Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills
Many comments here are about the value of higher ed generally and are fascinating to read, but I&#x27;m interested in critical reasoning particularly, and this study doesn&#x27;t surprise me.<p>(1) Critical reasoning is rarely taught directly, especially to students who don&#x27;t major in or take a philosophy course.<p>(2) Even when critical reasoning is taught directly, it&#x27;s poorly taught. Compare an introductory text on critical reasoning from fifty years ago with one today. You will find that the former feels like it&#x27;s written for a user of reasoning (which is as it should be written) and the latter is written for explainers of reasoning (colleagues or future academics, I guess?). Jargony, technical, prolix, etc.<p>(3) Too many professors in the humanities are influenced by a conception of argumentation-as-narrative rather than argumentation-as-truthseeking, or deny there&#x27;s a distinction or that the latter is possible. Quality of indirect&#x2F;incidental critical reasoning education is not what it used to be.<p>(4) STEM education overemphasizes formal logic. Most of our daily reasoning that&#x27;s worthy of being called &quot;logic&quot; is informal logic.<p>Outside of university is more important, but things don&#x27;t look great there either, for reasons everyone here is already familiar with. Echo chambers. Loss of nuance as deliberation is framed in terms that can easily be liked&#x2F;hearted&#x2F;shared&#x2F;retweeted. Curious what, if anything, folks here think could be done to turn things around.<p>[Edited for clarity.]