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Comment by galoisscobi | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think they don’t teach critical thinking?

Because whilst universities claim they do that, there is no evidence to suggest it is true. People genuinely trained in critical thinking would be highly skeptical of this claim. For example,

- What exactly is the definition of critical thinking they are using?

- Which part of a {computer science, art history, etc} course teaches this?

- How is it assessed?

- If it's a teachable skill, why are there no qualifications in it or researchers studying it specifically?

- If it's something universities teach, why are there so many bad papers full of logical fallacies and obvious fraud?

I know some like to argue philosophy is such a course but very few people do philosophy degrees, so even if that were true it could hardly be generalized to all of university teaching.

I've taken 2 required critical thinking courses from 2 different state schools. They were in the philosophy department. Why do you think they don't teach it? In stanford, for instance, they require taking 2 courses on formal reasoning as a prerequisite for a degree, which invariably includes critical thinking.

I've never heard of anyone being required to take a philosophy course but some universities surely do it. I was curious about the Stanford claim. This is the Ways system, right? Their website says you need to take at least one course in formal reasoning:

https://ways.stanford.edu/about/ways-categories/formal-reaso...

They list a few examples like market design or programming. I thought, OK, formal reasoning maybe, but is that really the same as critical thinking? Then I clicked the "See Formal Reasoning Courses in Explore Courses" link:

https://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=all%20courses&v...

143 courses are considered to teach formal reasoning. First on the list is "The Questions of Cloth: Weaving, Pattern Complexity and Structures of Fabric (ARTSINST 100B)" which teaches hand weaving on a loom. A bit further down there is "Introduction to Bioengineering" which teaches "capacities of natural life on Earth" and "how atoms can be organized to make molecules". It goes on like that.

I dunno, this doesn't sound like anyone has to study critical thinking specifically to pass the formal reasoning requirements. It sounds like almost anything connected to science or engineering in any way counts. And that's Stanford!

There was a critical thinking requirement that multiple courses fulfilled. One was a critical thinking english class that involved a lot of writing. I didn't want to write, so I chose the philosophy course (which still involved writing).

Here is a state school that has a foundation requirement in critical thinking with several courses:

https://www.csulb.edu/student-records/ge-approved-courses-ca...

Yes, but, thinking critically about this, why would learning how to hand-weave on a loom teach critical thinking? I get that you weren't doing these courses at Stanford but it's this kind of thing that makes people skeptical when universities make grandiloquent claims. Stanford is supposed to be the gold standard, so when it makes it appear that they teach critical thinking but actually don't (or it's at least very easy to make choices that won't do so) of course the claim is devalued.

If universities really cared about this aspect of their reputation they'd defend it by firing professors who were found to not be thinking critically e.g. by praising or putting their names on papers that are clearly fraudulent. It doesn't happen.

Your original claim was "there is no evidence to suggest this is true (teaching critical thinking)". I presented my own anecdotal evidence, and then a counterexample. I'm sure there are many, many more. Moving the goalposts is not a discussion I'm interested in having and you seem to have a very set viewpoint on this topic.

But I disagree with your counterexample - Stanford may say they do this but I don't think they do given the evidence I saw. Or at least, you'd have to explicitly seek it out as a student to get such exposure.

So we're left with your anecdotes. Lots of people have such anecdotes. People saying "I learned critical thinking at university" are a dime a dozen, but their beliefs aren't evidence they really did.

I don't think this is moving the goalposts. Obviously when I meant "no evidence" I meant no evidence that could persuade someone who didn't agree with the proposition. Just saying "yes they do" isn't evidence.

That's an interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing. If you had free rein of an engineering school in a university system, how would you re-design curriculum to address your concerns and establish proof of teaching critical thinking?

I don't know, I never thought about it much. I think engineering schools already do better than most others at this because requirements validation and weighing tradeoffs is such a big part of engineering as a discipline. Validating requirements often boils down to critical thinking, e.g. "but do you really mean that" and "is there a better way?".

The issues with critical thinking really show up in the other areas of academia, the humanities and natural sciences. But it's hard to get people to do it because often there are strong incentives not to think critically, or to be outright misleading deliberately.

I guess a curriculum focused around finding subtle flaws in arguments would be a reasonable place to start. It could be a lot of work to compile teaching materials that are tough enough. You could take papers that you know contain logic errors and ask students to find them. For instance, a lot of COVID papers work like this:

1. A COVID case is defined as anyone who gets a positive PCR test.

2. A positive PCR test is defined as detecting a COVID case.

When you see it spelled out so simply the problem is obvious but the whole field of public health managed to not see it (there were a few papers that timidly pointed out the circular logic, but it never reached public awareness). Of course maybe it was deliberate. But you could assign students a few relevant papers and ask them to analyze them critically.

We have all met college graduates.

I don’t understand, can you elaborate? I’m trying to understand your perspective. New college grads I generally meet and work with are bright, hard working, curious and have a deep desire to learn.

I don’t think we’re having the same experiences so I want to know more about yours.

Most fresh college graduates I have worked with are anxiety ridden wrecks incapable of developing skills on their own and lack fundamental knowledge of industry practices.

Makes sense. I think they're lucky to be around you. Since you're hanging out on HN, I'd imagine you care about tech, doing things well and have a natural curiosity.

Back when I started out, I was deep in debt, insecure about my skills and being around highly skilled people who had many more years of experience only deepened those insecurities. Luckily, people were kind and patient with me and gave me the apprenticeship I needed. They deeply cared about technical expertise and doing things well, probably like you if I am guessing right. I have my dream job today, and I am in a position to mentor new grads. I continue to pay it forward as the senior engineers did when I started out. Not all my colleagues do this, but I see so much potential around me and I try to grow it. It's one of the most satisfying when I get a note from a new grad/junior engineer on how they've grown after our work together.

Thank you for caring!

On a side note, I can't imagine the anxiety they must go through now between the economy being what it is and AI exacerbating the gaps in technical skills. Seems like a scarier time than when I graduated. It's harder to mentor in this environment, but it's a fun challenge to learn how to mentor in this environment.

Some of us are even college grads ourselves!

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