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At the risk of extending this OT discussion, I'll keep it short.
The failure to think critically is certainly due in part to education,
but you can't isolate everything in a vacuum.
The current educational system has its roots in industrialization. With
low-skilled, manual labor, (I'm talking assembly-line type work), you
don't want a bunch of people who can think and get bored or
disenchanted. You want people who can follow orders and perform mundane
tasks reliably and repeatedly. The traditional classroom approach does a
lot to further that ends.
But these aren't the skills needed in the "knowledge economy" where the
skills that are valued are related to the ability to think critically,
respond to change and work collaboratively.
The skills that are valuable in technical writing, for example, cannot
simply be reduced to a set of explicit steps, but are based on being
able to make informed decisions (and knowing what information, and where
to find it, to base decisions on).
There are some attempts to make changes as here in Quebec (to reflect
the changing competencies required in industry) with the curricular
reforms. But as usual resources are limited and demands on teachers are
unreasonable.
Now it's my turn to step off the soap box!
--
Kandis Weiner
kandis -at- toonboom -dot- com http://www.toonboom.com
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