Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bryan Dickman
Anthony Sassin
English 111
17 November 2017
Students have stumbled over the concept of critical thinking for many years. In the
classroom environment, students feel that critical thinking is not needed. Critical thinking is
taught in the manner that the students have a choice: to think critically about a topic and to
fully comprehend the ideas that are being presented to the students, or to take the easy way
out and merely graze the surface of the information to show the teacher that information has
been learned. There is a gray area in between where a student may be able to think critically
on a certain topic but not fully comprehend the topic to the best of their ability. Many
students may opt to follow the path of least resistance, which in this instance is to merely
only touch the surface of the vast pool of information. One reason that students might stay
away from thinking critically is that the life of a student is filled with many other activities
than just the classroom work. Student motivation is a big part of how much effort a student
will put into a certain topic or activity. Some students’ lives consist of sports or other after
school activities. In those activities the students will critically think on their own without
being told to, because the student in interested in that activity. An example of this is that I am
involved in the robotics team at Shepherd and when we are building and planning the robot
we constantly think critically about the problem at hand, and what needs to be completed to
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adequately complete the task at hand. In addition I find myself less motivated in a class that
is all information and something that I can not see any connection towards my future career
goals. Another reason could be that the student does not actually see the real advantage of
working on their critical thinking skills. The students may not feel that they have to do the
actual work to get a good grade in the class. In high school this is usually the case. For me
high school comes easy. The work that is assigned to me is almost second nature for me.
High school for me as a student does not adequately prepare me for adult learning in college.
I am not prepared for college in high school just because of the slight differences in the way
that the class is run. For example the weight of some of the assignment and the pace of the
class. The motivation of the students in the classroom is lessened because the students do not
feel a desire to know information about some subjects because they do not see the connection
between the subject and what the students want to do with their lives.
A potential problem with the entire school system and core subject classrooms is
that the primary focus is the information, rather than the methods for the students to fully
comprehend the information. There have been many idealists that have questioned the very
educational backbone that they themselves have endured. One of these many idealists is
Paulo Freire. Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was one of the leading
supporters for the Critical Pedagogy. One of his many articles was “The ‘Banking’ Method
of Education.” In his article, Freire explains how oftentimes, the education system as it
stands is a ‘bank’, depositing the information into the students in order for the students to
throw the information back at the teacher in the form of a test to show that they have
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‘learned’ the information. In his article, Freire states that “Narration (with the teacher as
narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content” (2). The majority
of the classes in high school does exactly what Freire says. The classroom setting focuses on
the information of the subject and not the analyzation skills that could benefit the student in
later years. The focus in high school and college settings are too focused around the
information. This is because of the ways that the classroom “system” is set up. John Tagg
wrote the article “Why Learn? What We May Really Be Teaching Students” In this article
Tagg says that “the only thing the college preserves about the students’ work in the class is
the grade. Thus when students become grade oriented they are merely responding to the
incentives in their environment” (9). In all of my classes the part of the class that truly
matters is what grade a student gets in the class. The whole education system is surrounded
by grades in high school the graduating class is ranked from the highest gps to the lowest
gpa. To get into a college a student will have to have a certain score on a college entrance
exam. To explain why students are focusing on the the grade of a class and not the skills is
because nothing else matters except a little letter grade that either shows that they
supposedly know the information that was taught in the class. The tests are just a way to
transfer the level of knowledge to a number. Students focus on the grade because the grade is
what the rest of the world looks at. Not how well the student may be able to pick problems
out of a solution.
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The focus on the grade of a course coaxes students to also become grade oriented.
Grade oriented students tend to focus on the grade. Tagg also says that “Most of our
undergraduate colleges do not preserve any information about those answers what to do
preserve is almost exclusively documentation for their work that survives in the class itself-
it's grades, and manuscripts” (3) High school transcripts do the same thing The transcript
only show the grade that the student got in the class and not the information surrounding the
grade and how they student handle the information that is given to them.The way that the
classroom is set up with only having grades count pushes the student into the corner in
having to make the decision either work harder or do what is expected of them in the course.
freire connects to this when in his article the banking concept of Education he says that,
“Worse yet, it turns them into ‘containers,’ into ‘receptacles’ to be ‘filled’ by the teacher.
The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly
the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are” (2). A student is
labeled as a good or bad student solely on the premise of how full the student can be stuffed
with information. Tagg elaborates on this when he says that, “then you think of jill when you
think of failing, … team player failing the system - because she did fail”(10). So if a student
fails a course the student is considered a bad student. A student can be compared to water
bottles. A water bottle that holds more water will allow the user of the water bottle to carry
more water with them. However, the best answer is not always about the quantity but the
quality. How well can that same water bottle keep the water cold? Or, how durable is that
water bottle? Education, in the same way, is single sided. The grading of information is
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solely based on the information and not on the skills, including critical thinking that will be
While the classroom is based on the information and the thought that it is more
important than the skills based around comprehending the information. Grading the
information on a test instead of being able to show how students got to that answer and not
solely the information. This idea is an idea that theorist Jack Mezirow puts forth his thoughts.
Mezirow was a professor at both Teachers College and Columbia University. His
philosophical thought on the education system mirrored that of Paulo Freire’s. Mezirow in
his article “Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice” theorized that education at this
explains it: “Learning to manipulate or control the environment or other people to enhance
efficiency in improving performance” (88). Education is flawed because of this. The students
in the eyes of Mezirow are being oppressed because the learning style is solely based on
ways that will increase the test scores and not actually allow the students to engulf
themselves in the aspect of critical thinking. Tagg Also says that “On the question of why so
many students choose performance over learning goals, they found the most direct
explanation is the design of the learning environment” (9) The classroom and the education
system should not focus on what the student should know and what is optional to know, but
rather the skills that are necessary to allow the students to fully comprehend the information
that is given to them by their teachers. Critical thinking is one of the many fundamental ideas
that the student and the classroom should focus on instead of standardized tests, which could
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the human because he says that “The "humanism" of the banking approach
masks the effort to turn women and men into automatons—the very negation of their
ontological vocation to be more fully human” (3). Critical thinking ads a certain level of
human features that make a human alive. Without critical thinking humans would be droids
controlled by another being. The problem is that for the government, in standardization there
is no good way to incorporate a standard of critical thinking. Critical thinking can not be
measured in the way that information is measured. There is no set single answer that goes
along with multiple choice tests like Tagg said that information is measured. One way to
allow teachers to fully engulf the students in the idea around critical thinking is to lessen the
material that the teachers have to cover in a school year. If the curriculum is lessened to
allow a little bit of wiggle room, the teacher will have free rein to incorporate critical
thinking more effectively in their lessons instead of having to fly through the material and
possibly leaving a student or two falling behind and struggling. The students that are refusing
to think critically toward a certain class or subject are almost better off because of how the
school system is set up, only focusing on and saving the scores and not the answers to the
harder for the student to successfully link one piece of information to another and to
understand the reasoning behind the link in information. Another theorist that makes their
mark on this subject is John M. Dirkx. The stance he has on education is roughly the same as
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Mezirow’s and Freire’s, with the ideas that the students are not being taught in a manner that
will help their well-being in the future. John M. Dirkx is a professor at Michigan State
University. He has published an article called the “Nurturing Soul In Adult Learning”. In his
article, Dirkx builds off of what Jack Mezirow says is the problem in education. Dirkx
widens the spectrum of who is considered students. Where Mezirow focuses on education
and students in general, Dirkx explains how this could be beneficial to the adult student. In
the mindset that Dirkx is thinking, he states that “Transformation theory moves away from
the instrumental view, helping us understand the patterns and forms of communication” (2).
Transformative learning is the idea of Mezirow but John Dirkx uses it to explain further how
many people have not had the necessary exposure to the necessary educational tools to
effectively communicate. Students of any age, especially if the student is older, should be
allowed to gain the power of critical thinking. Critical thinking is much more useful than it
was in the past; as technology advances the need to actually know and retain information has
depreciated. The reason people in this day and age do not need to retain as much information
is because many have a phone or a computer or any other web-enabled device that can give
them the information that they need in just a few seconds. What is important is the skills that
can not be searched on the internet, including critical thinking. As technology is changing,
Critical thinking is a tool that will come in handy in the toolbox for life. Critical
thinking is needed for virtually any task, from going to the store to driving. That skill will
help a person much more in life than an answer to a question that someone might be asked
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five years down the road. theorist John Dirkx, Paulo Freire, and Jack Mezirow are all
advocates for critical theory. They all come up with the same idea that the education system
is to blame. All of their ideas vary slightly in what they think that the main problem actually
is.Their fix to this problem varies slightly. The problem of critical thinking is a vast pool of
many smaller problems that add up to become an extremely complex problem that is too
complex to perfectly complete. that John Dirkx confronts the imagination. He states that
“learning through the soul calls for a more central role of the imagination” (5). Dirkx
explains that if the imagination is more interactive in the learning process that the student
will be able to experience the learning much more than if the information was just handed to
them. Jack Mezirow, on the other hand, believes that the answer to the education problem is
own and to have their own say in on a topic. If Mezirow were to theoretically have a
conversation with Dirkx, Mezirow would agree that the problem with education is that the
information is being handed to them because the students are not being allowed to
autonomously think on their own they are being told what to think and when to think it Dirks
is just elaboration on Mezirow's ideas. I believe that autonomous thinking would have the
greatest impact on the learning system because students would be forced to actively
participate in class which will allow the student to comprehend the information to make it fit
together in a logical sense instead of a list of terms. critical thinking would further the
comprehension of the information and decrease the oppression of the student. In my opinion,
students are not, at least in high schools, taught to think on their own and to come up with
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their own ideas instead of remembering what is given to them. Students right out of high
school may not be ready to think autonomously yet. If the schools allow the students to think
on their own instead of being told what to learn, the students would be much more equipped
to tackle the college classes that they will be enrolled into in just a few short months.
Critical thinking is a vast problem in the classroom because students do not see the
main connection between the class work and the life that they are going to make for
themselves. The setting of high school and college is setup to only look at the grades. High
school ranks its students from the smartest to the dumbest. Schools after high school only
look at the grade for the most part and their entrance exam score. Schools and colleges set up
students to not think critically in their core classes because the classes only focus on the
grades that the student gets in that class and not the answers that the student might come up
with for a problem. Students are also not seeing the real connection between the curriculum
and the skills that it comes with to help with later life and later problems.
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Works Cited
http://www.umsl.edu/~alexanderjm/The%20Banking%20Concept%20of%20Educati
Learning in the 21st Century, edited by MMCC, Pearson, 2016, pp. 86-93.
Tagg, John. “Why Learn? What We May Really Be Teaching Students.” About Campus:
enriching the Student Learning Experience, vol. 9, no.1, 2004, pp. 2-10