Critical Thinking & Analysis -- An Essential 21st Century Skill

One of the real joys of my job is the opportunity to observe exciting teaching and learning; this past Friday I was fortunate to observe two wonderful social studies lessons, both of which pushed 5th graders into greater critical thinking and analysis.  Unless you are lucky enough to be in today's classrooms, you probably are not aware of the extent to which teaching and learning has changed.  Students are no longer simply memorizing and regurgitating names, dates, and conclusions; rather, they are thinking hard about historical situations, analyzing the different interests of the parties involved, and working toward their own analysis and understanding using primary sources from the time.  This kind of analysis is frequently mentioned as a 21st century skill, and I completely agree that all of our students need to develop this ability and to become excellent critical thinkers.  Seeing what's happening in our classrooms is wonderful; students are indeed being taught these skills, and they are responding with engagement and learning.

Sometimes, though, I am puzzled by what appears to be a lack of critical thinking in some of the media reporting today about educational issues, and it seems to me that everyone could use the lessons I saw last Friday in the two 5th grade classrooms.  Recently, for example, newspapers reported the results from the international PISA testing, pointing out that the overall U.S. results were in the middle of the group, and using this to again say that our schools are failing.  Interestingly, though, this year's PISA results were reported somewhat differently, in that the U.S. data was provided disaggregated by schools at different poverty levels.  When you look at the disaggregated data and take the U.S. schools with a poverty level of 10% or less those schools outscored every other nation except Shanghai.  The newspaper articles I saw did not mention this, though -- they were fine with simply reporting what they saw as yet another failure of U.S. schools, and didn't think it important to point out that our schools in affluent areas outscore the world, while our schools in poverty-stricken areas come in last.  Drawing on what they learned last Friday about propaganda, and about presenting information to achieve a particular purpose, I think our 5th graders might now ask what the intent or purpose is of those who wish to paint all our schools as failing, and hopefully as adults they will continue to ask these kinds of questions, delving deeper, and demanding thoughtful answers to important questions. (You can find the disaggregated PISA data on-line, if you are interested, and/or read a related article by Gerald Tirozzi in the NASSP Newsleader -- http://www.principals.org/NewsLeader.)