An Easy Way To Understand The Emptiness Of American Education

Let's suppose that the educators in control of the system decided that baseball, like dodgeball, is too dangerous for children to play.

But local parents are fond of baseball and put pressure on the school to teach baseball. What to do?

Easy. Our modern educators would create a course called Critical Thinking About Baseball.

Students would watch video of baseball games and handle baseball equipment. Students would hear the names of famous players, and the lingo used in baseball, such as "Three strikes and you're out." Students would keep a portfolio titled "Baseball: Facts and Experiences." Students would discuss--that is, think critically about--every aspect of this game.

Teachers would announce that their students were engaged in "higher-level thinking" about baseball. Parents would be assured that their children had now gained "a fully conceptualized and deeply textured understanding of baseball." All students, thanks to their mastery of baseball, would receive an A+.

But the one thing that the students would never do is play baseball.

Critical Thinking is all the rage in American education. Typically, this phrase refers to children talking about something they cannot do.

Playing tennis without a net might seem to some a sorry approximation of an interesting game. At least it's physical. But suppose you stay in a classroom and discuss playing tennis. You are as far removed as possible from tennis, and yet your teachers will announce that you are learning to "think critically about tennis."

Critical Thinking moves children to a higher realm where they'll never get their hands dirty, not with baseball, not with math or even basic arithmetic, not with history, not with science, not with life, not with anything. Critical Thinking exists on a higher plane where pure, unfettered chatter is the rule. There are no constraints, whether from logic, history, facts or common sense. Critical Thinking transcends all these things and makes it possible for 15-year-olds to be philosopher kings.

American educators (the ones at the top who make policy) suffer from a deep phobia with regard to teaching anything, anything at all. They hate names, dates, maps, facts, and knowledge. Which creates a problem. What are teachers to do with all that time they used to use up teaching information? Everybody must be kept busy somehow; there must be the illusion of teaching and learning. Ah, that's precisely why Critical Thinking was invented: it's what educational institutions do now instead of education.

If our educators were serious about Critical Thinking, they would first teach facts, lots and lots of facts, and then teach students to evaluate and compare those facts. Without this foundational knowledge, any so-called thinking is necessarily shallow and jejune. Alas, when it comes to facts, our educators are like Victorians shrieking at the sight of an ankle. Facts are so vulgar, so last century. Zero-facts-per-hour is a good speed.

Seriously, you shouldn't think that slowing education to immobility is an easy task. Many sophistries converged to make this victory possible. Self-Esteem says: get rid of anything that the kids have trouble with. No Memorization says: they can look it up. Constructivism says: information doesn't count unless the kids invented it for themselves. Cooperative Learning says: if the group didn't do it, it didn't happen. Knowledge, at this point, is on life support. But the coup de grace remains Critical Thinking. You hear this phrase everywhere. Pure genius. There's nothing critical about it, and there's no thinking.

(For more on the collapse of American education, see this writer's book "THE EDUCATION ENIGMA--What Happened to American Education" on Amazon.)