@calmom - that isn’t the case with fundamentalist Christian schools that teach Creationism and reject evidence-based biological science, and such schools are (A) plentiful in some regions and (B) a real focus of new Ed. Sec. Betsy DeVos’ education plans.
Because the ones in a given area may happen to be better than the local public and/or private non-Catholic schools academically and/or in terms of maintaining a safe educational environment.
This was the reason why my parents and many non-Catholic neighbors send us kids to the local Catholic elementary schools and why one Mississippi cousin ended up being sent to a Catholic prep HS which required a 2+ hour commute each way and another sent to an elite NE boarding school.
And in the latter case, this was after he experienced a year at a local private school which happened to be an academically abysmal former segregation academy not any better than the local public high schools. Only meaningful differences between the local public and the local private schools like the one he attended reflected the racial and SES divides the town experienced after desegregation in the mid-late '60s.
Yes. This is extremely common. I know dozens of families who have made similar decisions.
@jym626 (post #93) I didn’t think of her but would like to make her rich again by reading her memoir (if she’s to write one) recounting her rising, particularly how she reached the conclusion of the magic of her product. People are gullible and I remembered I was excited ~30 years ago when people said we could track K-12 students into different classes based on their DNA sequences (can we now?).
@calmom (post #96) Your kids went to good schools. If PhDs, MDs, JDs, etc teach K-12, the outcomes should be much better. This thread makes me wonder what the bases for critical thinking are, how environments paly a role and when (time points or periods) the critical moments are. The more questions we ask the more we know better (but could be more uncertain).
Make her rich again by reading her memoir? Ugh. Why? Surely, there are better examples. And you can google for more on her.
@eholi - She is only 32 or so, so doubtful she’d yet be writing memoirs. There is plenty about her on the web to read! Heres another interesting read. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-exclusive Its not exactly flattering.
As for highly educated people as teachers, that would be great. But I also think that the parents level of education, and what kinds of thinking, discussion, etc they encourage in the home has a lot to do with the development of critical thinking inthe kids.
So lots of interesting sub-topics here.
On Catholic schools. I have some experience with this being both a product and consumer of multiple Catholic schools. There is a considerable difference in approach from school to school. Some are diocesan (run by the regional diocese) and others are ‘Order’ schools (run by various religious orders, such as the aforementioned Jesuit schools). My kids all attended Catholic school through grade 8 and have all had at least 2 years of public HS after (some have done some Catholic HS as well). One of the biggest differences between the public HS and the Catholic HS (aside from the obvious) is that the Catholic schools tend to many fewer course options. They focus more on teaching the basics well. In general, the fewer options the better the school. The best of them have what is often called a Classical education model. The goal is to build essential facts as a foundation to reasoning skills. Most Catholic schools do use some form of standardized testing (in my experience). The goal is not to measure the overall score, but to measure improvement and identify areas of opportunity.
On highly educated teachers. In theory, this would be great. In practice, many highly accomplished people are very good at what they do but have difficulty conveying that information to others. I have never really understood why one can be a college professor with no education background at all. Many professors would not be eligible to teach HS in many states as they lack even minimum coursework on education pedagogy. Perhaps a better approach would be to use these experts as guest lecturers to add insight to the structured curriculum provided by the professional educator. Oddly enough, when pay reaches too high a level, you can find the quality of educator decreases as rather than teachers called to teach. You get individuals entering teaching as a mere paycheck. Unlike other jobs where higher pay is directly correlated with higher performance, public education tends to reward only credentials and tenure rather than actual accomplishment. Until we figure out that puzzle, we will continue to have too many great teachers who are underpaid while having too many poor teachers who are overpaid.
Many of the advocates of public schools decry the bias and methods used by private schools. The sad reality is that every teacher/administrator in every school consciously or subconsciously transmits his/her own bias to students. At least in the case of private schools, a parent or guardian can have some measure of control over the direction of that bias.
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Re: Howard Zinn - book banning is precisely what critical thinking isn’t.
https://zinnedproject.org/2017/03/arkansas-bill-bans-zinn-schools/
Critical thinking is understanding there’s a difference between not including a book in a curriculum and banning the books from private possession or libraries. If someone passed a law, saying you can’t teach the Bible in a science class, would that be book banning?
Critical thinking is understanding that hyperbole is a common, time-tested rhetorical device, @roethlisburger
(I feel like we could do this all day.)
There is no reason to take 15+ APs. Our children face enough pressure without parents assuming that they need to do that. You can get in very good colleges while still having a life in high school. I know three parents whose children are currently so stressed out that they have had to seek mental health help and part of the issue is trying to take a full load of AP (which would lead to the 15+), be in the symphony ban (or equivalent), playing a sport and doing the extra curriculars that they “think” colleges want. This leads to crash and burn or worse.
There are good and bad private and publics when it comes to critical thinking. There are some APs that do a good job of teaching critical thinking skills and some that focus on regurgitating facts. The AP lit class my D is in right now is the best class she has had for critical thinking. This class has many “right answers” as long as you can show your logic and your argument. Each school is different so I think you would have to visit a school and see how they operate.
@KMich - I teach AP Lit, and while I think it’s a good program (and a decent test, even), I’d call that “analytical thinking” rather than “critical thinking.” Extremely valuable, nonetheless, and not as easy to come by in high school as one might like.
@eiholi -
Actually, my kids went to fairly ordinary public high schools – both went to public magnets but neither went to an academic magnet. They each had a mix of good, middling, and bad teachers. My son was the first NM semi-finalist that either his school principal or guidance counselor could remember in the years they had been there (significant because neither had a clue as to what they were required to do to help my son advance to the next stage, which involves submission of paperwork with a deadline.) My daughter went to an arts magnet - amazing for her chosen art (dance), but very weak on math and science.
My point was that the quality of teaching probably depends more on individual teachers than anything else, and you will find good teachers and bad ones at all schools, at all levels of education.
Obviously there are some elite private high schools that are well known for their academics and have a very strong commitment to assuring a high quality education for their students-- but there are also elite public magnets that fit the same profile. I didn’t have money on the private end, and I didn’t want my kids in high-stress environments on the public end – hence my decision to focus more on other factors than choosing a high school.
Hear, hear. In fact, just about every serious study about the factors that make a school effective concludes that a whole constellation of factors come into play but that this–the ability of individual teachers–is the single most significant of them all.
@marvin100 <<the idea=“” was=“” to=“” complicate=“” the=“” reductive=“” good=“” bad=“” dichotomy,=“” and=“” i=“” found=“” great=“” success=“” with=“” it=“”>>
That sounds like a great course you taught. Alas, I suspect it might not be welcome on many college campuses as students like their viewpoints uncomplicated, refusing to consider perspectives other than their own and in fact silencing any opposition. Trigger warnings for Ovid and whatnot. Consider, e.g., that just last night Charles Murray’s talk on his book Coming Apart was shut down and one professor injured due to violent attacks at Middlebury.
http://www.addisonindependent.com/201703middlebury-college-professor-injured-protesters-she-escorted-controversial-speaker
At approximately 1000 meetings on standardized testing (not always a great measure of critical thinking, but still) it has been brought up that home environment (aka parental input) is the single largest factor in determining the general level (advanced, average etc). But that when you measure from one year to the next the teacher is the single largest factor determining growth. Goes back to the question that the Sec of Ed struggled with- are you looking for achievement, or growth?
@keiekei - thank you.
That said, I don’t think college professors should be explicitly attempting to teach “critical thinking.” They’re there to share genuine expertise as actual scholars in their fields. I was just a high school teacher trying to get students ready for college. That difference, I think, is very important.
Oh, and I’d never invite Charles Murray to talk at any institution I had any respect for. He’s awful and I stand in solidariy with the students who opposed his appearance at their school.
Also, IMO, if one waits till college to start learning critical thinking skills, s/he’s effectively fallen too far behind. At that point, even the best college Profs’ efforts to salvage such a student in one, few, or even 4 years worth of courses is likely to be a near Mission Impossible.
Colleges IMO are meant to refine and hone the critical thinking skills already learned from parents, teachers, other adults & peers, and life experiences and practiced during the first 17+ years before undergrad for most. Not institutions for critical thinking 101.
Partly, it depends on how you want to define critical thinking, but I don’t think you can fully understand any modern study, without an intermediate course on probability and statistics. To teach probability and statistics properly, you need students to have already had a course on differential calculus, integral calculus, and linear algebra. It would be quite rare for students to get all that in high school.