Pearson, the world's leading education company, conducted an analysis of the top 50 education systems, the United States' education system ranked 17th out of the 50 countries involved in the study. This result was not too surprising to the people who were already aware of the problem, but many people, including myself, did not realize how much our nation was struggling to keep up with other countries and their education systems and how serious the problem really is. We are supposed to be a "Superpower" yet we are barely in the top 20 when it comes to education. There are many areas where our education system needs help, but I think a big problem with our education system today is the lack of actual "thinking" we as students have to do to succeed in school. Our education system is missing the fact that it needs to teach the students to be critical thinkers, not "simple" thinkers. As young kids, we were all critical thinkers. Kids are always wanting to know why, and how; they are always asking questions, but as the system is now, as students advance to jr high and high school, they are essentially taught not to think or ask questions.
Most of the curriculum in high school consists of listening to the teacher and retaining what they teach for just long enough to regurgitated it back out to pass the test at the end of the chapter and move onto the next one. It is based on short term memory; memorizing what is taught instead of learning it and being able to use critical thinking or thinking in general to understand it and apply it. John Gatto explains this in "The Banking Concept of Education" by stating "The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education, then, is the sonority of words, not their transforming power. 'Four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem.' The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means, or realizing the true significance of 'capital' in the affirmation 'the capital of is Belem,' that is, what Belem means for Para and what Para means for Brazil." The way a lot of students get through high school is to "cram" as much information as they can into their memory before a test. Usually it works out alright, it worked pretty well for many of my classmates and I, but the downside to this method is a month, or less, later, you can not remember hardly any of the material. The US' education system, essentially, is just "cramming" students with the material that they decide is going to be taught. The teachers teach it and the students memorize it. This method of teaching does not encourage "thinking" it encourages obedience and conformity.
Wikipedia states, "Critical thinking clarifies goals, examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, accomplishes actions, and assesses conclusions." These are skills that are very important and crucial for individuals to be able to do no matter what profession or career path they choose. With the many different types of jobs that are available today it is much more difficult for our education system to prepare us for most of the jobs out there. Because of this, it is more important than ever for students to be critical thinkers in order to adapt. In "Critical Thinking", Bell Hooks describes critical thinking by saying, "In simpler terms, critical thinking involves first discovering the who, what, when, where, and how of things-finding the answers to those eternal questions of the inquisitive child-and then utilizing that knowledge in a manner that enables you to determine what matters most" (9). What this means is critical thinking encourages us to dig deeper into a topic, understand the "why" and "how" not just the "what" to a problem or question. Generally, our education system trains us to be "simple" thinkers, to just look at the "what". We are expected to give an answer to a question but often were not shown why or how the answer is "A" instead of "B".
In the film Mona Lisa Smile, Miss Watson applied a "critical thinking" type curriculum instead of the assigned lesson plan. When she first came to her art history class she realized that all her students had already memorized the entire syllabus, not really learning anything though. So instead of teaching from the syllabus, she made new lesson plans that encouraged the students to think and come up with their own ideas and views instead of just regurgitating an answer that meant nothing. If teachers engaged their students like Miss Watson did it would make a big difference in our education system. In Mike Rose's "I Just Wanna Be Average", he touches on the importance of critical thinking in education. He writes, "through exceptional teachers...students learn to develop hypotheses and troubleshoot, reason through a problem, and communicate effectively - the true job skills" (2). Critical thinkers dig deeper into a problem or question and keep an open mind unlike "simple" thinkers who just do something because that is what they are told to do. Critical thinkers question information and points of views instead of just accepting it. This type of thinking encourages students to be creative, to come up with their own ways of solving a problem or issue. In his lecture on education, Sir Ken Robinson states "creativity in education is as important as literacy". If our education system created more critical thinkers, as a result, we would have more creativity in our schools.
There is a long road to recovery for our education system that is going to require many steps and hard work from a lot of people. In the past, people have thought that if we just throw more money at education it will get better. We have proved that is not the case, funding is important but more important is how the students are taught. If our teachers encouraged more critical thinking, students would become better problem solvers and learn to analyze a problem or question in a whole different way than they do now. Critical thinkers don't look for the easiest or most obvious answer, they use knowledge, background, questioning, formulas, hypothesis, and other information to solve the problem and come up with the best solution.
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