How and not What
In the courses I teach I attempt to promote community and try to motivate students to learn HOW to think and not WHAT to think.
Jim,
That is a great strategy. They need to develop their own way of how. Online learning can provide that.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
The problem with teaching students HOW to think is that the world (i.e., parents, church, family, friends, work, and media) are all teaching people WHAT to think. As John D. Rockefeller so aptly put it: "I am not interested in critical thinkers. I am interested in good workers".
The question becomes how do instructors reverse or even affect this type of programming. It should be remembered that the vast majority of people, when faced with the truth that contradicts a person's belief structure, will chose their belief structure over and above the truth. This is a fact.
The only way that I have ever found to counteract this problem is to point it out to people, and then encourage them find out whether the proposition is correct.
So, I wonder how many instructors point this out to their students. I do not think very many. What do you think?
Donald,
I think that in some areas we do have to teach students what to think. In the medical field you want a student to understand how to use certain knowledge that becomes the foundation of all learning. In accounting, you have to have certain foundational knowledge that becomes the tools that students use in ethical decisions. Students have to have the prerequisite knowledge to be that independent thinker.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
