Self help for those who want to learn to think critically

[calfoxwc]

http://www.skymark.com/Theseus/overview.asp

[Mr. T]

Welcome to better thinking!

[calfoxwc]

I think this article is intriguing - it contains some of the points I have made in the past about

emotionalism vs critical thinking, the blurring of right and wrong...

 

from a PHD:

 

Mystique -

The Corruption of Critical Thinking

 

Gerald L. Rowles, Ph.D.

 

 

We have often attributed a broad range of societal ills to the misguided tyranny of the educational system. I don't believe that to be hyperbolic, but I think that it is easy to overlook the tyranny of the "socialization system" that is governed by other such elite institutions as (American Psychological Association) APA-accredited training programs and their offspring - psychology licensing agencies.

 

An example: People stand in awe of the Clinton mystique, that a man such as Bill Clinton is such a persuasive communicator, when he has clearly been shown to be a liar and that his words are ultimately meaningless when it comes to translating them into action.

 

This, I submit, is indicative of the systematized corruption of critical thinking skills.

 

There are two reasons why this corruption has occurred.

 

First, the most obvious and very damaging failure of the education system to teach children the fundamental language skills. At base, the development of traditional logic and critical thinking flows from understanding the structure of language. C is to kuh; A is to ah; R is to ar = CAR. From there, advanced language skills evolve through learning the essentials of sentence structure, with an emphasis on how meaning is changed by the proper or improper placement of words and their modifiers. These are the mechanics, the tools of logical and meaningful expression. It has become increasingly clear that "whole language" instruction has bypassed these essentials.

 

Second, the less obvious but more insidious failure comes from the "socialization system" that has mandated or advocated an untested school of child-rearing. One of the most recognized, and least tested, is the Benjamin Spock school of child-rearing. Following WWII, this school of "expert" thought has encouraged a whole generation of parents to intellectualize their relationship with their children; to "reason" with their children in order to create a more "democratic" family structure that ostensibly enhances the child's self-esteem - which is alleged to have been damaged by the traditional patriarchal structure. Nevertheless, rates of teen depression, drug and alcohol use, and violence have escalated in these ostensibly "democratized" children.

 

The unackowledged problem is this. As William James, the father of pragmatism, said, the child's mind is a blooming, buzzing confusion filled with unarticulated sensory input. For a parent to try to "reason" with a 3-7 year-old, most of whom lack any but the most basic language skills, is futile. Blindly submissive to a social "expert", a substantial measure of a generation of parents has done so, feeling that they were on the cutting edge of evolved parenting. For the child though, the actual effect is only greater confusion. A young child, faced with a "reasoning" parent, hears only a seemingly endless collection of words that has no connectedness in their world. So, their option is to select out those words that they grasp, while attending to the parental intonation. Does the intonation indicate parental favor or disfavor? The child then proceeds on the basis of this patchwork of disjointed words and tonality. The whole connection between words-actions-consequences - the fundamentals of critical thinking - is diminished in the process. Ultimately, the child is functioning in an ill-defined, guesswork universe that lacks clear boundaries and objectives - But, just keep talking.

 

This child-as-adult is ultimately the perfect foil for the Bill Clintons of the world - a person who regresses them to that earlier time of disjointed, emotive words that recreate the misguided, "intellectualized" environment of the parental home. For them, this is "reason"as they know it - because key words have been implanted in a "feel good" or "feel bad" tonality. This child has lost the Jamesian ability to form a semblance of "true" belief where, in the long run, a true belief must work beneficially, while an untrue belief will work destructively. Truth for this child is a moving target - and as long as the talking continues, no matter how unreasoned - the child's objective, no matter how self-destructive, remains attainable; they are in the position of power over parental authority that has eschewed the word "no" in favor of a paragraph that may or may not be consequential.

 

St Thomas Aquinas stated: "the good of man is to be in accordance with reason," and evil is "to be against reason." First, however, one has to understand "reason". By school time, however, the "intellectualized" child, is reason-deprived by the very parents that sought to raise them in a "reasoned", "democratic" environment. And no matter how well he or she ultimately learns the mechanics of language from the educational system, those tools will fail to provide them with critical thinking skills, which first require a fundamental understanding of a words-action-consequences pragmatism. One of the most powerful, pragmatic lessons a child can learn as to the importance of words is that which is taught under the benevolent dictatorship of the traditional home - when they are compelled to bend their will to "reason", as advanced by the traditional psychologist John Rosemond: The reason? "Because I said so"! - No more talking.

 

This is the powerful failure of the contemporary "socialization system", and the elite training programs and licensing boards that are statutorily empowered to still those voices that might advance "reason"able alternatives to the corrupt PC ideology.

 

In what turns out to be a strikingly contemporary observation on the value of reason to judge good or ill, St. Thomas Aquinas spoke thus: "The conjugal act and adultery, as compared to reason, differ specifically and have effects specifically different; because the one deserves praise and reward, the other, blame and punishment. But as compared to the generative power, they do not differ in species; and thus they have one specific effect. ... For an action is said to be evil in its species, not because it has no object (effect) at all; but because it has an object (effect) in disaccord with reason, for instance, to appropriate another's property, (spouse, reputation, etc.)."

 

BUT, for the reason-impaired, the effect remains ill-defined, as long as you just keep talking.

[calfoxwc]

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

 

~ George Orwell

 

 

Like telling the truth on this board, to some of the libs, eh?

 

Most of us are truth revolutionaries now.

 

My instincts tell me that Shepbites and MosquitoZits will not

be able to handle the truth... critical thinking wise.