Comments on: Why It’s Never Mattered That America’s Schools Lag Behind

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 17:20:59 +0000

I agree that students in some fields learn much, much more than students in others — although, frankly, anyone who earns less than an "A" in a class, STEM or not, probably retains next to nothing. The larger point is that classes meant to teach critical thinking do no such thing. Some students can think critically, and some can't, but simple exposure to a "good" education doesn't seem sufficient to confer the skill.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 16:01:54 +0000

I don’t think it’s muddying the issues to say that bright, motivated immigrants (and natives) come to Silicon Valley for the startup scene, and improving our educational system won’t affect our level of innovation much, if at all.

By: William Newman

William Newman — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 14:01:57 +0000

“most students float through college without learning much in the way of critical thinking”

I’d be more impressed if they picked linear algebra or pharmacology or tax accounting for their demonstration that students don’t learn anything in college.

One minor but useful bit of critical thinking is picking up on internal evidence that an article is flaky. That an article chooses to focus on something that’s difficult to define rigorously and technically difficult to measure after you’ve defined it — critical thinking, for example — is internal evidence that the article is flaky.

By: Ross

Ross — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 23:17:10 +0000

A large percentage of innovators here in the mid/late 20th and early 21st century are immigrants. (One of my personal favorites is Von Braun.)

So…people have immigrated here for security, economic opportunity, legal protection of intellectual property and general freedom since WWII, and that’s why it doesn’t matter if our domestic schools are not best of breed and getting worse?

Methinks there’s a muddying conflation of issues here.