Teach Students to Think

These are the kinds of discussions that take place in knowledge making disciplines like Comp Theory, where the emphasis is on inspiring students to develop critical thinking systems.


Interestingly enough, this relatively young field emerged in the last 30 years after the Women`s, Civil Rights, Anti War movements, and in the wake of mass Non English speaking immigration to North America. The average student was not necessarily an 18 year old middle class, white male who entered college straight after school-but female, of color, having worked for several years, a parent, a veteran, an immigrant. The idea that a college education is not a mechanism of class, but something that everyone has access to has changed the way North Americans think about education.

The ongoing issue is balancing rote info with critical and exploratory research; i.e. a student who has brilliant ideas but has not developed adequate grammar skills. On one hand, there is a certain amount of rote info that has to be familiar to the student so that she/he may function at a certain level of competancy. On the other hand, she/he must be encouraged to explore those ideas that are meaningful and relevant to her/him and her life.