HOW DOES EDUCATION PARALYZE INDEPENDENT THINKING?

CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING AND CRITICAL THINKING IN SCIENCE EDUCATION 

K. P. Mohanan 

1. A CRISIS IN SCIENCE EDUCATION 

There has been a growing awareness all over the world that the current approach to science education is unsatisfactory in many ways. Books by educators and professional scientific journals devoted to research have repeatedly voiced this concern. In his book The Unschooled Mind, for instance, Howard Gardner describes how otherwise competent college students do not “really understand” what they have learnt, even when they show a high degree of understanding in solving problems of the textbook type (Gardner 1993). In his Science editorial, “Science: A Mountain or a Stream,” Don E. Detmer (1997) expresses the warning: “If we remain dedicated to minor revisions of past educational approaches, our prospects will be dim indeed.” In his Scientific American article in the section on Trends in Science Education, Tim Beardsley (1992) documents an extensive list of similar concerns. The 1991 Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government states that the situation is “a chronic and serious threat” to the future...(click to link full article)