Paul Stoller has a post on the Huffington Post on education, ignorance and politics. Some of what he has to say relates to policies that aim to constrain the acquisition of knowledge. Here’s one example I find particularly astounding, not because it is an unusual position to take historically speaking, but because it comes from a political party in an adversarial system. You would think that participants in such a system would at least have to give lip service to the idea of clarity and independent thinking, but perhaps it’s only children they don’t want thinking about thinking.
We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
via Paul Stoller: Social Engineering and the Politics of Ignorance.