Critical Thinking — Time for a Comprehensive National Curriculum

“If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence. If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?”
— Sam Harris

It seems there is no shortage of existential crises facing us here in the United States. Some of these are global in scope and require a global response, much like the discovery that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons, gases used in aerosol cans, were destroying the Ozone layer that needed a global response. Climate change, ocean acidification, wanton destruction of forests and other habitats, pollution of the air, ground, and water for short-term economic gains are just some of the issues modern civilization has to solve. If allowed to proceed unchecked, each one is more than capable of destroying most of humanity’s habitat, if not all of it. Unfortunately, despite the gravity and urgent nature each one holds, these issues have been stubbornly resistant to gaining the global consensus needed to solve the problems they each present.

When we look into the situation further, it becomes even more depressing to those who want the human race to exist and flourish rather than become extinct in a handful of generations. When I talk about a consensus, I do not mean solving disagreements among groups as to the most effective way to mitigate the effects or which technologies would be the best to embrace in the short and long term. No, the consensus I am talking about is way more fundamental than that: Gaining a consensus that these issues exist. The inability of our society to agree on what is real and not real is not limited to facing existential crises. This intellectual paralysis has infected just about every aspect of our lives, and, as with all paralysis, the effects couldn’t be more damaging.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

― Issac Asimov

Since Issac spoke those words, the cult has become a full-blown religion with mega-churches and celebrity pastors. The ideas they preach to their millions of followers are a full-throated defense of anti-intellectualism and the moral duty of each congregant to advance this Zeitgeist into the culture at large. In a particularly bizarre example of this celebrity grifter Franklin Graham engaged in a mysterious attack on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the county’s leading epidemiologist. The issue for Graham? What is truth, and who has the monopoly on it? Graham posted this to his Twitter feed during the brush-up:

So let’s stop and examine the claims advanced as to how the world works. On the one hand, we have Dr. Fauci and the science of epidemiology. This science has eradicated diseases that have plagued the human race for thousands of years. But, on the other hand, we have Franklin Graham, who offers us, “Pestilence is the result of sin.” Now, while others may justifiably go after the utter moral bankruptcy of Graham, the fact we need to consider is that millions of people unquestioningly accept Graham’s claim and actively reject the evidence of Dr. Fauci and science.

Understanding why this is so will allow us to put everything in focus. We’ll see that the primary battleground is not in the political, scientific, or religious arenas. These are all secondary skirmishes. The real fight is for the contents of our children’s education. This battle is not a recent battle; it has been going on for decades. Anti-intellectual interests have been trying to get their narrative into the school system with such ploys as Intelligent Design buttressed by a well-coordinated political campaign against Boards of Education urging them to “teach the controversy.” The defense against this effort has failed miserably, and the result can be seen all around us, from anti-vaxxers, flat earthers, homeopathic medicine, to name a few. While there was a robust defense in the courts with rulings all in favor of the science, there was no response to the attack by the educational system to the ideas that ideas introduced while the controversies raged. Suppose the educational system had responded by instituting a mandatory national Critical Thinking skills curriculum at the time. In that case, we may never have had to endure things such as the anti-vaxxers and the subsequent reappearance of childhood diseases in epidemic proportions that were virtually non-existent, for example. Indeed, the correctly predicted reappearance of said diseases should have resigned the anti-vaxxer narrative to the intellectual septic tank where it belongs. Yet, the anti-vaxxers persisted as one preventable disease after another made their reappearances. They know the science; they wield all sorts of technical jargon in their vacuous arguments. It is a lack of critical thinking that is the culprit. Those educated in critical thinking could see right through their nonsense arguments and could have dispensed with it and their attempts to hijack essential medicine long before any child needlessly contracted a preventable disease.

Now, the stakes couldn’t be higher. We are decades into this anti-intellectual mess, and the halls of power in this country are filled with people who pride themselves on how little they know. Worse yet, conspiracy theories and the people who push them are now gaining political power if the recent primary elections in the United States are any indication. We need to equip our children with the tools to stop and reverse this, and we need to start now. The most effective way of doing this is by making Critical Thinking Skills a required core curriculum nationwide, K-12. A majority of the educators, the teachers, in this country would sign onto this effort wholeheartedly. Many are already advocating for it. Suppose we graduate a generation of children equipped with the robust education available to them augmented by the ability to reason correctly. In that case, the intractable problems we now face will disappear, and we will be able to find the needed consensus to tackle any issues we face. Conclusion: finding a cure for Polio and putting a man on the moon results from critical thinking. It can provide us with so much more if we put effort into teaching it to all our children starting now.