This question came up during one of our education management discussion on society and education .
Teaching students how to think and analyze information is education. Teaching them what to think and demanding adherence to those ideas is indoctrination.
Teaching them how to think is most beneficial, and can be tailored easily to their age group. For example, I learned of propaganda in my communication undergrad in a variety of contexts. What I remember most is a simple explanation of how soap is labeled 'anti-bacterial' and had a good laugh afterward, for it is the act of creating friction, coupled with water rinsing, that removes bacteria; therefore, all 'soaps' are of equal value. The same could be said for toothpastes and tooth powders. Yes, teach them to question everything.
John Dewey ,conventional type of education is training students to be complaisance and obedience to perform imposed tasks is indoctrination and Dr Gregg W. Etter mentioned about indoctrination that teaching students how to think and demanding adherence to those ideas is indoctrination . Indoctrination occurs in every schools, and it is reflecting in our society . I guess the schools are not really teaching the students how to think but teaching them what to think .I agree with Dr. Lori George teaching how to think would be most beneficial.
In some context school has to remain neutral like tiffin, looks parents etc but in other cases like discipline, decision making, how to grow self respect, self defense teacher have to interfare regarding their well upbringing.
Neutral according to whose worldview? Perhaps neutrality is only a construct. Perhaps teaching how to think and what to think are not so easily separated, perhaps one shapes the other like two sides of a single coin as does the bag that holds the coin, as do the other coins in the bag. And so on...
This question actually goes to the heart of my dissertation. It is better to teach students to think and analyze critically. Much of American education right now is built around socialist indoctrination. However, not all American education is that way. Our students today will be the national leaders of tomorrow. They must have thinking skills above all.
How to think, of course. ''What to think'' sounds like dogmatic option. Maybe in some other formulation it could be added - with an emphasis on content knowledge. Teaching ''how to think'' in terms of critical thinking skills (or higher order thinking skills) is, in my opinion, the most important goal. And - from my experience - it's really not easy to deal with thinking ...
The adult in a child's life is in a position of power. Teachers, and parents, choose the books and authors, the TV shows, movies and playthings they would like the children to be exposed to. Willy-nilly, therefore, we adults are directing the thought of our wards. In our desire to do our duty by them, as we see it, we decide what young minds receive into their heads. To a large extent this foundation of what to know and why these choices are made determines how the child thinks at a later age.
After you teach a learner how to think, he will be able to know what to think. Knowing how to think opens up their minds to all possibilities that can guide them about what to think. Teaching a child what to think is indoctrination indeed.
Thinking is instinctive.The responsibility of the educational institutions and teachers is not to discourage this instinctive nature in young individuals. Looking for meritorious challenges according to the societal demands the system of school education encourages rote memory learning methods.These methods suppress the curiosity in the students at initial stages.Most of the negative instructions given by the teacher even hinders the students thinking ability.Exploration is possible when the teacher facilitates the students to think.
School is required to teach young people to think independently, act consciously, take the decisions they make.
I think that ''how to think'' is the right approach. Its implementation, however, requires both dedicated and open-minded teachers.
The school should only provide students with scientific knowledge.
Scientific thinking is opposed to political and religious dogmas by which the population is manipulated by a minority in order to acquire and maintain private privileges against public ones.
Knowledge and scientific management demonstrate the importance of using public property in the public interest for the sustainable development of mankind in harmony with nature, as opposed to private property for economic purposes that destroys this balance.
Hello,
In my opinion, you teach "how to think" while you teach your subject. Once students learn how to think, they can think anything. Neutrality doesn't exist. What exists is oppression. Or dialogue.
Success!
Hi,
In my opinion, "how to think" and "what to think" are equally important. It can improve student's reasoning as well as thinking skills, which they will be executing in the real-life situation in the future. Therefore, it's better to starts from the young learners.
Thank you!!
Teaching 'criticallity' (or critical thinking) involves teaching how to analyse information to form a judgment; it is not about teaching the judgement. In this regard, in teaching school mathematics, the following book might be of interest:
Coles, A., Barwell, R., Cotton, T., Winter, J., & Brown, L. (2013). Teaching secondary mathematics as if the planet matters. Routledge.
The philosopher John Dewey wrote, “Education is not a preparation for life but is life itself.” Dewey reflected extensively on the page about the role of education in a healthy, ever-evolving democratic society, and he believed classrooms aren’t just a place to study social change, but a place to spark social change. Dewey wrote about these topics in the early twentieth century, at a time when debates raged about whether teachers should be tasked with preparing students to conform or to actively push for progress and improvement where they are necessary.
Dewey remains one of our clearest voices on the argument that the classroom ought to be seen as an important locus of social change. For present and future teachers, it’s one thing to appreciate Dewey’s views on education and social change and quite another to create a classroom environment that embodies them. So, how can teachers build real classrooms that exemplify Dewey’s ideals for education in society?
Here are a few ideas:
1. Encourage active participation and experimentation with ideas among students.
2. Teach students how to think instead of teaching them what to think.
3. Prepare students to expect the need for change and to believe in their own ability to take positive steps for the benefit of society.
4. Make classroom processes democratic to establish the idea that if we actively participate in our communities, we can help make decisions about how they function.
5. Facilitate discussions among teachers as a group – starting with student teachers – about the decisions they can make to drive social change.
We must teach students how to think. They should be presented with multiple sides of any discussion topic and taught how to discern fact from opinion and research from rhetoric. Students should be encouraged to challenge information to ensure its validity. Universities, professors, instructors, adjunct faculty, and anyone in a position of authority has a responsibility to neutrality. To offer one's own viewpoint should be done with extreme caution and be offered in a way as to expand or deepen the learning process and not to recruit impressionable youth to fulfill personal agendas.
My favorite game to play is Devil's Advocate. Regardless of the topic or my personal stance, I will argue the opposite of my students viewpoint. I will answer questions with a question and let the student find other perspectives. I do this because I have found students to be void of substantive arguments or quantitative rationale. They simply regurgitate the morally ambiguous rhetoric or catch phrase floating around on Facebook and follow suit.
If we continue to raise a generation of idealistic copycats, instead of critical thinkers, we will be handing the world to adults who are incapable of problem solving or conflict resolution. It is both irresponsible and unethical to exploit our students naivety to fuel our own narcissistic agendas. Students must be provided the tools to facilitate their own knowledge; find their own way. If we teach them what to think based on our own biases, how will they ever be able to survive on their own? We cannot prepare them for every scenario in life. We can, however, guide and support them as they learn how to learn. That way, they will be prepared to overcome unforeseen challenges in unfamiliar settings.
I prefer how to think, but it is not like a recipe. It is more about personal construction.
Hi,
According to me, we need teach students creative thinking which encompasses “how to think” and “what to think” because students now need more than subject knowledge in order to thrive and they need capabilities.Through creative thinking, we can developing learners who can think critically, encourages them to learn new things and solve problems in the future.
Further reading:
Lucas, B., & Spencer, E. (2017). Teaching Creative Thinking: Developing learners who generate ideas and can think critically. Crown House Publishing Ltd.
There is always a certain amount of content knowledge that students have to know to function in their culture. But I think, if we teach students how to think and how to tell truth from falsehood, then we prepare them to face a wide variety of situations in the future. We should definitely avoid politically indoctrinating our students. That is something they should sort out for themselves. But if they know HOW to think, they will be ready to sort it out.
Drawing from a great educator Paulo Freire who postulated that the purpose of education should be to teach not only how to read the word but how to read the world, how to interpret the world, and how to decrypt what is happening around us. I think neutrality in education itself is a social construct!
Schools can never be neutral for thinking process. In school teachers and classmates influence the thinking and decisions making
A New category of school is Jail where hard core criminals train young minds
Latest trends are seen in invisible schools imparting knowledge and training to terrorist and influence the thoughts of desciples that they are committed for their life or sacrifice life for some reason or idealism
In my opinion, it is impossible to teach how to think if a person does not know how. A good teacher can show that it is possible, to give some general principles, but the “mechanism” of thinking is a person’s own technique, which he develops on the basis of his own potentialities. For instance, if a person has a good memory, his thinking will differ from the thinking of a person with well-developed logic.
For example (not claiming to the title of "thinking person"), I have never (this is seriously) remembered the proofs of the mathematical theorems that had to be proved during the exam. I always deduced these “anew”. Several times the professors asked me where I took specific proof, because it was different from the one given in the textbook or in the professor’s lecture. So, frequently on the exam for me was elimination the weaknesses of the answer pointed out by the professor, but once the professor told me that he didn’t see problems in my proof, but surprised by the way of proof. Week later he meet me in university corridor and informs me, what he find the lacuna in my reasoning. But this was not too interesting to me yet, since the grade for the exam was already set.
Returning to the topic of the question, I would like to emphasize that we (and in the overwhelming majority of cases thinker himself) do not see the mechanism of “thinking”, but receive only the result. And the effectiveness of thinking is evaluated precisely by the result, and not by the algorithm used. As for the question "what to think", here the answer is simple - about everything!
I like the question and the replies. I guess they stress the ultimate goal of Education and School.
Teaching vision and creative is key along with skill development, as well.
Piggy-backing on Seun Adebayo's answer, I agree that it is impossible to be neutral. One area I am researching is pedagogical paradigms. In short, is one a positivist, constructivist, traditionalist, or progressive? Everybody is something and whatever a person (teacher or administrator) is will affect what they teach and how. But no matter what one's overarching paradigm is, if we teach our students to think, I am thinking critical reasoning here, then they will be able to come to their own conclusions. Our goal as educators is to give every student who sits under our teaching, the very best education possible within the circumstances we are called to work under. Our personal biases need not be a barrier to lifting our students up and giving them the tools to make their own determinations.
Neutral schools on a large scale is not a feasible idea. Well the discourse on teaching students on how to think or what to think may leads us to a point of ponder. Matter is, in education system we have some open and some hidden SLOs and every nation has its own educational perspective according to the need and era.
Impact is variable in terms of school. School administrator has some impact on teaching ways and standard and so are SLOs.
For neutral schools, there should be some testing phase, may be we get a in between situation where results are better. All we need is evidence based research on both ideas.
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