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Opinion, Bias, and The Threat of Critical Thinking

What some in good numbers will understand to be the truth. The argument is, unlike what it pretends to be, anything but based objectivity based in fact.
 
Which raises another question for those like me who teach and consider it important that students know how to think critically and read the world with a critical eye. I do not know about others, but I have been hit over the head by students and administrators for bringing up issues and offering up and encouraging students to find and speak up about the various perspectives people have on important issue.
 
Of course I have a bias. They can read my blog site to know that. But when I ask that they speak with the kind of authority that comes will knowledge and reason, many think asking such of them to be unfair those I ask it of all who make claims that, of course, need corroboration.
 
I think we are at a point where it has become dangerous (again) to teach to critical thinking in schools across the spectrum, yes, even in college. There are many stories that tell of professors being castigated for discussing certain issue in their courses. Some are wrong is their forcing students to buy their bias. But a good many ask students to present their views so that the issue of bias can be worked out and truths discovered.
 
This is a base-line crisis in my mind because it about the basics of good sense, good will discussions that lead to better understanding of important things. Pushing the critical thinking element out of education on the basis of it being a ploy to indoctrinate is dangerous, very dangerous.
http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/382748-fbi-raid-on-trumps-attorney-is-so-political-it-would-have-made-j-edgar

By lafered

Retired professor of education concerned with thoughtfulness

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