Epilogue
The idea was to complicate the reductive good/bad dichotomy, and I found great success with it. The unit was accompanied by an essay (with multiple revisions, of course) entitled “A Portrait of Power,” in which students researched and wrote about a figure of major historical power and resisted any simple evaluations of good/bad. Those were good essays to read and I got positive feedback from students about the unit and the essay process.
I’m sorry this has gone on so long, and I have so much more to say, but I’m sure I’ve already tested your patience enough for today. If you’ve made it this far, thanks!
I view Howard Zinn as an exemplar of someone who lacked even a child’s critical thinking skills. No sane person thinks the world would have been a better place if Hitler had won WWII or the Soviet Union had won the Cold War, taking control of Western Europe, Africa, and South America. And only an exceptionally naïve person believes those events could have been averted with the US sitting on the sidelines of world affairs.
That’s immaterial, @roethlisburger – Zinn is only used as an illustration of a methodology. Feel free to substitute any other historian who has extensively examined Columbus’ genocide. There is no shortage.
I believe it’s a lapse in critical thinking to do throw the baby out with the bathwater like this. For example, I find Zinn objectionable in many, many ways (and likely agree with you on some of them!), but the parts I discuss and quote have nothing to do with them. Just as I find Morison objectionable in many ways, it’s uncritical thinking to then reject the rest of his (impressive! rigorous!) scholarship–Zinn doesn’t throw Morison out.
I’ll also add that if you like logic games, then what you’re doing is a form of ad hominem or a genetic fallacy, depending on your taxonomical inclinations.
I liken Howard Zinn as akin to reading the unedited works of a schizophrenic historian. Yes, there’s occasionally some brilliant insights, but it’s certainly not what I would assign to a high school student to develop critical thinking. Some of his conspiracy theories(ex. maintaining innocence of the Rosenbergs even after the release of new evidence being one I can think of off the top of my head) borders on as almost as crazy as the stuff coming from the John Birch society and their ilk.
Yes, I only assigned the Columbus chapter. But again–immaterial. My posts about my views of critical thinking do not hinge on assigning Zinn and your focus on an illustrative example isn’t demonstrative of much circumspection on your part.
CT isn’t about quickly being critical. Nor about simple ‘compare and contrast.’ It’s about that awareness and inspection, (and I might say, intellectual caution,) the openness to putting various perspectives together and trying to process. And, in history or social sciences, understanding how one’s (or a generation’s) perspective(s) shaped even the supposedly impartial observer’s views, conclusions. (This formed some underpinnings of DH’s work as a historian, different era.)
A little different application in day to day life.
How does that support your point? Nitpicking the illustrative examples is poor critical thinking. Do you have a dispute with the methodology or other parts of my ideas? As I said, I’m still working them out and I posted them here in hopes of getting meaningful and interesting feedback so that I might reconsider/strengthen/replace/amend them. @droppedit
I think standardized test like regents discourage critical thinking and encourage memorizing and the teachers that “teach to the test” don’t so well at fostering the critical thinking aspect. I go to a private school that used to take regents. One of the older teachers still teaches that curriculum (global) and I don’t think I wrote one single thing in that class that was beyond basic memorization. My second global teacher was the polar opposite. We spent so much time analyzing and writing about sources and documents and writing essays about cultural influence. Much more thinking involved. It’s not the school as much as it is the teachers.
But they serve a different purpose. Maybe what I question is ‘teaching to the test’ alone and trying to use metrics to presume superiority, that hierarchical thinking.
Agreed, @lookingforward . I see standardized tests as a necessary evil at worst and an annoying speedbump at best. But this is in danger of derailing a pretty good thread, so I won’t comment further on it.
When one of your examples is so known for inventing alternative facts that even historians on the left don’t take him seriously, it’s not nit-picking to suspect someone’s more interested in indoctrination than developing genuine critical thinking skills.
@marvin100 – someone disagrees what you’re saying and you immediately resort to saying they lack “critical thinking” … again. Are you truly that unaware???
If the curriculum, teachers, and students are great, one can go well-beyond “teaching to the test” and still have students doing well on the NY State regents.
Especially considering the regents even back when I was a HS student 2 decades ago were widely considered at my public magnet HS to be exams meant to test to the LCD*.
Not too surprisingly, no one at my public magnet or friends/acquaintances/colleagues who attended one of the rival public magnets took the regents very seriously or would admit to doing so as that would be viewed as a disclosure one was very dim, indeed.
One example from my experience was how despite getting Ds/Fs in the vast majority of my HS classes in a given subject(my worst), I ended up scoring in the mid 90s on the regents exam on it without doing much studying**.
When my HS teachers in that subject found out about my regents score, they cited that as further proof the regent were such a joke that “even [cobrat] can score into the mid 90s”***.
They have been considerably watered down even further in the subsequent 20 years judging by what my former HS teachers still teaching and friends who have been teaching in the NYC/State public high schools for the last 10+ years.
** Wasn’t worth putting in the effort for the return on offer…and the results confirmed that.
*** Said in the same tone as one of the Geico “So easy, even a caveman can do it” ads.
I’ll just say it’s common to focus on and critique the actual choice of materials and forget the purpose is in the exercise of examining the various perspectives, observing, processing.
He didn’t disagree with me. He criticized one of my examples, which is immaterial to the substance of my comment. And it’s definitely a lapse in critical thinking to think that to dispute an example is to critique an idea. Whether he disagrees with me or not, I still don’t know, to be honest. All I know is that he dislikes Howard Zinn, and as I’ve expressed, I’m fine with that–it’s immaterial to the substance of my comment.
