When I hear the word “school,” my mind immediately jumps to the frustration of trying to memorize the battles of the Civil War, the anger of missing a multiple choice question that is fully open to interpretation, and the annoyance of attempting to figure out how many apples Johnny will give to each of his friends.
Our schools live by the mantra of “knowledge is power,” a quote plastered across school hallways since time immemorial. However, with the creation of graphing calculators in 1985, the World Wide Web in 1989, and the introduction of smart phones in 1992, knowledge is at our fingertips. In this modern day and age, the majority of people in high-income nations have access to all the knowledge they want or need. Just open Google and type in “periodic table,” and you get over one hundred fifty million results.
With all this knowledge readily accessible, knowledge is not really as powerful anymore. Rather, the power now comes from applying that knowledge using critical thinking.
The fourteen-thousand-plus hours we spend in grades K-12 are meant to give us an education. However, due to the failure of our education system to modernize, this, ironically, is what our school system fails to fully provide. We graduate school knowing the quadratic formula, the plot of Romeo and Juliet, and Newton’s Laws of Motion, but unable to take initiative, solve problems, or think creatively. Our education system is overly focused on memorization rather than fostering our critical thinking.
Critical thinking is the means of processing information in an organized fashion to make informed decisions, form opinions, and arrive at conclusions. It is a skill fundamental in any job market and in everyday life. Critical thinking is the equivalent of being street smart.
I remember an assembly back in middle school. As always, the gymnasium was filled with chatter and the pungent smell of sweat. The speaker seemed to babble on endlessly about motivation and other forgettable stuff.
But then he posed a question: “What do you stand for?”
I brushed it off as some cheesy motivational quote our teachers wanted us to be inspired by. Over the next several days, however, I kept replaying the question in my mind. What do I stand for? The truth is, I did not know. In school I was asked to recall facts, not to form opinions, much less vocalize those opinions. Schools expect us to know that Herbert Hoover was president during the Great Depression. Rarely do schools ask us what policies caused the Great Depression.
Our education system should place more focus on thought processes. We need to be taught to think in an organized fashion so that we can form our own opinions and derive our own conclusions. Facts learned in school should serve as a premise for our own conclusions rather than a piece of information that Google can recall better than we can.
In math class, we should be asked to derive formulas and given word problems at least somewhat applicable to real life, rather than aimlessly solving for x. Language arts could focus more on developing our logic and teaching us to use evidence to develop an argument. Social studies could allow for more room for interpretation of historical documents and events. Historical information should be given to us in an unbiased way, and we should be given a chance to draw our own conclusions. Science teachers could design their classes to be more experiment-based, where students create their own hypotheses to test.
Memorization does not define our intellectual ability, but critical thinking does.
Each of these adjustments of standards will teach students organized thinking and, thus, greatly develop their critical thinking. This skill, not memorization, is what prepares kids for the future. With a knowledge base built on critical thinking, as adults, we could better organize our money, make more informed decisions, and develop advancements in our various fields of interest. With critical thinking we will know what we stand for. We will be able to take the information presented to us, gather the facts, and decide what we believe in. We will also be able to extend this to our professions, where we will make advances through discovering new knowledge, reforming a system, or pioneering something completely unheard of.
Memorization does not define our intellectual ability, but critical thinking does. Perhaps if schools adopt a more flexible curriculum based on critical thinking and broaden their narrow expectations, students can feel empowered in the classroom; thus, knowledge learned in schools can be truly powerful.
Ana Despa is a sophomore at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.
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