I hear so many commentators repeat the mantra: ‘We should teach them how to think, not what to think!’
This lament is often expressed out of concern when someone discovers yet another example of children having been instructed in ways that are harmful to nation building or, even worse, harmful to the child. Questioning how this happened is sensible.
The problem is that even though the motive may be good, the logic is not. As cognitive researchers have explained over and over again, one cannot think critically if one does not know anything.
There is a saying attributed to CS Lewis that describes this mistake well: ‘There is nothing as dangerous as a 15-year-old with a strong opinion who knows nothing.’
I propose that the same applies to leaders and teachers.
This came to my attention a number of years ago when I started teaching undergrads (in contrast to post-grads). As I mostly teach in education theory and practice, certain issues routinely arise because they are embedded in the construction of our school and tertiary curricula.
One issue involves questioning what is happening to the planet. Are we heading for a catastrophe soon, and very soon, or is it manageable? Does ‘climate change’ equal ‘climate catastrophe’?
Anyone who has read Bjorn Lomberg knows that the best answers lie somewhere along the line of ‘change is happening, but adaptation and feeding the poor’ is much better than – well, than what Australia is currently doing to its environment and economy.
Here are the kinds of questions I like to ask these undergrads to test the basis of their opinions.
‘Which of the following is true or false?’
Heat waves are now more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past 50 years.
Humans have had a detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century.
Greenland’s ice sheet is shrinking more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago.
The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be drastic through at least the end of this century.
If you have read any of Steve Koonin’s book Unsettled, or Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore’s Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom, you might realise that all of the above quotes are false.
However, I am yet to meet a new graduate from an Australian school who correctly identifies this.
It is a similar story with Australian Indigenous history. To help the students think more carefully about this topic, I learned to ask this question: ‘What social difficulties, if any, did Australian Indigenous people groups have before contact with Europeans?’ Over almost a decade, only three mature-age students offered any ideas.
When I became more focused in my questioning, with something like, ‘Were women and children treated with universal equal respect?’ There was a slow dawning that they did not know, and that there probably were some ‘uncivilised’ traditions. I would then offer something to them, like Tom Holland’s Dominion – The Creation of the Western Mind.
Similarly, I have been marking essays from a Sociology of Education course. So far, all essays suffered from the uncritical adoption of whichever theorist was used to demonstrate knowledge about sociology. For example, when demonstrating conflict theory, students did not read that Marxism, perhaps with some kernels of truth, doesn’t work the way it was supposed to in the real world. Their essays read more like the work of apologists than critical thinkers. They simply do not know enough about the topic.
Why is this lack of knowledge happening?
It is my view that students forgot to read the critical knowledge articles they were given (despite the reminders), and instead preferred the labour of their dear friend, Dr Google Scholar or some such AI study partner. That is the pattern of their thinking – find some articles online that are regularly referenced, and present them.
This behaviour leaves students ignorant in the fields where they are trying to demonstrate competency – competency in knowledge that informs professional practice, which then informs both how to teach and what to teach.
It is no wonder that primary-aged students come home worried because they have stolen land and are destroying the planet.
Their teachers have been taught incorrect facts and information. No matter how many thinking hats a student puts on, if they are using wrong information, they will not be pursuing truth. They will be pursuing error.
Gibb and Peals in their Reforming Lessons described the perils of ‘progressive educational ideologies’, and their first feature for turning that ship around was as follows:
Feature 1 – Develop Knowledge Rich Curriculum and Resourcing … establish the importance of knowledge as a precursor to complex thought … develop resources which ensure that knowledge is presented in an optimal way to their pupils in both the short term (a single lesson) and the long term (a scheme of work).
Yes, it is both. It is how to think and what to think. The alternative to truth is lies. But how can one discern lies when one does not know a better picture of reality than the other person?
As Bella d’Abrera concluded in her book, Mindless:
[Bloom] thought that one of the most damaging beliefs of all for the university student was ‘there is no truth, only opinion’.
Students will not find the best validated knowledge by being facilitated – they need instruction to overcome ignorance, and teaching that invites them into moral, spiritual and aesthetic development. As d’Abrera also noted in describing the impact of the postmodern cultural neo-Marxist ‘long march through the institutions’:
The collapse of classical metaphysics, especially the abandonment of natural law and objective morality, has not led to enlightenment but to chaos.
Which is why so many parents are now opting to homeschool, or send their students to schools with a clear metaphysics about life, hope and liberty – and yes, isn’t it sweet when that makes to regressive socialists confused and frustrated?
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