01/20/11: Critical thinking in a fast-paced world

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

IN A BOOK published this week, authors Richard Arum and Josipa Roska report on a study they conducted in which a large group of college students was followed for four years. The results are startling: A large number — more than a third — of the graduates aren’t learning.

Majors in the traditional liberal arts fields — social science, humanities, natural science and math —had higher gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills than those majoring in business, education, social work and communications.

One news report on the study describes the situation as students graduating without the ability “to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event.”

Perhaps this provides some insight into another study, released last month. That one surveyed voters in the 2010 election and the extent of misinformation. Among the responses, only 43 percent correctly answered that the stimulus included some tax cuts while only 28 percent were aware that the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts occurred under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. On some issues, supporters of both Republicans and Democrats were equally misinformed.

Studies like these scare me. Like our forefathers, I consider nothing more important to our future than an educated populace.

Gov. Bob McDonnell has proposed an additional 100,000 college degrees to be awarded over the next 15 years, with a preference for those in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines, which is where the jobs are supposed to be. Obviously, jobs are important. But as important as knowing how to do something is understanding why. That’s where those other skills come into play.

Ours is a fast-paced world, with information coming from many different sources. The ability to determine the veracity of that information — to separate the truth from spin — is critical. There was a time when we got our information only from unimpeachable sources. That is no longer the case.

These days, we get e-mails from trusted friends passing along various claims, all of which are supposedly true. How many take the time to verify anything before passing it along to those in our address book?

We get slick mailers from candidates or watch 30-second commercials on television. If it’s printed or on TV, it must be true, right? Unless, of course, it’s coming from the candidate we don’t support, in which case it must all be a lie.

With the glut of information and the demands on our time, I believe we tend to rely on those we trust to provide us with truth, abdicating our own critical thinking skills to someone else’s. And like everything else, when we don’t use it, we lose it. When, exactly, was the last time you wrote a letter?

Thomas Jefferson wrote that “no republic can maintain itself in strength” without “that of a general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.”

It is hard to find the additional time in each day to exercise our brains. Perhaps we can steal it from the time we spend watching “Glee,” posting on Facebook or checking in on Foursquare.