Critically Thinking about Dr. Ed Meyer’s Teaching Philosophy: Part 2
Please read Part 1 for some introductory info on Dr. Meyer. Here is a new piece he wrote just for my Critically Thinking Substack readers (you!)…
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There is general agreement that the purpose of going to school is to prepare youngsters to contribute to society and to be successful adults. Success in the workplace and in life requires the ability to think critically. Unfortunately, K-12 education in the United States is not producing critical thinkers. The underlying problem is a shift away from challenging the students to think for themselves and a shift toward loading the students with content while giving them a non-thinking protocol to follow to get the desired response.
There are many reasons for this shift, but I believe that the primary one is simply that struggling in school has a negative connotation. In general, teachers don’t want their students to struggle, school administrators don’t want students to struggle, parents don’t want their students to struggle, and the students themselves don’t want to struggle. However, without struggle there is no development. In fact, without struggle, the brain atrophies.
Research on the human brain tells us that a toddler has about 100 trillion neural connections and as the child grows and interacts with the world, the brain strengthens the connections that are used frequently, while pruning away the ones that aren’t. If the neural connections associated with critical thinking are not used, they will atrophy. The result will be adults who have trouble thinking for themselves. Instead of coming up with their own ideas, they robotically adopt the ideas of others. Instead of considering options involving relationships, financial decisions, and career choices, they want to be told what to do because that’s how they were trained by the K-12 educational system; if you don’t know what to do, you raise your hand, and the teacher tells you.
To nurture the development and maintenance of the neural connections involved with critical thinking, K-12 students must be given opportunities to think critically; to invest time trying to reach a new level of understanding, and to have an “AHA!” moment.
When the goal of a class session is developing the students’ critical thinking skills, the teacher adopts the role of a coach instead of a source of information. The coach provides a challenging mental workout and encourages the students to keep working at it to reach a new level of understanding. The students are not following any rules, protocols, or instructions. They are exploring, they are wandering around in their own mind palace. They are trying to come up with their own ideas. In doing so they are developing their critical thinking skills.
On the other hand, when the goal of a class session is to transfer knowledge, the teacher is an authority. The students are supposed to listen attentively and perhaps take notes. Later, the students will take a test to determine if they remember what they have been told.
When the goal of a session is to develop critical thinking skills, the students might be trying to solve a challenging logic puzzle. When the students are not heading straight to the answer, it is detrimental to their development if they get any hints that steer them toward the solution. They must be left alone to think for themselves. This is difficult to do for most humans.
When compassionate, empathetic adults see a youngster having difficulty, it is natural for them to want to help. In some cases, this is the right thing to do. When the goal is to develop the thinking skills of the students, however, it is crucial to let the students try to figure it out for themselves, so they won’t have to rely on someone to tell them what to do.
Trying to figure out the way forward and trying things that don’t work is an important part of developing problem solving skills. This makes the development of thinking skills seem inefficient, but this is only if the goal is to get the answer as fast as possible. If the goal is to develop the students’ thinking skills, they must be allowed to think. Guidance often undermines their development. After all, as soon as they get direction, they are not thinking for themselves (like wolves) - instead they are doing what they are told (like sheep).
As a university professor, I see many students that have lost the ability to think for themselves. When they get a problem that they have not been trained how to solve, they raise their hands and say, “I don’t know how to do this,” as if they have never been presented with a problem that they do not know how to do. I usually reply something like, “I know you don’t know how to do it; that’s why I gave it to you” (but the specific response depends on the student). I also get, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” In this case, I ask the students to give it some more thought. They can push back a bit at this, saying, “How do you expect us to get the answer; you’re the teacher; that’s your job.” I also get, “You’re just setting us up for failure!” These students have already been set up for failure in the real world, as they will not know what to do when confronted with a problem that they have not been trained to solve in their schooling. This is understandable because the majority of their entire K-12 education involved feeding them information plus remembering rules and protocols for getting answers to specific problems that were given them by a teacher.
One strategy to add the development of critical thinking skills to the curriculum is simply to clearly differentiate between a class session that is designed for remembering facts and a class session that is designed for developing their minds.
One way to do this is to have a class called something like, “Critical Thinking Development,” or “General Problem Solving.” In such a class, the teacher will take on the role of a coach, provide a challenging mental workout and allow the students to struggle. When the students understand the goal of the session is not to get the answer as quickly as possible, they "take their shoes off" and have a delightful walk to explore the solution space. They won’t ask for help, they will enjoy the struggle, and, with good coaching, they should not have any stress or anxiety.
They are ready to develop, not learn. They adapt quickly and will "get with the program." The transformation over a single semester can be remarkable. Students who were perfunctory at the beginning of the semester are showing active engagement by the end of the semester. In addition to the development of critical thinking and problem solving skills the students have developed their communication and collaboration skills, because good thinkers want to share ideas.
Near the end of the semester, problems are presented, and the teachers leave the room. After the students recover from this abandonment, groups form, students go to the board to share their ideas and discuss them intelligently. This leads to shared insights. This type of “education” more closely matches the skills needed to be a successful adult and to contribute to society.
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Struggle is the centerpiece of leftism — but only struggle directed by "leaders," such as the lowest ranks of infantry would be expected to do on the battlefield. They don't want any real individual improvement. Those who struggle and improve and develop skills and abilities of their own are recognized as not being "useful idiots" and are therefore dangerous to the New World Order, so they're the first to go to the guillotine.