this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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I really hope it’s not the same kind of critical thinking that some other states pushed.
Missouri’s version was to assign a controversial and biased news article and the students had to write an essay agreeing with the article while citing that same article. Outside sources were not allowed and neither was disagreeing with the article. Anything but full agreement resulted in a 0% and put marks against the school since it was state assessment.
I mean that's not a bad thing, either. Being capable of understanding an opinion you don't agree with is incredibly important and very lacking.
The problem was it forced you to agree with that opinion. There was no thinking involved, only blind belief
Critical thinking would allow you to understand opposing opinions while respectfully disagreeing
I actually wholeheartedly disagree. It's easy to spout off your own beliefs, it's harder to justify one you don't already agree with. Critical thinking here would require you to understand where the article is coming from rather than writing it off entirely because you start from a position of not agreeing.
Understanding an opinion while not agreeing with it is incredibly important. If you don't understand a topic well enough to advocate for the devil, then you don't understand it enough to have a conversation at all.
This is literally what critical thinking is. It's not "justify a position you already agree with."
I disagree. You are only allowed to agree with the article using the articles own statements. If article states the sky was always red without mentioning anything else, then you’d have to agree or fail.
No other views, facts, opinions, perspectives, etc was allowed.
That is not critical thinking.
That was how Missouri taught “critical thinking”
If you brought in dissenting opinions, then... That would just be a lesson on disproving articles, not actually learning how to understand opposing opinions.
It's an example of critical reading, not critical thinking. Reading isn't thinking, they are different, that's why they mostly have different letters in them
I doubt you'll change my mind on this, but feel free to keep trying
You aren't just reading it. You're writing an entire-ass paper on the subject which would require actually understanding where the article is coming from in order to further extrapolate its opinion, otherwise you'd just be rewriting the article in its entirety which doesn't seem to be the goal of the assignment.