Krstovic's Thoughts on Education

After listening to a talk by Garfield Gini-Newman tonight at OISE/UT,  I learned that teachers are not pushing critical thinking in their classes as much as they should be, myself included. One study found that today’s kids are more engaged outside of school than inside. This really concerns me, and it should concern every educator and parent out there. Why are our kids so disengaged from school?

While there may be several answers to this question, one answer alludes to the fact that teachers teach too much “stuff” to the kids without getting the kids to “think” enough about the “stuff” – and think critically about it. When we look at engagement data, it was further noted that:

• kids are more engaged in arts and tech classes than “academic classes”
• they were also more engaged in science than math
• kids were more engaged in math than in history or social science

What does this tells us about engagement?

I will let my readers figure the answer to this question on their own. Isn’t this part of what critical thinking is all about?

The idea of critical thinking is not new. One of the founders of our public education, Egerton Ryerson (1803- 1882) talked about it more than a hundred years ago.  But we still don’t do justice to critical thinking in our public education.

It is important to note here that critical thinking does not mean to criticize. The word ’’critical’’ derives etymologically from two Greek roots: “kriticos” (meaning discerning judgment) and “kriterion” (meaning standards). Critical thinking is an invitation to judge and assess in light of relevant factors or criteria. Gini-Newman’s argument is that we engage in critical thinking more often than we think.  For example, when we think about buying a new car or a house, we have an initial set of criteria that we use to help us make wiser decisions. Our kids do the same in their every day lives. Thus it would make sense that we should continue to nurture a community of thinkers in our classes by providing critical challenges while teaching and assessing the intellectual tools required for critical thinking.