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[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]

PP. Persuasive writing is not the problem.  I understand what you're trying to say but in my school district there's not enough persuasive writing to create little spinmeisters.  There's just not enough factual non-fiction and analytical writing.  There are more explicit media literacy units though - those are actually useful.[/quote]

My son is in high school now in fcps and at least since middle school he has had nothing but non-fiction and analytical writing.  In fact, it's almost too much.  He spends hours doing exercises that involve reading something and then writing paragraph-long answers to questions where he has to quote the text and cite his sources, and then writing a short paper or presenting something based on that.  He has to come with a hypothesis and everything.  He has never had a persuasive writing assignment, unless it was in elementary and was done in class where I didn't see it.  He does this for both English class and History.  It's so similar that I have concluded this is the focus of the current curriculum, so it's probably the same way throughout fcps.[/quote]

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