The classroom of the future

Sir, – Your article “Why the Irish classroom needs to change right now” (Education, March 30th) says that the need to develop “critical thinking is an area in which there is a remarkable level of consensus”.

Unfortunately some of the proposals in the article and being canvassed generally will probably hinder the achievement of this important goal.

The problem is that there is no agreement on how – or even if it possible – to effectively teach students skills which they can apply across a variety of areas.

This is because critical thinking is mainly domain-specific. I may be expert in biology but this will not help me in engineering or history. If – like most students of 14 or 15 – I know little or nothing about the history in the years before 1914, there is no point in asking me to use my critical faculties to discuss the causes of the First world war. Instead the student will have to spend a good deal of time learning facts about the history of the period and to study concepts such as imperialism, militarism, colonialism, etc, before they are in a position to examine opposing arguments about the war’s causes and, perhaps, draw a conclusion of their own. To put it simply, critical thinking is usually impossible with a lot of background knowledge.

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Luke O’Neill’s proposal, quoted in the article, that we should tailor “education to the needs of each individual student rather than teaching everyone the same thing” feels instinctively true to most people simply because Romanticism has brainwashed us for about 200 years. In fact, to a large extent – and particularly in primary and early secondary education – it is important that everybody be grounded in a common curriculum so that they learn the fundamentals of science, geography, history, English, civics, etc. They will acquire the knowledge that will later allow them to become critical thinkers. If this does not happen, children from poorer backgrounds – who do not have the educational gaps filled in at home – will fall still further behind. To put it crudely, we need more facts, not fewer (imaginatively taught, of course, with all the available technology). – Yours, etc,

BRIAN HANNEY,

Shantalla,

Galway.

Sir, – It is suggested that what is needed, among other things, is “More schools run by organisations other than churches”.

Here’s a really radical suggestion – how about the State takes responsibility for education? – Yours, etc,

GARRET CAMPBELL,

Malahide,

Co Dublin.