Quote:
Originally Posted by RickyMaveety
Rote memorization has its place, but I do wish that American schools would start teaching more critical thinking. Around here, sometimes it seems like all they teach (at the public schools no less) are Bible stories and creationism.
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Having partly grown-up under a communist government that gently and not so gently persecuted Christians, I do not share your concern over bible stories being told to children in school or outside thereof. And creationism I perceive to be an American export that has little merit, but ultimately is also of little consequence over the long term.
As for critical thinking, I think people who laud it have a tendency to overestimate its place in and significance to human thought-processes... which I believe to be far more rooted in habits--even for the best, brightest, and most critically thinking among us--than in highly-conscious and deliberate weighing and evaluation. With the caveat though, of course, that a right-thinking man can do his best to break himself of harmful habits and to establish for himself helpful and beneficial ones.
Upon rereading, the above may sound a bit argumentative, but is not intended to be so. Just sharing my own views, being well aware that you and I disagree, and are unlikely to convince one another.
Basically, I view human consciousness as a little man sleeping (possibly drugged?) inside a sensory deprivation tank well over 90% of the time, only occasionally when we are passingly shaken from established routine/habit finding the tank's doors opened with a computer terminal descending in front of him with a query: "What's the best way to proceed in this situation?" And, of course, once he types in the answer and presses enter, the terminal quickly ascends and back in the tank he goes to slumber until next time he is needed.
- Ahi