why the GOP are opposed to “critical thinking”

[solarbird]

The Republican Party of Texas have gone on the record as opposing “critical thinking.”

Really, the snide commentaries write themselves. But it’s good every so often to talk about what’s actually going on here, because – if you can’t already guess – this, too, comes directly from the Christofascist takeover of the party.

Fundamentalists have been explicitly opposed to critical thinking / higher-order thinking skills for as long as I’ve been studying them, and have led political crusades against it every so often for my entire life. The only new-ish part is it being in the actual Republican platform in those words.

It’s been in the platform before. It’s just generally been disguised, with code words. Now it’s not.

So. Why do they oppose teaching students how to think critically – or more importantly, analytically – about, well… anything? How can that be bad?

It’s because this is – at its unironic core, buried underneath all the horrible culture war tropes and all the determined ignorance – a battle between models of knowledge.

No, really. It actually is about knowledge models. Sometimes, I’m not even sure they know that – the rank and file, I mean, the leadership certainly does. But that’s what’s going on here.

It’s all about how you define and determine truth about the world.

There are a variety of models to define truth, but we’re going to talk to the two big ones in Western thought over the last several hundred years.

The first model is “empiricism.” This model includes the scientific method. It asserts that the best way to find truth is by observing reality, forming hypotheses about it, testing those hypotheses, and learning from the result to gain knowledge about the world. At its core, it asserts that you can learn about the world and improve that world and your place in it through observation and understanding of it.

Empiricism is what most people – however badly – actually try to use most of the time when they’re having to figure out something actually new.

The second model we’re talking about today is “received knowledge.” This model asserts that knowledge and truth come from a higher, more perfect form handed down from greater authorities in the past, and that this knowledge can only be deviated from to its detriment. The way to learn about and improve the world is to adhere ever-more-stridently to that ancestral perfect knowledge and comply ever-more-completely to it.

For centuries, the latter was the far more dominant form of knowledge judgement in the West after the Roman Empire fell. Through much of the middle ages, those higher authorities and lost knowledge were writings of ancient Rome and Greece, along with – naturally – the New Testament of the Bible, along with some Old Testament thrown in.

There were multiple sources. And to be fair, you can really understand how they got there, having had organised civilisation collapse away underneath them and having lost so very, very much Until the Renaissance, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment and all those changes which happened across the period of a few hundred years, “received knowledge” really was the dominant working model on many topics throughout the West.

But then, well – Renaissance! And empiricism took over because guess what, bitches: science works! And lives actually did get better for it.

The fundamentalists – now the Christofascist MAGA – still use this model, however. Or really, still want to. They’re fundamentally (HA! GET IT? ar ar ar ar ar ar ar) drawn to it because it fits both their temperament and their desires for power. They don’t want to think – some of them outright say so – they want to already know, and just react, using that knowledge already received.

In their case, unfortunately, it’s been ground down to mean less many sources and more a far more crude “Word of God,” a.k.a. “What We Say God Said,” which they assert is perfect, eternal, and unchanging, even if what they think God Said now has rather little to do with what they might’ve thought God Said 50, 100, or 200 years ago.

Regardless, they know the “secular” world doesn’t agree. And that’s where things get scary, because in their beliefs, literally everything “good” comes from God; their god is a god of power, who is also definitionally good – basically due to that power – and is the source of all knowledge, since he created the universe.

So between that and their self-radicalisation on this axis in particular – something I will elide here, for the moment – everything that doesn’t come from God is actually evil. Yes, by “actually evil,” I mean literally Satan.

Accordingly, they blame the shift in knowledge model from “received knowledge” to “empiricism” for, well… underneath it all… basically everything. Literally everything they hate.

It wasn’t even long ago that they’d say that outright. Ralph Reed used to tell you that the Renaissance was where western civilisation went wrong, and it was because that’s where western civilisation started to “turn away from God” as the source of all knowledge and all truth. And he’d undo it if he could.

Which gets us back to critical thinking skills. Critical thinking skills are the ability to look at a situation and try to understand it, using not just received knowledge and reaction but tools you have at your disposal to examine a situation, do analysis, solve problems, even research facts, all through empirical methods.

And that’s very, very much not what they want. They want – for most people, anyway – that people apply the received knowledge they’ve been given by their betters, not create any new knowledge and understanding on their own, because that shit won’t come from God, it’ll come from their own minds, and their own abilities.

And since none of those things are God, that means those things – underneath it all – are Satan. Or at least influenced by Satan.

And they – and God, of course – hate that.

That may sound a little nuts, but to quote Joe Biden, “I mean it, folks.” They train this approach into their kids early and continually.

Just for example, check out this summary from a recent new episode of Down Gilead Lane, a Christian “educational” drama for children just starting its sixth series. The highlight is added and the important part:

You can’t “trust God alone” (trust only God) if you trust yourself, or trust others. And you have to trust God ALONE.

You can’t know truth if you learn for yourself, or from observation. And you have to Know (Godly) Truth.

Different topic, same story, same pattern, same belief.

The fact that schools teach something else about how you can think, the fact that they show that you can learn about the world through observation, through experimentation, through rational thought – that’s unacceptable. That’s un-Godly.

Because that teaches you how to think for yourself, and not to rely solely on God – as interpreted, of course, by them.

And that might just be the thing they hate the most.

These are the people who want to decide how you can bring up your kids, folks. This is what they’ll do with power.

72 days remain.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Comments

[canyonwalker]

Yeah, it's why the extreme right-- and more recently the mainstream right-- have been campaigning against public education and higher education (except religious universities) for years. As my father put it when my adult sisters became ardent home-schoolers of their own kids, "The problem is there's no God in school."

"But can't you teach about God at home after school and in church on Sunday?" I asked. I mean, that's how I learned about God in his house. I didn't need God to be on the syllabus M-F 8am-3pm 36 weeks a year.

Of course, I turned firmly against religion in my teens thanks to a public school and university education, so maybe to my family I am Exhibit A for the argument that public schools and universities are anti-God.

[solarbird]

There are just certain posts I have to re-write every six or seven years, and this is one of them.

And yeah - decades.

It started, of course - as did homeschooling - with segregation, and keeping their (white) kids out of integrated schools. But it shifted, again, decades ago.

I suppose they needed a reason that wasn't segregation anymore.

[canyonwalker]

Though homeschooling started in the 1960s with opposition to desegregation (i.e., appealing to racism) as one of its original selling points, religious fundamentalism is what has driven its growth in popularity since the 2000s. Now, since 2020, politically aligned Covid denialism has also been a factor in parents choosing to home-school their children.

[jessie_c]

You can leave 'critical' out of your thesis statement and not change one bit of your conclusion.
They don't want the sheeple to think. At all. They don't want anyone to think, because thinking people can see through all their lies and that leads to them being forced out of power. So no thinking, you naughty, evil people, you.

[solarbird]

Of course, and I speak to that in the later portions of the article, but the context is specifically "critical thinking" as used in the platform. Hence.

[jessie_c]

Thin edge of the wedge. Camel's nose under the edge of the tent. Foot in the door.
Get one part of the plan accepted, and the rest will follow.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

I've seen some videos about how Fascism was in part a backlash to The Enlightenment, even if it incorporated some aspects of The Enlightenment into it.

Dan Olson's video "In Search OF A Flat Earth" goes into the true purpose of Flat Earthism (and later, Qanon) as a rejection of science and a retreat back to previously held religious superstition ("God created the Earth and put it in the center of His Universe, and all of the other planets and stars revolve around it, and anything different is Satan using atheists to lie and mislead people.")

Reactionaries hate critical thinking because it tends to create ex-reactionaries.