One of my kids goes to the Old Donation gifted school. I can tell you that the projects they work on require a good deal of critical thinking and independent problem solving that I do not see being required of one of my other kid's classes in a non gifted school in Virginia Beach. Both of their schools ace the SOLs each year, but I cannot help believing that somehow the one in the gifted school will end up being better prepared as they move further along in their educations, as a result of the type of education he is getting now. On another note, I doubt that many students who have passed an SOL could tell you where Chile or Vietnam are located or who was involved in WWI. I mean, what is a standardized test supposed to ensure you know? Finally, I agree with PD, some of the things my kids know now, I don't ever even remember learning in the first place...

I believe mine is already smarter than me in many ways and he is only in elementary school. LOL

PD, if we taught our kids to think, evaluate and properly use the facts they have assimilated, they'd be smarter than we are.

Critical thinking is not a natural event in many people. Case in point, there are a lot of dolts in this world who lack even basic common sense let alone any critical thinking skills. And this is not about teaching someone how to think, that is a bogus point. It is about giving students the opportunity to do more than memorize material to take a test, by helping them develop the skills to synthesize and analyze material and data and apply it to realistic situations. We are not talking about eliminating the core competencies, we are talking about adding some real world value to courses that normally require memorization that only facilitates short term goals. Much is forgotten soon after taking the test. Why do people not want that advantage for our children?

You teach facts first--then concepts--then values. It's the same inverted pyramid from decades ago--now some bureaucrat working on his (presumed) umpteenth grad degree thinks HE dreamed it up...ha!

Teaching "critical thinking skills" is the hot new buzzphrase within educrat circles. I think the SOL's are the best thing to happen to a horrible educational system in a long long time. Poor teachers and adminstrators are no longer able to hide their incompetence. Kids need to be taught a broad set of basic facts. "Critical thinking" or "thinking for themselves" is a natural occurrance. Which reminds me, I'd love for someone to tell me how you teach someone to think.

Instead of saying "Teaching to the Test", say Teaching to be able to pass the Test.

That is what was done long ago when kids that graduated could read and write coherently.

I know, it is easier to teach good feelies instead of actual facts.

I agree that teaching critical and creative thinking is not necessarily mutually exclusive to teaching basic skills and facts. In fact, I think the opposite is actually true; I believe that you can't truly think critically about something without having a firm command of the relevant facts.

The problem isn't the teaching methods, the problem is the structure and content of the SOL itself. The SOL isn't designed to engender genuine comprehension of and ability to USE information, merely the ability to store and regurgitate data.

Why is "critical thinking" seen as a new concept? I minored in Philosophy in college, and loved to study the great Thinkers, the Fathers of "critical thinking". I still do. One can go back over 2500 years to read Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Come forward to the middle ages and wonder at the thought processes of St. Thomas Aquinas, and later René Descartes, whose "cogito, ergo sum" has never left me.

My dilemma with introducing this to the "Jonas Brothers generation" is....are the teachers ready for it? Do they have the fortitude...the insight...the intelligence? Is the average student deep enough and serious enough to absorb the concepts, and profit from them? Pink Floyd ("the Wall") had it right: school systems thrive on conformity, not individuality. Can they do a 180 degree turn in thinking? I doubt it. Critical evaluation can only follow the formation of a solid database of knowle

I would add, to learn to distinguish fact from opinion. Scary thought--someone on this board wrote the other day that they are pretty close in meaning! Ouch!

And . . . we will need to work extra hard on teaching about consequences, as many homes are teaching that we can defer consequences of our actions by finding someone else to blame!!! Cheers, MGM

The two (creative thinking and learning standards) do not have to be mutually exclusive of each other. We can teach students the basics while at the same time teaching in a manner that promotes them to not just memorize and regurgitate (SOLS), but to synthesize what has been taught. This is how material is presented in institutions of higher learning. Some courses are not ripe for this style of teaching, but many such as history, civics, and art are prime candidates. The sooner we teach our future leaders to think for themselves and to be able to discern facts from fiction and to understand not only what has happened but why and what the consequences were, the sooner we become a more competitive society in the world. We have lost our edge in this arena and that is a fact.