Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 27, 2025, 09:48 AM

QuoteI think it relates to the degradation of the American education system.

Or total lack thereof.

Well, that depends on where and when. Certainly a decent private school education was available when I went to it, and my kids both had decent K-12 schools in the 21st century. As best I could tell anyway. I don't believe that I can judge the quality by what happened AFTER high school, if only because my kids had parents that gave a shit. That has to be here somewhere as well.

It is what you make of it perhaps.

Quote from: K-DogI say that in an absolute way because thinking critically is something you do or you don't.

Well, okay, but how many people claimed to be critical thinkers while screwing the pooch? 

Quote from: K-DogAmerica fears education, specifically critical thinking.  Critical thinking is a problem for power.  People on top of exploitation pyramids know that critical thinking is a direct threat to their comfortable perch.

I can't say I know anything about what America fears. In a system as big as this country you can find supporting evidence for about any relative position you'd like. And there is always shitty ideas being sold daily. Recently we've got like being woke, the immigrant takeover, folks who dress up and...folks who are supposed to not dress up...???....fairness without regard to race, color and creed appears to be on the downswing, and subserviance to morons and political correctness on the upswing.

I think if you polled 100 Americans, 99 of them would say they have fine critical thinking skills. I know perfectly educated people (a lady with 2 bachelors, 3 masters, an education junkie...speaks 5 languages as well, originally from Spain) and she frustrates the PISS out of me because she can't see anything outside of her own perspective. Absolutely blind. Certainly doesn't fear education. But I'm not so certain that education and critical thinking are correlated. Might be. Some. Maybe more than I think. But I wouldn't line those 2 up 1:1.

Quote from: K-DogConcentrating on test results, and only teaching by rote ensures that critical thinking skills do not develop.  An educated populace equipped with sharp analytical skills (good critical thinking) will chew their propaganda before they swallow it down,  Power can't have that.

I don't assign motives to "power" anymore than I do the "average American". The average American has one testicle and one breast...a difficult beast to find. I get the idea that rich folks have more say in what happens in America than normal folk, but that has been going on since the Robber Barons. Or earlier....the country was founded for the good of all (yuck yuck yuck) otherwise known as rich white MALE property owners, still around in their oligarch form.

Quote* critical thinking (for the uninformed) is nothing more than the activity of trying to find out if what you read and hear is true or not.  You question the facts thrown at you.  You try and read between the lines.  You go down the rabbit hole with an open mind.  It is not magic, it is a learned skill, and a sad fact of the human condition is that critical thinking must be taught.  It is not a natural idea like getting pagan about the changing of seasons.  And you have to know that some people lie all the time and have no interest in telling truth.  A lack of interest that seems to be proportional to an individuals material condition.

Trying to convince someone already in the condition of "uninformed" to suddenly critically think? Your explanation as to HOW is fine...but....HOW do you get them to...DO....anything? Lately I haven't been able to get a woman who speaks 5 languages and has 5 academic degrees to dig herself out of a hole of her own making....took 90 minutes to go through her latest email point by point and be nice, while demonstrating without using foul language that you can still be dumb as dirt with plenty of degrees when you have an interest in NOT wanting to critically think.