Over Spring Break I had a very interesting conversation regarding politics, education, and the importance of thinking in democratic nations. I was staying at a hostel in Seville, Spain (where my younger sister is studying abroad) and the conversation took place with an elder Canadian/American couple and a Chinese immigrant to Great Britain who now studies (and teaches) in Spain.
The couple were very liberal and insisted that the United States is falling behind because creativity is not valued and people are not taking advantage of the opportunities that a democracy gives its people. I spoke about my experience as a teacher in Baltimore and the pressure that standardized tests bring into the classroom.
Teaching 12 year-olds English in Spain, Howard said that he sees how critical thinking doesn't seem to be valued in Spanish schools either. Back in Britain, he described his end-of-course exams that students had to pass in order to move onto the next grade. Such a system ensures that high school teachers aren't faced with students who read at elementary school levels. He explained that the pressure to do well on those tests came from concerned parents and teachers - rather than administrators worried about meeting AYP goals. He also explained the immense pressure from classmates to do well.
As self-proclaimed free-thinkers (currently on a 1,000 km hike across Spain), the elder couple seemed disgusted by the thought that students aren't exposed to electives such as art, music, and technology because of the immense focus on the tested subjects - reading and math. This left me pondering an important question; if our students are not being taught to think for themselves, where will the future engineers and creative minds of our nation come from?
Our conversation really got me thinking about what it is that I'm teaching my students. With the HSAs (standardized tests) coming up in less than two months, I have weeks dedicated to reviewing material and test preparation. What if instead, I just taught critical thinking skills?
How does a second-year teacher go about teaching 150 high schoolers to think critically? Is it even possible? Why isn't the focus of teacher prep and systemic Professional Development on teaching students to think, so they can form educated opinions and participate in our democratic society?
Then I saw this blog post and realized that concerns over standardized testing, discipline issues, and tenure are issues facing teachers all across America. The problem is much more than simply not teaching kids to think.
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This appears to be a very common topic when discussing school curriculums, standardized tests and accountability mechanisms within the context of education. Two questions remain: How do we teach our kids to critically think? If possible, how can we explicitly teach critically thinking skills while simultaneously monitoring their learning?
Critical thinking is hard for an educator to teach, assess and monitor learning in an environment where the student population my be characterized as having minimal cultural and social experiences. If an educator presents specific content and aligned questions as a means of assessing critical thinking ability, the educator may misinterpret poor assessment results as low critical thinking ability. Conversely, low assessment results from an assessment that addresses critical thinking abilities may derive from lack of cultural or social context for the presented content within the assessment. In essence, it is hard to design assessments that solely address critically thinking abilities without including social or cultural factors that put students from restricted backgrounds at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, critical thinking must become a top priority on the national level and researchers need to find a way to design an effective assessment for doing so.
In my opinion, standardized testing, to a certain degree, restricts free thought and conditions students to approach a problem in a manner where they seek question-specific information that was retained rather than approaching a problem in a way where you develop strategies or conduct research for solving it. There needs to be more explicit instruction on teaching thought processes within the context of specific academic domains.
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