Texas Republicans oppose higher order thinking skills

[Danzig in the Dark]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/2 ... 32097.html

The position causing the most controversy, however, is the statement that they oppose the teaching of "higher order thinking skills" -- a curriculum which strives to encourage critical thinking -- arguing that it might challenge "student's fixed beliefs" and undermine "parental authority."

How can anyone be against thinking?

[SeminiferousButtNoid]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/2 ... 32097.html

The position causing the most controversy, however, is the statement that they oppose the teaching of "higher order thinking skills" -- a curriculum which strives to encourage critical thinking -- arguing that it might challenge "student's fixed beliefs" and undermine "parental authority."

How can anyone be against thinking?

They aren't "against thinking". The Puffington Host writer misrepresented the situation. Just because the curriculum states they are striving for "high order thinking skills" doesn't make it so. The Texas program is a rebadge of something called OBE or Outcome Based Education where there are no grades or tests. Students are evaluated with dossiers compiled featuring silly-assed abstract evaluations like "empathy learning". It's similar to the vapid $50K a year progressive private schools that started a few years a ago, where parents are pulling their kids out in droves because they are counting to potato.

I just shat out a turd and I'm calling it "Delicious Chocolatey Goodness". Wait, what? You don't want to eat it? What do you have against chocolate? Why would anyone not want something delicious that is associated with goodness? What's wrong with you?

[Danzig in the Dark]

It seems that's what they meant but it is not what the platform currently states, and they're stuck with it until 2014. Had the delegates used some critical thinking skills, they might have caught it.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.c ... skills.php

The Republican Party of Texas’ recently adopted 2012 platform contains a plank that opposes the teaching of “critical thinking skills” in schools. The party says it was a mistake, but is now stuck with the plank until the next state convention in 2014.

The plank in question, on “Knowledge-Based Education,” reads as follows:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Elsewhere in the document, the platform stipulates that “[e]very Republican is responsible for implementing this platform.”

Contacted by TPM on Thursday, Republican Party of Texas (RPT) Communications Director Chris Elam said the “critical thinking skills” language made it into the platform by mistake.

“[The chairman of the Education Subcommittee] indicated that it was an oversight of the committee, that the plank should not have included ‘critical thinking skills’ after ‘values clarification,’” Elam said. “And it was not the intent of the subcommittee to present a plank that would have indicated that the RPT in any way opposed the development of critical thinking skills.”

Elam said the members of the subcommittee “regret” the oversight, but because the mistake was part of the platform approved by the convention, “it cannot be corrected until the next state convention in 2014.”

TPM asked Elam what the intent of subcommittee had been in including the “Knowledge-Based Education” plank.

“I think the intent is that the Republican Party is opposed to the values clarification method that serves the purpose of challenging students beliefs and undermine parental authority,” he said.

They not only dropped that deuce, they ate it.

[RATTdrools]

Texas Repukes are against higher order thinking because then people will realize the bible is CRAP!

It's only through force, violence, intimidation, and bribery people were dumb enough to believe that book of FICTION!

Stupid morons like Stryper!

[Danzig in the Dark]

Texas Repukes are against higher order thinking because then people will realize the bible is CRAP!

It's only through force, violence, intimidation, and bribery people were dumb enough to believe that book of FICTION!

Stupid morons like Stryper!

Even Texas Republicans can tell how bad Ratt sounds compared to Stryper these days.

[RATTdrools]

Texas Repukes are against higher order thinking because then people will realize the bible is CRAP!

It's only through force, violence, intimidation, and bribery people were dumb enough to believe that book of FICTION!

Stupid morons like Stryper!

Even Texas Republicans can tell how bad Ratt sounds compared to Stryper these days.

WRONG Dickhead in the DARK!!

Pearcy at 10% is better than the Stryper fags any day of the week! Pearcy just rocked the house at the Whisky a Go Go and that's based on those who were actually there!!

[MickeyG]

Who cares, it's fucking Texas.

[Crazy Levi]

It amuses me that many impassioned online Republicans leaped to the defense of the brave Texas Republicans and their progressive "no-thought" party planks...and a day later the same Texas Republicans were all "Never mind! Our mistake."

[RATTdrools]

Who cares, it's fucking Texas.

There was that hilarious line from the movie Geronimo.

A white U.S. infantry soldier said Texans are the "lowest form of white man there is".

[Danzig in the Dark]

It amuses me that they are stuck with it for 2 more years.

[MitziDupree]

Those li'l chirren can learn to question some MAD authority in two years.

Parents will be undermined!!!!


I have raised my kids with hard core critical thinking skills. Our dinner table conversations are legendary. And I feel a lot better about sending them out into the world. The ability to examine fixed beliefs is probably one of the best skills you can equip a child with for future personal and professional success.

That said, I have zero confidence is a public school system (Texas or any other state) being able to successfully instill this. At the risk of sounding like a wacky anti-sex education freak, this is something that is probably best learned at home. Or at least in college from a long-haired, stoned professor.

[MotleyMaiden]

Mitzi- you are not the average parent. There are a lot of things that may be better taught at home if, IF, IF parents would teach them. Sex ed being one of them.

I have a friend, ironically enough in Texas, that home schools her kids. She was fairly reasonable until she moved to Texas and became a bible thumping Baptist. She is now teaching her kids abstinence only with the bare minimum of sex education. Basically, she is teaching them that this is a penis, this is a vagina and don't do it until you are married!

She is a freaking nurse. She knows better. Well she did until the Baptists got a hold of her anyway.

[MitziDupree]

Let's meet in the middle and agree on the long-haired, stoned college professor.

[MotleyMaiden]

<sigh> I majored in nursing. My professors were neither long haired nor stoned. I missed out!! They looked like this:




But without the smile. And with a white hat.

Maybe I should go back and start over?