James Fallows has been blogging this past week about criticisms the Chinese education system doesn't teach critical and/or creative thinking. He posted this interesting letter on the teachability of critical thinking:

The writer argues yes, you can teach critical thinking as a skill in its own right. I would be interested in seeing the specific exercises and lessons one uses.

In America, this supposedly happens in our vast and unique liberal arts college system. There's the old cliche "a liberal arts education teaches you how to think." Well, it sounds good: It's not about filling your head with facts, it's about the thinking habits that get developed…or something….somehow. Occasionally I ask people, "What do you mean 'teaches you how to think'?" and I'm met with blank stares. It is one of these lines about education that sounds wonderful in the abstract but lacks concreteness, making it impossible to evaluate whether it is actually happening. The writer above notes that even liberal arts programs that do specifically try to impart critical thinking skills often fail.

Bottom Line: Critical thinking can probably be taught independent of other skills, but it is not being done in U.S. colleges in a way that creates meaningful difference (in this specific area) from its Chinese counterparts.

The modern academy expends an enormous amount of energy generating and then entertaining cultural left bullshit. The endless talk about multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, racism, sexism, sexual orientation-ism; the pseudo-controversies that erupt around these issues; the shallow academic departments (Gender Studies, anyone?) that have been created to address said issues; the misguided policies such as admissions affirmative action which in one sense attempt to create hyper-local laboratories for these grand ideas; then the ironically over-firm application of the "tolerance" value that conveniently suffocates conversations skeptical to any of the above.

I don't question the ends of these recent additions to the academic scene. I have, many times, conveyed my support for gay marriage, old and new feminist ideals, environmental issues, and the like. But the conversations about these issues in academia seem rigged from the start and always weighed down by an overwhelming deference to political correctness. Does anyone really believe, in this post-Larry Summers-gets-lynched-for-contemplating-gender-differences era, that universities are the finest source of free and open dialogue about the critical issues, specifically tricky political topics involving race and gender?

This rambling and only semi-coherent introduction is all to link to this review of a book of essays from the New Criterion where the author makes the following assertion:

Multiculturalist pedagogy; the promotion of “cultural diversity” through arts administration, philanthropy, and public policy; academic departments of Women’s Studies and Afro-American Studies; the project of “critical theory”; and in general, the greatly increased weight — in teaching and research, hiring and funding, programming and grant-making — given to explicitly political considerations: altogether these things have done more harm than good. They have undoubtedly made possible some valuable work and attracted some people to culture who would otherwise have been lost to it. But they have also generated a really staggering amount of mediocre and tendentious work. And not only do these ideological priorities make for less accomplished artists and scholars; they also make for less effective citizens. Attempting to turn one’s professional enthusiasms and expertise to political account can distract from — can even serve to rationalize the avoidance of — everyday democratic activity, with all its tedium and frustration.

(hat tip Andrew Sullivan)

Yesterday, Michael Lewis referred to a job as a 9-5 gig that offers security and a chance to pursue a life outside of work. He referred to a calling as something that so excites you that your life becomes completely wrapped up in that work. Each involves trade-offs. He said that many yearning for the benefits of a calling are not willing to bear the associated costs.

Here's today's question: Why do so many young people, upon graduating college, have such a hard time finding a rewarding job or a calling?

One explanation: Because to find a job or calling you need to know what you like to do, and by the time you graduate from college formal schooling has eroded your natural radar for detecting things which genuinely excite you.

Think about it…You've just graduated from college. You have just spent the last 17 years of your life in a formal schooling environment non-stop. As a young child, through to adolescence, into your early adult years, an authority figure has been telling you what to read, study, and write, and then judging it good or bad.

Take learning how to write. 99% of the writing you do in school involves offering answers not questions. A teacher gives you an essay topic, and you write about it. Over and over again. Yet, the real word rewards those who themselves can ask the right question. Coming up with an essay topic is 99% of the work — yet teachers rarely make you do this. One reason I encourage folks to don pajamas and start a blog is it forces you to create not just respond. Each blog post starts with you, a bottle of Scotch, and a black cursor blinking menacingly on an empty white screen.

Then there's the formal school philosophy promoting breadth not depth, weaknesses not strengths. If in school you found yourself unusually interested in a particular topic area, you couldn't really pursue it seriously since you had all your other classes to manage. I.e., if you found yourself a math whiz, it's the rare school that will seek to nurture this precocity. Instead, they said if you finish math early, get on with your English, biology and basket-weaving homework.

When parents reviewed your report card, did they ever say, "Wow – an A+! Why don't you continue to focus on that and maybe you can become really good at it?" No. They probably stroked their hairless chin, nodded solemnly at the A, and then pounced on you about the C. Whereas the real word rewards those who can discover and build upon a couple core natural strengths and interests, in school you're taught to pursue a broad balancing act and shore up weaknesses.

So there are two intertwined dynamics in school that I think contribute to the aimlessness of new college grads: an entrenched habit of rule-following (the real world has no clear rules and no clear authority articulating them) and the promoted philosophy of "be pretty good at lots of things as opposed to extraordinarily good at one thing."

Bottom Line: Formal schooling dulls one's exploration of natural interests. To ask yourself what you naturally enjoy and excel at, and then pursue it vigorously, would detract from the balancing act and contradict the authority structure. Unfortunately, asking yourself this very question is the key to a rewarding real-world career!

It is common wisdom that going to college and obtaining a degree is the smart path for any ambitious person. Since it’s common wisdom, most people have never been forced to articulate the specific reasons why one should go to college. “Just get it done and then go on and conquer the world,” a degree-holding elder might instruct the youth. The specific reasons why will likely be a hodgepodge. I think they generally fit in three big categories: Learning, Connections, and Credential.

Learning — The stuff you actually learn. This includes all the intellectual and social and emotional skills that are part of the experience. The hard, specific knowledge (who is Plato?) and the high level “learn how to think” stuff.

Connections — The people you meet and develop lasting relationships with, both peers and professors.

Credential — The piece of paper (degree) which said you mustered the self-discipline to attend classes, follow the rules, read the requisite books, and did so all at a level your institution deemed satisfactory.

All are strong reasons to go to college, especially the credential.

The arguments presented for not going to college and getting a degree also tend to be scattered. Usually, people say something like, “Well, Bill Gates didn’t get a degree.” Or that 73 out of the 1,125 billionaires in the world dropped out of some stage of schooling. That Ben Franklin completed only two years of formal schooling. While these can be fun examples, they are not particularly persuasive because they rely upon a comparison being made between the student at hand and, say, Michael Dell. It takes a helluva ego to consider yourself the next Michael Dell.

Better approach: If you want to make a compelling case against college, organize, de-mystify, and argue against the three reasons for college. Argue that self-directed learners have the world at their fingertips with the web and needn’t be stuffed into a system that assumes all learning styles are alike. Argue that connections can be built through other affiliations and on one’s own. And argue that substitute experiences (for the credential) can signal equally strong in many industries such as business or journalism (concede medicine, law, and academia to the traditionally credentialed).

I’m sure there’s some name for the argumentative device of working with and arguing against the stated reasons for, versus trying to muster your own points. Maybe this is “process of elimination” — you needn’t offer your own argument you just need to destroy your opponent’s.

Bottom Line: Assumptions like “everyone should go to college” are rarely challenged, and when they are, the arguments tend to be all over the place. Challenge bedrock assumptions. Worst case, you’ll bring clarity around the assumption’s existence. Best case, you might find the assumption rests on less steady ground than originally thought.