That This Nightmare Of An Election Is Even Close Screams The Need To Revamp Critical Thinking Education

Authored by abovethelaw.com and submitted by DonnyMoscow1
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My parents have been married for more than 40 years at this point. Throughout the 35 years of that marriage that I’ve been around for, my mom has been fond of reminding me why she was so keen on getting an education after she finished high school: so that if she stayed married it was because she actually wanted to, not because she was economically trapped in marriage by a higher-earning partner.

By and large, college is indeed an extremely wise financial investment for the individual. According to a comprehensive report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, a bachelor’s degree is worth $2.8 million, on average, over a lifetime.

The degree my mom got from the University of Minnesota wasn’t a bachelor’s, but she did fine during her long and successful career as a dental hygienist in small town America. She definitely met her goal of being financially self-sustaining (and apparently never felt the need to leave my dad, thankfully, despite being able to outperform him financially).

But sometimes I think the intangible value of education to our society as a whole gets overshadowed by the material results for individuals. Even though it wasn’t a four-year program like it is today, the dental hygiene program at the University of Minnesota was no place for academic slouches in the 1970s. Year after year as a child, I’d travel to the U of M for follow ups to my congenital cataracts eye surgery, and once we arrived on campus my mom would tell stories about her gross anatomy lab when she was a student there many years prior.

If you don’t know what a gross anatomy lab is, well, put down your drink if you’re having a coffee or something. That’s a class where you dissect human bodies (ones that their former occupants were kind enough to donate to science).

Why does a dental hygienist need to know how to dissect an entire human body? Well, some would argue she doesn’t. I don’t know that those folks would want someone poking around in their face with a sharp metal instrument without knowing exactly where all the arteries were, but maybe that argument carries a little more weight when we get below chest level.

But forget about a dental hygienist, there are a lot of things to learn about human biology that are useful in making a good citizen out of anyone, anywhere. Like, you know, that vaccines work. Or that wearing a mask helps keep respiratory viruses out of your face-holes.

There is a reason that about two-thirds of whites without a college degree voted for Donald Trump in 2016, while only 38 percent of whites with a four-year college degree voted for Trump. Uneducated people are generally not as good as educated people at determining when they are being lied to, because they are not as good at distinguishing between the credibility of different sources. There is a reason why so many uneducated people are still sticking with Trump in 2020, despite the fact that his pandemic nonresponse needlessly cost hundreds of thousands of lives and his only major policy accomplishment was a tax bill that harmed them to give away money to obscenely rich people. These folks do not (yet!) have the wherewithal to determine that the Fox News pundits screaming lies at them all day are not actually on their side and are not equivalent sources to the thousands of whiny liberal scientists, economists, and frazzled Above the Law columnists gently urging self-beneficial corrections to their worldview.

People (bad ones) make fun of baristas with college degrees, but every good citizen should have enough of a post-secondary education to vote competently, to determine fact from fiction to some meaningful degree. It doesn’t matter how tangential that education may be to how an individual ultimately earns a living. There’s dignity and intrinsic value in any kind of real, legitimate education, just like there is dignity and intrinsic value in any kind of real, legitimate work. In a more utopian American — maybe one where absolutely everyone could get at least two years of education after high school without going into debt — perhaps that would be self-evident.

My mom has a Joe Biden sign in her front lawn in a small town awash with Trump-flag-waving quarterwits because, unlike many of her peers, she learned how to think critically. I’m not going to totally credit a gross anatomy lab for that. But it sure didn’t hurt.

Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].

gopher_everitt on October 29th, 2020 at 01:04 UTC »

The most valuable course I took in college, certainly more useful in real life than my degree specific classes, was “Argument Based Research.”

It was a mid level English course of nothing but logical fallacies. How to spot them and, more importantly, how to recognize when you are using one.

Shout out to Mrs. Moore. It’s really helped me navigate the political landscape the last 12 years.

Magnus64 on October 29th, 2020 at 00:47 UTC »

I will never, as long as I live, vote for a party that is content to cut educational services the way the Republicans have been. They are literally trying to make the next generation as dumb and gullible as possible trick people into voting against their own best interests. It's a disgusting, vile, and a downright evil thing to do.

The children of this country deserve better.

Magic8BallResponse on October 28th, 2020 at 23:19 UTC »

But sometimes I think the intangible value of education to our society as a whole gets overshadowed by the material results for individuals. 

100% agree. College isnt just about getting a job. Its about developing critical thinking skills, expanding your world view, and having your ideals challenged in a good and constructive way.

Edit: I should make a few clarifications. Also, please read my last paragraph for a great way to donate money and have a direct impact on someone's life.

I'm not saying critical thinking shouldn't be taught before college - obviously it should be introduced earlier. But college in general is much more "open ended" and has much more breadth than primary education, and those skills are rapidly expanded.

No, college isn't for everyone. But I firmly believe everyone can get a benefit from it, even if they drop out. The experiences and introduction to other cultures and ideas are worth it alone.

Yes, college price obviously needs to be reduced/eliminated for any of this to happen. Fun fact: the operating cost of college per student hasn't really changed in like 40 years (after adjusting for inflation) - so the myth that colleges are getting more wasteful with spending or just jacking up tuition because the government subsidizes student loans (this is a common right wing talking point) is false. So the price hasn't changed, but what has changed is that the average percentage of a college's income from the government went from like 50-60% in the 70s to around 13-15% today. The cost was made up by raising tuition. You can blame republicans for this.

Edit: people asking for a source on this, sorry it was part of some research I did in college (ironically) and I dont have my links. I've been searching, but on mobile it sucks. Also as a user pointed out - college costs per student have increased due to more infrastructure and stuff, but the increase nowhere near the tuition increase. Its like 200% vs 5000%. If I get time later I can try to do the math with actual sourcing.

Here's an example though from PBS about decreased state funding

Closing thought since I have a soapbox: no kids in primary education should be punished for their parents not being able to afford lunch. If you have cash to burn, consider calling local elementary, middle, and high schools and seeing if you can pay off outstanding debt on student lunches.