Critical Thinking and the Next Generation
The students of today become the voters and community leaders of tomorrow, and for our way of life to survive, they must be able to ask hard questions and see through wiggly answers.
Joann Knuth, Minnesota 2020
The key to the success of the next generation will be their ability to think critically. Education expert Mike Schmoker makes a compelling and convincing argument for serious literacy commitment in our schools in which critical reading, writing and discussion skills will become cornerstones of effective teaching and learning.
Schmoker writes that a serious literacy commitment, also called authentic literature, is not just for children who can already read or for gifted students. It is for all students, including students experiencing learning difficulties and second language learners.
Research shows that reading is a process of using prior knowledge along with clues from the text to construct meaning. Effective or expert readers have purposes for their reading and adjust their reading for each reading task. Strategic readers use a variety of skills as they build meaning. Readers develop the use of strategies and skills by reading and writing and being given the support they need to grow in these processes.
Related:
The Death of Why: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy ~ Andrea Batista Schlesinger, Berrett-Koehler Publishers
- Argues passionately for the critical importance of inquiry to a healthy democracy
- Shows how the very institutions that should be encouraging inquiry—schools, the media, government, the Internet—are actually discouraging it
- Highlights hopeful examples of people working to restore inquiry to its rightful place of importance
