Reply to Alexandria Catholic School - no critical thinking??

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes, memorizing mundane and intricate facts is absolutely essential. Maybe one day they’ll invent something where kids can easily retrieve esoteric information at will, but until that day, rote memorization must be the focus over analysis and critical thinking.

It’s also a binary choice — rote memorization OR critical thinking. I understand why the school chose the former. [/quote]

I can't think of any good reason for students to memorize mundane or intricate facts like when the Revolutionary War happened, what the Stamp Act was, when the Mexican-American War happened, and who was President during World War II. That's some pretty in-the-weeds stuff, and they could always just look it up on the internet.  [/quote]

Yes, mid conversation or debate they can just say, wait a minute while I look up the basic facts everyone else knows.[/quote]

Yep. It’s also really helpful for college and beyond when you have to do a lot of critical thinking and have absolutely no basis for any of the topics. Nothing like writing a term paper and needing to spend endless hours learning dumb facts first. Or googling furiously during a class discussion because you don’t have any background in the topic yet want to avoid saying something obviously stupid.[/quote]

In the near future people will likely use AI to dig through facts and organize them. The brain-work will be learning to analyze and critically think about the facts. So thank you very much, but I don’t want my kid wasting any of his time learning facts. I want him to polish his critical thinking skills. He’s going to leave everyone else who’s busy sitting through facts in the dust while he’s coming up with next-level analysis.[/quote]

Your approach is an enormous pedological shift from a millennia of academic tradition.  Sounds like you should be looking into an Alpha school or sim to use this approach.  I suspect it may work for some of the most naturally intellectual students but we are talking about the top few of the class.  It is really rolling the dice for the large majority of students and a disservice to our people and civilization.  Not pouring in historical, scientific and philosophical content would end with empty vessels for a large majority of students.  The dumbing down of school expectations and grades etc has resulted in enlarging the achievement gaps and a net loss to our culture which this approach would double down on.

You said “…. I don’t want my kid wasting any of his time learning facts.”  I can’t imagine you actually believe this.  You can’t learn/do calculus without having full command of your math facts (memorization.) And for me personally, not sure I’d hire a consultant, doctor, attorney or expert in any field that didn’t have fluency of the facts and data in that field.  You can’t do that without having general knowledge and grasp of facts of the world around you. AI is so new and as an expert in MY field, I can only analyze and discern the info bc I know which parts are true and which are not.  The critical thinking and analysis will be a natural outcome of being well educated and then having experience in your field of choice.

But you may have a spectacularly precocious child with some insatiable intellectual curiosity that will seek this info out on their own.  Pretty rare but how blessed if you do.  Look at Alpha schools.  That’s what they espouse.  Good luck![/quote]

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