John, As usual your points on the Critical Thinking and AI issues are well crafted. How would the teachers be evaluated and chosen to teach these subjects?
Paul: Thank you. There would be special PD (Professional Development) classes for teachers who express an interest in this subject. I don't expect that there would be a shortage of interested teachers.
Critical thinking should definitely be taught as a stand alone course. It will automatically be integrated into all other courses by the students who absorb the teachings. The younger they're taught, the better.
This was an interesting read:
"To Think or Not to Think: The Impact of AI on critical-thinking skills"
An excerpt: "One of the most recently cited studies in this area comes from Microsoft (2025), which focused on knowledge workers and their perceptions of where and how critical AI impacts thinking. The simplified “spoiler alert” from the study’s abstract reads as follows: The higher the level of confidence in AI that the user has, the lower the critical thinking (inverse correlation), while the higher a user’s self-confidence is, the greater their use of critical thinking (direct correlation). Figure 1 shows these relationships. This leads to posing these questions: How does AI impact the development of critical-thinking skills in science? How can teachers best use AI while developing those exact skills?"
Nadia: TY for that article, which I had seen. What it is addressing is people who are not trained to be Critical Thinkers, have whatever minimal Critical Thinking skill they have undermined with over-reliance on AI.
IMO that is all the more reason to teach the two in tandem. Together they can (and should) be a very powerful force.
If one has coached youth teams and taught in a school, one finds that education without training is mere entertainment and that training without education is blind regimentation. One learns that the players need education to make the training innate, and that students needed training to make the education purposeful.
Secondly, the old liberal arts degree was designed (before the term came into being) as an interdisciplinary degree. One had 'required courses' in different disciplines as well as one's major. This led to a wider perspective on the world when exercising the discipline of one's 'major'. One could no longer comfortably 'pigeon hole' one's thinking. The other disciplines which one learned would keep raising uncomfortable questions about one's thinking within one's major.
It occurs to me that most things which we learn in life we learn in a hurricane of events happening almost all at once. We then harvest from that whirlwind thoughts and facts which were relevant in that moment. And we remember them. In other words, we learned them.
Could it be that schools have 'pigeon holed' too many subjects, and classroomed courses into boredom, all leading to a sort of vaccination culture about 'learning'. Once taken, one is immune from knowing about the subject matter of a course and one therefore never has to address the subject matter again?
John, As usual your points on the Critical Thinking and AI issues are well crafted. How would the teachers be evaluated and chosen to teach these subjects?
Paul Anthony
Paul: Thank you. There would be special PD (Professional Development) classes for teachers who express an interest in this subject. I don't expect that there would be a shortage of interested teachers.
Critical thinking should definitely be taught as a stand alone course. It will automatically be integrated into all other courses by the students who absorb the teachings. The younger they're taught, the better.
This was an interesting read:
"To Think or Not to Think: The Impact of AI on critical-thinking skills"
An excerpt: "One of the most recently cited studies in this area comes from Microsoft (2025), which focused on knowledge workers and their perceptions of where and how critical AI impacts thinking. The simplified “spoiler alert” from the study’s abstract reads as follows: The higher the level of confidence in AI that the user has, the lower the critical thinking (inverse correlation), while the higher a user’s self-confidence is, the greater their use of critical thinking (direct correlation). Figure 1 shows these relationships. This leads to posing these questions: How does AI impact the development of critical-thinking skills in science? How can teachers best use AI while developing those exact skills?"
Nadia: TY for that article, which I had seen. What it is addressing is people who are not trained to be Critical Thinkers, have whatever minimal Critical Thinking skill they have undermined with over-reliance on AI.
IMO that is all the more reason to teach the two in tandem. Together they can (and should) be a very powerful force.
I agree.
If one has coached youth teams and taught in a school, one finds that education without training is mere entertainment and that training without education is blind regimentation. One learns that the players need education to make the training innate, and that students needed training to make the education purposeful.
Secondly, the old liberal arts degree was designed (before the term came into being) as an interdisciplinary degree. One had 'required courses' in different disciplines as well as one's major. This led to a wider perspective on the world when exercising the discipline of one's 'major'. One could no longer comfortably 'pigeon hole' one's thinking. The other disciplines which one learned would keep raising uncomfortable questions about one's thinking within one's major.
It occurs to me that most things which we learn in life we learn in a hurricane of events happening almost all at once. We then harvest from that whirlwind thoughts and facts which were relevant in that moment. And we remember them. In other words, we learned them.
Could it be that schools have 'pigeon holed' too many subjects, and classroomed courses into boredom, all leading to a sort of vaccination culture about 'learning'. Once taken, one is immune from knowing about the subject matter of a course and one therefore never has to address the subject matter again?
Chris: TY for your good thoughts.
IMO the K-12 educatiom system is a bureaucracy where not rocking the boat is much more rewarded than trying something promising and genuinely new.
John:
I agree with you 100%.
Chris