How the Conservative Worldview Quashes Critical Thinking -- and What That Means...

[SarasotaRepub]

I don't want to hurt education...

Sat May 19, 2012, 06:43 AM
xchrom

How the Conservative Worldview Quashes Critical Thinking -- and What That Means For Our Kids' Future http://www.alternet.org/education/15...ids%27_future/ The Conservative War On Education continues apace, with charters blooming everywhere, high-stakes testing cementing its grip on classrooms, and legislators and pundits wondering what we need those stupid liberal arts colleges for anyway. (Isn't college about job prep? Who needs to know anything about art history, anthropology or ancient Greek?) Amid the din, there's a worrisome trend: liberals keep affirming right-wing talking points, usually without realizing that they're even right wing. Or saying things like, "The education of our children is a non-partisan issue that should exist outside of any ideological debate." The hell it is. People who say stuff like this have no idea what they're talking about. The education of our children is a core cultural and political choice that reflects the deepest differences between liberals and conservatives -- because every educational conversation must start with the fundamental philosophical question: What is an education for? Our answers to that question could not be more diametrically opposed. A Question of Human Nature Our beliefs about the purpose of education are rooted in even deeper beliefs about the basic nature of humanity.

DUmmies, no one is denying you a Masters in Basket Weaving or Wemyns Studies, we just don't want to pay for it. You want some useless degree??? Cool!! I have ZERO problems with that. BUT, I'm not paying for it. YOU pay for it.

And why does this really matter??? I read a thread on the All Knowing DU that College degrees are worthless!!!! So why all the hubbub, bub???

[DumbAss Tanker]

It makes sense if you pause and consider that to a Liberal, "Critical thinking" means the ability to completely suspend disbelief in Skittle-shitting unicorns, the infallibility of Obama, the horrors of the BFEE, the integrity of anything or anyone political associated with the names 'Clinton' or 'Kennedy,' the validity of CBO's HCRA forecasts, smudging, rainbow magic, healing white light, astrology, money trees, and waterfowl that can ovulate precious metal ingots.

[Odysseus]

The Conservative War On Education continues apace, with charters blooming everywhere...

Because, as you know, schools that actually teach kids instead of warehousing them for the welfare state constitute a war on education.

...high-stakes testing cementing its grip on classrooms...

Again, part of that pernicious conservative mindset that demands that kids actually learn something in the schools that our taxes are paying for.

...and legislators and pundits wondering what we need those stupid liberal arts colleges for anyway. (Isn't college about job prep? Who needs to know anything about art history, anthropology or ancient Greek?)

Art Historians, Anthropologists and Historians would have uses for those. But how many art historians, anthropologists or historians will the market support? Taking money to teach kids skills that will not permit them to be gainfully employed after graduation is worse than converting colleges into technical schools that exclude any liberal arts background. Under the latter, kids come out with the basic skills needed to survive in the world, albeit a less interesting world, but they will be able to provide for themselves and their families. The former defrauds them, gives them useless degrees in boutique subjects that, at best, will provide them with a meager living as teachers, and at worst, consign them to the Occupy movement, where they will be left to lament their student debt and lack of available jobs that meet their expectations. If you're going to end up working a counter at Kinko's anyway, isn't it better not to be saddled with six figures of debt on top of that?

The entitlement mentality cripples these clowns, and they don't even know it.

[Wibbins]

The Conservative War On Education continues apace, with charters blooming everywhere...

Because, as you know, schools that actually teach kids instead of warehousing them for the welfare state constitute a war on education.

...high-stakes testing cementing its grip on classrooms...

Again, part of that pernicious conservative mindset that demands that kids actually learn something in the schools that our taxes are paying for.

...and legislators and pundits wondering what we need those stupid liberal arts colleges for anyway. (Isn't college about job prep? Who needs to know anything about art history, anthropology or ancient Greek?)

Art Historians, Anthropologists and Historians would have uses for those. But how many art historians, anthropologists or historians will the market support? Taking money to teach kids skills that will not permit them to be gainfully employed after graduation is worse than converting colleges into technical schools that exclude any liberal arts background. Under the latter, kids come out with the basic skills needed to survive in the world, albeit a less interesting world, but they will be able to provide for themselves and their families. The former defrauds them, gives them useless degrees in boutique subjects that, at best, will provide them with a meager living as teachers, and at worst, consign them to the Occupy movement, where they will be left to lament their student debt and lack of available jobs that meet their expectations. If you're going to end up working a counter at Kinko's anyway, isn't it better not to be saddled with six figures of debt on top of that?

The entitlement mentality cripples these clowns, and they don't even know it.

stockholm's syndrome

[DumbAss Tanker]

The Conservative War On Education continues apace, with charters blooming everywhere...

Because, as you know, schools that actually teach kids instead of warehousing them for the welfare state constitute a war on education.

...high-stakes testing cementing its grip on classrooms...

Again, part of that pernicious conservative mindset that demands that kids actually learn something in the schools that our taxes are paying for.

...and legislators and pundits wondering what we need those stupid liberal arts colleges for anyway. (Isn't college about job prep? Who needs to know anything about art history, anthropology or ancient Greek?)

Art Historians, Anthropologists and Historians would have uses for those. But how many art historians, anthropologists or historians will the market support? Taking money to teach kids skills that will not permit them to be gainfully employed after graduation is worse than converting colleges into technical schools that exclude any liberal arts background. Under the latter, kids come out with the basic skills needed to survive in the world, albeit a less interesting world, but they will be able to provide for themselves and their families. The former defrauds them, gives them useless degrees in boutique subjects that, at best, will provide them with a meager living as teachers, and at worst, consign them to the Occupy movement, where they will be left to lament their student debt and lack of available jobs that meet their expectations. If you're going to end up working a counter at Kinko's anyway, isn't it better not to be saddled with six figures of debt on top of that?

The entitlement mentality cripples these clowns, and they don't even know it.

Well said; it is not the availabilty of fine arts and humanities courses that are the problem, they are after all a perfectly sound part of a well-rounded education so we aren't raising a generation of proles, the Java and CNC coding equivalent of the machine-tending proles in Metropolis. These courses, or curriculums for the few who can succeed in them as career fields, should absolutely be of a quality consistent with the prestige of other degrees from the same school. No, the problem is the bureaucratic imperative to live and grow that each of these departments has in real schools, in a Parkinson's Law sort of way, which impels them to fight for more staff and faculty and then to fight for more students out of each year's crop to support those same staffing requirements, all with no regard whatsoever for the real-world employability of their graduates.

[FlaGator]

I believe that the election of Obama is proof positive that the majority of libs totally lack critical thinking skills. What most every conservative knew would happen if Obama was elected has happened and libs are in complete denial of this. Not only were they completely unable to discern the out come of and Obama Presidency many are still deluded enough to accept the idea that he just needs more time.

No ponies in 2008 and no ponies going forward. Libs you used your elite thinking skills to buy in to a dream that had zero chance of becoming a reality.