Current Events > Did your social studies classes in school try to promote critical thinking?

(+) Yeah! (+)

My title question is not intended as an insult, rather I am genuinely interested.

By promoting critical thinking I mean things like having student write essays analyzing historical events, presenting students with situations and asking them what they would have done in the situation, and even stuff that isn't essays like hands-on activities (e.g. "creating your own government" group activity, debates on issues, and stuff like that.)

This is opposed to just merely memorizing stuff in a textbook.

I think we had some activities like that in my social studies classes throughout my school years from Elementary to University. But we were resigned to mostly memorizing facts - at least in the earlier years.

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high school was just memorizing shit from the book.

college was writing prompts mostly.

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Yeah Id say so, my 7th grade Social Studies teacher gave me a copy of Confessions of an Economic Hitman for example. I actually took a critical thinking class in high school, the teacher was cool and reminiscent of Conan OBrien. I think it was called Theory of Knowledge or something like that.

Heres a piece I remember reading in that class:

https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacirema.pdf

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Social Studies in the 90s (when I was in HS/College) was basically a glorified reading comprehension class.

Monday: Read this, answer questions about it.
Tue-Thu: Repeat Monday 3 more times
Friday: Answer all the same questions, but for all 4 days at the same time.

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Shablagoo posted...

Yeah Id say so, my 7th grade Social Studies teacher gave me a copy of Confessions of an Economic Hitman for example. I actually took a critical thinking class in high school, the teacher was cool and reminiscent of Conan OBrien. I think it was called Theory of Knowledge or something like that.

Heres a piece I remember reading in that class:

https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacirema.pdf

Haha...I remember that. Kinda eerie yet awesome!

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I dont think so

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We had a whole subject called Critical Thinking

Only the smart kids had it though. Everyone else had General Studies
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PikachuMaxwell posted...

Haha...I remember that. Kinda eerie yet awesome!

Confessions or Nacirema?

:P

I liked it too

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Shablagoo posted...

Confessions or Nacirema?

:P

I liked it too

Nacirema. I will read the other one too, when I have the time.

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Only like one semester in sophomore year of high school, but it wasn't nearly enough.