{"ops":[{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"[Missed Part 5?"},{"insert":" "},{"attributes":{"bold":true,"color":"#002060","link":"https://community.criticalthinking.org/blogPost.php?param=228"},"insert":"Read It Here"},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"]"},{"insert":"\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true,"bold":true},"insert":" "},{"insert":"\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true,"bold":true},"insert":"What Is the Significance for Education of Irrational Learning and Irrational Production as Social Phenomena?"},{"insert":"\n"},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":" "},{"insert":"\nWentworth Eldredge has put part of the background of the problem in a stark light:\n \nThe traditional democratic assumption is that rational adults in a rational society have the necessary hereditary intelligence and social training, coupled with a determined interest and sufficient time, to absorb the available facts which will enable them to make in the political process wise decisions among offered choices and upon occasion to invent and make real alternate choices. A majority vote of such reasoning citizens shall constitute the truth and the ship of state will sail a true course . . . Most adults have completely inadequate training to understand even remotely the complexity of the contemporary scene. They lack interest and feel hopeless to think and act correctly in other than purely private concerns; and moreover, they have neither the time nor the information – assuming they could cope with the latter if by chance it were made available. They are merely carrying out the trite inculcated orders of their culture which have been drilled into them formally and informally since birth. Most adults are feeble reeds in the wild, whistling storm of a dangerous world they neither made nor could ever understand. To ask for the people’s reasoned decision and advice on weighty matters of policy would seem to be a waste of everyone’s time and energy, including their own. One might as well inquire of a five-year-old if he wanted polio vaccine injections."},{"attributes":{"indent":1},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":" "},{"attributes":{"indent":1},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"In a rational society three general conditions would prevail:"},{"attributes":{"indent":1},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":" "},{"attributes":{"indent":1},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":"1) The modes of production would be rational; that is, the bulk of production would be designed to satisfy basic human needs in a manner minimally wasteful of human and natural resources."},{"attributes":{"indent":1},"insert":"\n\n"},{"insert":"2) There would be, as a result, a multiplicity of jobs available to individuals whose performance would have a self-fulfilling quality based on the realization that it contributes to production in the public good."},{"attributes":{"indent":1},"insert":"\n\n"},{"insert":"3) Education would be oriented toward providing citizens with the critical thinking skills to make informed judgments with regard to the social and political decisions that ultimately shape and determine the economic destiny of the nation."},{"attributes":{"indent":1},"insert":"\n\n"},{"insert":"I am arguing that we are far from this democratic ideal of a rational society. If we are committed to it, we must devise means to achieve it. The only satisfactory strategy available to educators lies in making "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"rational learning"},{"insert":" the hallmark of schooling. We can no longer afford the kind of schooling that at best transforms students into narrow specialists or experts who function as "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"tools"},{"insert":" subject to additional "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"retooling"},{"insert":" as dictated by the needs of production narrowly defined and narrowly controlled, and at worst leaves them without either specialized job skills or a general capacity to learn. The ordinary citizen needs the critical thinking skills of a person able to probe the evidential grounds for belief, a person who is swayed not by appeals to fear, prejudice, or ego but rather by the weight of evidence and reason, who is capable of suspending his judgment until such reasonable grounds for beliefs are forthcoming; a person eager to hear reasons and evidence against his or her beliefs if they become available, and to modify his or her views in accordance with them. Today’s industrial technology is complex, specialized, and interdependent, but the social uses to which it is put and the human decision-making needed to maintain and direct it must be flexible, analytic, and humane – “ends” as well as “means” oriented.\n"}]}