What ‘Learning How to Think’ Really Means

The Chronicle of Higher Education:

It has always been taken as self-evident that higher education is good for students and society at large, and that American colleges and universities are doing an excellent job of providing it. No more. Commentators, politicians, and parents are expressing serious doubts, about whether colleges are teaching what they should be teaching and about whether they are teaching it well. Demands for accountability are everywhere, spurred in part by the absurdly high cost of a college education and the trillion dollars in student debt. What are students getting for all that money? What should they be getting?

…

As the psychologist Jonathan Haidt pointed out in his book The Righteous Mind (Pantheon, 2012), people use reason more like a lawyer who is making a case than like a judge who is deciding one.

Humility allows students to face up to their own limitations and mistakes and to seek help from others. As Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson wrote in their book, Mistakes Were Made, but Not by Me (Harcourt, 2007), we often hear people use passive constructions when describing failures. Students say things like “I got an A,” but “she gave me a C.”

Read the whole story: The Chronicle of Higher Education