Episode 87: Can anyone in America do critical thinking? (Wed., March 1, 2023) Artwork

Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price

Savvy, practical insights on where our Education Establishment went wrong and how most schools can be improved.LET'S FIX EDUCATION explains the many dysfunctional theories and methods operating within our schools. This podcast is intended for parents, teachers, and community leaders who want education reform.

Each week, LET'S FIX EDUCATION examines another problem in our public schools, such as: Constructivism. Learning styles. Sight-words. No memorization. Cooperative learning. Prior knowledge. Reform math. The dilution of knowledge. Common Core. Project-based learning. Student-centered, etc. In fact, there are DOZENS of counterproductive learning and teaching theories, all made worse by ideological motives.

Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, and education reformer. He has analyzed the problems in education for more than 30 years. Price is the author of "Saving K-12: What happened to our public schools? How do we fix them?" (190 pages) His main education site is Improve-Education.org. For more information about book and author, visit Lit4u.com. Newest novels are "Frankie" (about a harmless robot) and "The Boy Who Saves The World" (about a boy who saves the world).

"Bruce Price’s SAVING K-12 is a MUST read! It is precise, concise and powerful. Action is required…for the sake of our children, our grandchildren and the future of the American Republic!” Robert W. Sweet, Jr., long-time President of The National Right to Read Foundation

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Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price

Episode 87: Can anyone in America do critical thinking? (Wed., March 1, 2023)

February 28, 2023 • Bruce Deitrick Price

0:00 | 7:04

There's a war against our children. Have you read anything about it in the media? The public schools are dumber each year. Can you explain this?

Our Education Establishment should be called the Anti-Education Establishment. Their great genius is to develop theories and methods that stifle the acquisition and use of knowledge. Why do they want to do this?

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Background article: K-12: The War Against Children

Second background article: Americans Living Under Communism.
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Episodes Are Not In Any Order. Start Reading Anywhere. Everything remains current because the Education Establishment effectively prohibits improvement.

Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price

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Best way to understand problems in public schools: Saving K-12
(Want to help my work? Discuss this book; give it to friends.)

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New novel coming soon:
Art and Beauty
Genre: crime fiction

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Let's Fix Education explains to Americans why their schools are so bad. The people in charge prefer mediocrity because they are socialists of one kind or another. If people work together to promote real education, we'll have it.

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Let's Fix Education -- Episode 87 -- Bruce Deitrick Price -- Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Can anyone in America do critical thinking???

As you know, our public schools are constantly yammering about critical thinking and how important it is.

But do they teach it? Can they teach it? And here’s the big question, can anyone in America actually engage in critical thinking? Apparently not. But why not? Why do the schools talk about a subject but never successfully teach it?

Something is seriously wrong with the entire school system. This skill that is so much talked about doesn't seem to exist. Here’s proof.

Consider the cultural and educational landscape. The US in a powerfully rich and successful country. So we can spend huge budgets on our public schools. But as you can find out everywhere, our students test roughly in the middle against other countries.

Pew Research reports: “US stands in middle of pack on science, math, reading scores.” Isn't that lame and pathetic?

Really focus on this. We're outspending everyone else but we are in the middle of the pack??? The data reveal that we are 15th or 20th or 25th in every area. How is that even remotely possible?

Do you have an explanation for this? It could be the biggest disaster over to hit America. Do you see it being discussed in your paper or in your media.??? But why not?? That is the only intelligent question to ask. That is what critical thinking looks like. Questions are asked, things are explained.

On the other hand, our situation is like reading that many people in a certain town are dying of intestinal poisoning. But nobody cares enough to ask why? Is that possible?

Don't you have to immediately ask, well, what is the cause? Is there a murderer? Is there some alien attack? Are the Chinese shipping over poisonous rice, to go with the poisonous drywall? Seriously, you have to assign a cause otherwise we are like ignorant primitives 100,000 years ago, before the wheel, before written language, before the use of metals. What did those people know about critical thinking?….. But wait one second!! These people were probably doing more critical thinking than our people are, because we aren't doing any.

So let’s see what critical thinking feels like. What are some questions we would like answered, for example, aren’t we almost forced to conclude someone is wasting billions of dollars? We spend 100 billion and we get 60 billion in education. Thinking critically, we can easily conclude that something is rotten in the state of K-12. Is someone cheating us?

Here's another question. Who is in charge of all of this waste and corruption? Oh, that would be the Education Establishment? Aren't they obviously unskilled and untalented? How do we get rid of them? Why can't we find people who know what they're doing?

Or is that the wrong question? Could they have been bribed? Could they be corrupted by ideology or pay-off? Here’s the toughest question. What’s their motive for doing a lousy job?

Go ahead, give your best answer. We have to settle this right now. I say the Education Establishment must be saboteurs. They evidently think it's their job to make American weaker and more vulnerable, so their comrades can defeat us.

Can you think of another theory?

And what would be the motive for this perennial cheating? You don't have to know much history to know that starting after 1920, the USSR (that's Communist Russia) began a widespread assault on countries that did not convert to communism. These clever enemies viewed flawed education as a military tool, believing that ignorant people would be weak people.

As I say, think critically. Always look for the simplest, most elemental explanations, no matter how unpleasant to contemplate.. The far-left wants us weak and, what do you know, every year we are weaker. Does anyone care?

Let’s think critically about the answer. Why not teach more information and knowledge in the schools.? Why don't we eliminate all the half-baked bogus methods that tend to dumb down most students?

Summing up, There’s a war against our children. Start asking and answering the kind of questions that critical thinking demands. Who wants dumb schools? How do the saboteurs reach this goal? Why is the country so sleepy on the subject?

It's time to start worrying.

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background article: K-12: The War Against Children

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NOTE: podcasts are published weekly on Wednesday. Read in any order.
Episodes are not topical but timeless. That's because the education establishment
does not allow much change or improvement. Problems from 20, 40, or 60
years ago are often still with us, which permits the decline discussed here.

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#dumbingdown #socialism #ignorance
#teachers #SavingK-12 #knowledge