Critical Thinking in Philosophy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-breslin/why-public-schools-dont-t_b_7956518.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-breslin/why-public-schools-dont-t_b_8017986.html

1/ After reading Why Public Schools Don’t Teach Critical Thinking- Part 1&2 think through and answer the following questions:
• The author makes many points throughout the article. Identify at least one point that you either agree with or disagree with. Why do you agree or disagree with the point the author is making?
• What is your overall takeaway from the article?
• Is there anything important or relevant from your own life that connects with the article? Why or why not?
• Finally, do you believe that critical thinking is an important component of education? What would the world look like if critical thinking were valued at least as much as common subjects such as Math, Science, English, etc..?
• Do you see any places in the word today where more critical thinking could be helpful? Describe where and why.
Finally, what are some of your takeaways from the materials this week?
2/ You need to reply to at 2 postings below that agree or disagree, each reply must be unique and be a minimum of 3 sentences.

Post #1:1. “They (parents) understand that a high school must prepare students for college, where they will need critical thinking to survive in this challenging new environment.” I completely agree with this point because high school students need to be prepared and learn to think critically before college because if they don’t learn then, it’s going to be difficult to learn as they navigate college and possibly even navigate life.
2. The education system should start training the young, the high schoolers, critical thinking skills more often to get them prepped for college and for life.
3. As a student who would like to teach right after I get my bachelor’s, I believe that if I don’t teach my students to think more critically on their own and/or with their peers, I believe that I could possibly fail my job as a teacher.
4. Yes. Critical thinking is an important component in education as I’ve said above. Thinking critically in subjects that are common would hope to see more knowledge, more debate even, and hopefully grades would increase as well.
5. Probably in low poverty nations that don’t have a very good education system and who are unable to give children/students the education they need.
Post #2:The author says students should be taught by abandoning group thinking and I agree with that because when working in group projects there’s usually one person that says something and everyone else just goes along with that. If we were to get rid of that in school, every student would always have to think of their own things which would also improve our thought process.
The takeaway from these articles is critical thinking. It is something that should always be taught to better society but that is not what society nor the government want. The government is always hiding things and if everyone was taught critics thinking, everyone would have ways to figure those things out.
Yes, in the first article it mentions that children need room to breath and I completely agree with that. I have had many times where I felt like I needed a mental break from school work or have wanted to be with my family and I couldn’t due to school work.
Critical thinking could be a crucial if taught in school and statistics would be much higher, including successful students but I doubt it will ever be fully taught due to how society sees it.
Critical thinking could be used more in jobs and museums. Tons of people visit museums and it gives the people reasons to think about what they are looking at.
My takeaway from this lecture is that critical thinking is very important and it is rarely used when it could be used more often.