Friday, June 10, 2005
Professor of education: Teaching encourages students not to think
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In his new book, “The Foundation of Critical and Creative Learning,” Robert Boostrom, USI associate professor of education, explores the ways in which the practice of teaching unintentionally encourages students not to think. “There are certain conditions of teaching and learning that encourage non-thinking in classrooms,” Boostrom said. “Students are thinking about how to accomplish the assignment instead of thinking about the subject matter.” The book is philosophical in its “thinking about thinking,” but uses every day examples from the classroom. In the book’s first part, “The Paradox of Defining,” Boostrom discusses the ways in which the study of “subjects” releases students from thinking. “Subjects have boundaries, procedures, and protocols to follow,” he said. “To the extent that we define and give students procedures, they don’t have to think; they just do what is done in the situation.” Or, as series editor Jonas F. Soltis put it in the book’s introduction, “The more we seek to define and codify methods for teaching thinking, the more these things become procedures and templates for teachers and students to mindlessly follow rather than promoting thinking.” In Part II, “The Paradox of Telling,” the fact that teachers tell students what to think is explored. “Teachers can’t avoid it, but it creates a perception that students don’t have to think about things, because teachers tell them what they need to know.” The problem of truth is discussed in the book’s third part, “The Paradox of Believing.” “Students need to be able to believe things, but to the extent that we believe things, those are the things we don’t need to think about.” If education is about transmitting facts, receiving facts marks the end of thinking. From elementary school through college, teachers make a distinction between fact and opinion. Boostrom argues that the difference as presented in the classroom “is a watered down version of the philosophical problem of truth, and doesn’t describe very well how we approach the world. We can’t really put things into these two categories of truth and opinion.” When examined closely, even facts such as dates, which appear to be black and white, can come down to a matter of interpretation. “Interpretation is an opinion, not a fact,” he said. Often times, students come to believe that one opinion is as good as any other. “They are left with the conclusion that they can think whatever they want, because nobody is right or wrong. “That problem requires new categories of thought, versus facts and opinions.” The curriculum encourages students not to think, but teachers also are modeling rote procedures. One example is the way in which B.S. Bloom’s taxonomy, a classification of six increasingly complex and abstract cognitive levels from “knowledge” to “evaluation,” is used in the classroom. Teachers are encouraged to use specific words associated with each level when questioning students. For instance, Level 3, Application, is associated with the words “apply,” “choose,” “demonstrate,” etc. It is a method similar to the rote habits of the mind students utilize in order to perform well on standardized tests. Boostrom said that a teacher enrolled in one of his graduate courses is routinely evaluated on whether she asks students questions using the “right” words to evoke Bloom’s associated level of thinking in her students. “No programmatic scheme can be invented to coerce or guarantee thought,” Boostrom writes in the book. “A taxonomy can be invented to classify instances of thinking after they have occurred, but it cannot show us how to create those instances. “To suppose otherwise – to identify categories or levels of thinking with the use of certain words – is to encourage non-thinking.” The Foundation of Critical and Creative Learning is part of the prestigious “Advances in Contemporary Educational Thought Series,” published by the Teachers College Press of Columbia University. Boostrom also is the author of "Developing Creative and Critical Thinking," and co-author of "Moral Life of Schools." He teaches educational foundations courses in the undergraduate and graduate programs at USI, and has designed two graduate courses: EDUC 605: Moral Dimensions of Schooling and EDUC 690: Thinking Across the Curriculum. U.S. Editor of the Journal of Curriculum Studies since 1997, Boostrom received his Ph.D. from University of Chicago. He joined USI in 1993. |
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