow the students to integrate the new expressions into their cognitive schema. Once students get past the 10th grade state test, they are allowed a bit of lit, as the junior and senior curriculum still allows some of the old canon. But it is possible now to graduate without having read a single novel, not once, in English class. Gone is 1984, which used to be required reading. No more Flowers for Algernon, a personal favorite. Macbeth and Beowulf have endured, but To Kill a Mockingbird is gone, as are The Scarlet Letter and everything by Dickens and Twain. All gone with no memorial service or even recognition that what students learned from them was valuable.
Nowadays, it is critical for students to read dry, emotionless excerpts from a spectrum of non-fiction disciplines in order to be able to demonstrate skills like finding textual evidence in two speeches that supports a vapid prompt written by a testing company employee for the purpose of having students practice skills that will be tested using materials from the very same testing corporation. /cough Pearson cough/ Once students have passed the state English test, they may go on to other high-stakes tests that purport to test their readiness for higher education.
Ironically, if anyone still remembers irony, many of the professors in institutions of higher learning report that the result of this sea change in K-12 schooling is a rising tide of students who arrive in their classrooms without the ability to relate the professors' lessons to the body of knowledge that those lessons assume that they have brought to campus with their laptops and Iphones. True irony, for those who are familiar with Eric Blair and the works of his nom de plume, is the insistence by those bereft of knowledge that nothing was lost when we left out the knowledge of which they know nothing. Ignorance is strength in this Brave New World.
Who was Saul of Tarsus? What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect? Why does the Magna Carta matter? How and where did Thomas Becket die? Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him? What did Lincoln say in his Second Inaugural? His first Inaugural? How about his third Inaugural? What are the Federalist Papers?
Saul was later to be come Paul (Major Saint in the Bible)
95 theses who wrote them...Don't know....
Effect? Don't know, should I?
Magna Carta (Established rules of law for non royalty/My memory is probably off)
Thomas Becket..Who?
Guy Fawkes...heard the name, no knowledge of what he did or was or why there's a day named after him.
Lincoln 1st, 2nd and any inaugural (Sorry, not into Lincoln history)
Federalist Papers...Writings about the laws of this country...(My guess)
Now I am 56, should I know all this?
I quoted you because of the list, not because of your response.
All of the items listed (with the exception, maybe, of Guy Fawkes and Becket for the US) are pieces of what are called cultural literacy.
Some deal with religion (Saul, 95 Theses), others deal with government (Magna Charta, Federalist Papers and Lincoln's Inaugural Addresses) which form the basis of much of Western generally, and US specifically, society.
Beckett and Fawkes are somewhat outliers in the list.
Now to something you said. If you're 56 I can guarantee that you were supposed to cover, at least superficially, the Magna Charta and 95 Theses in World History. Saul, maybe not, but you would have had a unit somewhere on Christianity. The 95 Theses would have maybe been there or, more likely, in the unit on the Renaissance and Reformation.
The US items would have been mentioned, maybe not studied, except for Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address ("With malice towards none, with charity for all.........")
A good article I fully agree with. It is fairly short but makes a lot of great points and sadly is so very true.
Every single generation - every one - throws its hands up and declares that the following generation is worthless/lazy/incompetent and everything is going to hell in a handbasket.
The Roman poet Horace, writing around the year 20 AD: Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.
And every time, they've been convinced that 'this time, it's really true!'.
All that happens is that younger generations refuse to follow the conventions set by the previous generations. People (some, not all) of those older generations, as people have always done, confuse change for degradation, and rail ignorantly against it.
Rest assured, younger generations are just fine. And, rest assured, they will soon have their turn at holding the generation that follows them in similar contempt as you hold them.
Once upon a time, in our school, students read literature and analyzed it for themes relating to the human condition.
Once upon a time some teachers presented such material (believing erroneously that they all did) and presumed that all their students absorbed what they thought they were presenting (though few did).
The primary difference between then and now is that back then there were so few students who attempted to go to college--those that did were the minority who really had absorbed what those teachers presented. Therefore the fact that they were a minority was never revealed.
Today, the fact that only a minority of students ever did grasp that information (and, actually, only a minority of teachers taught it), is revealed because so many more students--not truly prepared--attempt a college education.
The good old days were never so good as they are nostalgically remembered.
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