Why Can’t College Students Argue? Don’t Ask Me, I Don’t Control Academia.
For many years, our society has accepted that the fundamental qualification for any sort of decent career must begin with a college education. Tens of thousands of families spend millions of dollars, often times incurring five- or six-figure debts, to send their beloved children to institutes of higher learning, confident they will graduate with a solid educational skill set.
An unprecedented study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of college found that large numbers didn’t learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education.
Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event, according to New York University sociologist Richard Arum, lead author of the study. The students, for example, couldn’t determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin.
The numbers are stunning. Almost half of the students in the study showed no real improvement in their critical thinking in their first two years of college and almost 40 percent showed little to no improvement after four.
What’s to blame for this? Well, most of the educators quoted in the article assigned a small amount of blame on colleges for not demanding more of students or for not stressing academics over socialization. What none of them mentioned is the more obvious answer: college students don’t learn critical thinking skills because their professors do not give them opportunities to think critically. For that, I blame the progressive establishment, which has controlled academia for longer than I’ve been alive.
Critical thinking is not something you can teach like you can teach English or Mathematics (see Ace’s post here for more on that). You can only present a few opening rules: the difference between fact and opinion, how to verify a fact, basic logical fallacies. Beyond that you must have experience. Students have to hear both sides of an argument in order to learn to decide which side has a more valid argument. This is where progressive academics have failed their students utterly. Universities are full of progressives who argue from emotion (think: universal health care, nutritional laws, gun control) or dismiss one side of the argument on spurious grounds (think: tax policy, welfare, climate change). Our colleges waste vast amounts time teaching diversity based on physical appearance rather than exposing students to intellectual diversity, so they never have the raw materials they need to develop the skill.
If college students never have to make an argument and never hear their professors make an argument, how in the world are they supposed to learn to argue? Well, as this study demonstrates, they won’t. They’ll enter the world with the same skill set their professors have — one that sets them up perfectly as Democratic voters, but not so well as functional and responsible citizens of a free society.
(via memeorandum)
Other Posts of Interest:
- Why College? Heck If I Know.
- Are College Diplomas Overrated?
- “I Pledge to Rat Out My Parents for Fishy Commen…err…Stay in School.”
Category: Edyookashun
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Oh wow! College kids can't think? Who'd a thunk it?
I suppose that's what "fluff" courses of study bring about. You know, those degree fields like "Women's Studies", "African American Studies", "Asian Studies", "Art History", "Theater and Dance", and "Fashion". They are light-weight courses that don't require a high degree (no pun intended) of critical thinking, complex reasoning, or written communication.
Sadly, high schools are graduating students who don't have the basics, and colleges just perpetuate it. Can't damage their precious little egos or hurt their self esteem, don't you know.
Case in point, a few years ago, I was having a discussion with a bartender at restaurant/bar I go to on occasion. We were discussing college tuition, and she said she thought college should be free, just like local <public education-type> schools. I asked her who she thought should foot the bill for that. She said "the Government". When I asked her how Government would finance that, first she thought the Mint, then the Fed, then the Treasury, funded Government. I had to burst her bubble, and let her know that Government is funded by taxpayer dollars, and that free public education isn't free.
She was a recent college graduate, with a degree in Art History.
When teachers are forced to teach the party line, when the kiddies' feelings are more important than finding the truth, when "getting along" is more important than settling a controversy–it's no wonder college kids can't think. Heaps o' thanks to the predominantly socialist membership in academia.
You ask about critical thinking, but you provide the challenge: "If college students never have to make an argument and never hear their professors make an argument, how in the world are they supposed to learn to argue?" At the university where I teach and the departments across campus, students are taught and required to conduct research on all aspects of a problem or topic and make an argument or state a hypothesis based on evidence, not opinion. Analysis as opposed to opinion, support as opposed to beliefs and feelings are prioritized though student experience and other information can be part of the evidentiary foundation. I'm not going to say all professors require this, but I know many who do and I challenge you to critically rethink your overly generalized statement that none do. This is exactly what we challenge our students to do–to reconsider blanket generalizations that have no researched support. This is one of the ways we DO teach critical thinking. What is your researched support for your statement?
You read the article to which I linked, yes? It contains the researched support.