Downfall of Critical Thinking

I had a similar conversation earlier in the evening. It seems that our schools, specifically public schools, today are churning out students that substantially lack critcal thinking skills. With America school facing an ever mounting teacher shortage crisis, our classrooms are overcrowding. Simpy for time efficiency sake teachers are forced to administer multiple choice test in subjects where essays or papers might better satisfy pedagogical goals. The concern I have with multiple choice testing is that it seems backwards. Traditiaonlly speaking test questions are created by the teacher while answers are given by the students. In the case of multiple choice testing the test questions and answer are both created by the teacher. Turning multi-choice testing into a teacher focused test rather then student focused. This debunks the argument that multiple choice tests are in fact objective rather then subjective. There is in fact no such thing as an objective test. Though students might prefer multi-choice tests over essays or papers the truth to the matter is essays and papers, specially ones that require the student to advance an argument are better able to teach necessary critical thinking and development skills.

In addition, with the hiring of less and less qualified teacher the use of classroom discussions as a teaching tool is quickly disappearing. No longer are students encouraged to ask questions. Rather critical questions that challenge the status quo posed to lousy instructors are more of a threat to the teachers ego and are seen as defiant to authority then as a educationally useful. Critical discussion of history is crucial to its understanding. The marketplace of ideas dictates that in order for new thoughts to flourish they must undergo scutiny. Students are no longer encouraged to scrutinize class material but rather blindly accept what is taught.