So, I wanted to explain one of my philosophies in the light of the whole Cognitive “our students can’t think” angle that showed up in class.
Namely, the idea of encouraging students to think.
When I was in high school, I had thoughts. A lot of thoughts. Dumb thoughts, at times, but thoughts. It was a nerve wracking time for me. I was growing up in a Post 9/11 world, coming of age during the biggest financial crisis in decades, and reaching the point in life where I was expected to make some sort of final decision about my life. There was a lot going on in my head.
But my issue was… well… I wasn’t sure what to do with it. My biggest moment of enlightenment came when I was assigned a simple pre-class response, where I had to explain why I liked a certain song. I knew why I liked the song. I had feelings associated with the song. But I had never been asked to put them into words before.
And… that’s really what our job is, right? Teaching people to put thoughts into words. Doing so will give people a more nuanced understanding of those thoughts, but it doesn’t mean they weren’t there to begin with.