Reply to Guest lecturer perspective: modern students are absolutely atrocious

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My siblings a college professor.  He says it’s really bad for years and gotten worse.  [b]Critical thought is dead and there is no interest in reviving it.[/b]  It’s bad news[/quote]

That's because we no longer teach kids in a way that makes sense to teach them critical thinking. First stuff their heads with facts in elementary (so they have a basis from which to even begin to think), then teach them logic in middle, then teach the persuasion in high school. [url=https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Tools-Learning-Dorothy-Sayers/dp/1941129862]Dorothy Sayers was right[/url].[/quote]

They're now being taught persuasive writing in elementary school.  That's one of the things that is leading to all these unintended consequences.  Research is no longer about gathering general information that then gets analayzed.  Research nowadays is entirely about finding support for the argument they come up with first.[/quote]

And typically, their feelings are used as evidence...[/quote]

In my kids' public school district at least, kids are taught to use research sources far sooner than they ever were in decades before.  And in addition to persuasive writing they are taught analysis of sources.  I think all the complainers need to actually look at the evidence in the curriculum before making unsupported blanket statements.[/quote]

Not PP.

Kids are told to pull in sources, sure. They're given some black and white standards for a "good" source - Wikipedia bad (true!), Encyclopedia Brittanica Online good (maybe true!). But do they really have a solid basis from which to think and analyze? Do they have a lot of knowledge? Do they understand logic and reasoning? No. My kid was doing a research essay without ever having been taught how to connect every paragraph to her thesis sentence. Just  because the school calls it "research" doesn't make it positive. And yes, the classmates she was working with on the project absolutely used flimsy evidence, because they don't know what good evidence is or how to gather it from a good source and include it in their own argument.

I'd rather they get the research sources later, after they know how to write a five paragraph essay.[/quote]

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