Wikipedia

[dave_orphal]

This is a shared post.  The sections in bold come from called Rethinking the future of learning institutions: 10 principals by John Norton, published in October of 2009.  Specifically, this post is looking at the principal of "De-Centered Pedagogy." from that article.  I am writing about it here because it reminded me of a discussion I read

Comments

Education Theroy is Big on Recycling

[hunrvogt]

"...students will be trained in skills rather than in knowledge. Students will have to know how to find information; they will have to know how to evaluate the reliability of that information; they will have to be able to understand the effects of bias and how to determine the bias of an information source."

To a certain extent I started with some of these skill in High School, but really expanded them in College and further in Grad School. I'm a pretty smart kid, but I don't know that I would have developed sufficient skepticism to successfully employ these techniques early in High School. You need a little world experience and cynicism to detect bias.

There are reasons that ideological groups (terroists, activists, and religous) target kids in that 11-14 range. Those kids frequently have a hard time objectively evaluating the message.

Now I suppose there could be an argument that if we taught them to think objectively about the subjectivity of messages earlier, they might be better prepared for such targetting. I do wonder if there is a physiological mentality maturity barrier that prevents us from teaching these skills too young.

PS I personally believe I fund public education with my tax dollars because I would like to have an educated workforce. Even more than that I really want an educated electorate and that requires some level of development of critical thinking. I also think some subjects (notably Science and English) develop critical thinking better. Other subjects (notably Math and History) develop core life skills like memorization and comfort working with numbers.