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Colton Cutchens

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Would reforming the core curriculum to include a Metacognition class and a Critical Thinking class be effective in education?

What is your opinion about adding a Metacognition class and a Critical Thinking class to the core curriculum? How would this effect students? Also, how would we need to structure these classes if we were to go about doing them? A Metacognition class would be defined to teach about self-reflecting, understanding, and discovering one's own talents, personality, and ways of thinking (this could be similar to a Psychology class). And a Critical Thinking class would be defined to outline what logic is and teach how to think logically and question rationally (this could be similar and categorized as a Philosophy class).

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    Joshua Kloppers

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    Jan 2 2013: In my school Life Orientation, which covers these two area's of thinking, is not taken very seriously. People mess around and so do not do very well which in turn leads to the education department making it easier which further reinforces this idea that it is not very important.

    Before a class along either of these lines can be introduced this stigma or dogma of how useless they are needs to dealt with. I do not know how but I do know that if the stigma is not dealt with then it will not be taken seriously and it will never achieve its purpose to further develop the youth of today
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      Colton Cutchens

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      Jan 3 2013: I think in order to show how these two subjects are important is to introduce them to the students at an early age (see also my reply to the comment above), so that the process of understanding one's self and the concepts of logic are started and worked on continuously throughout their lives, especially during school (which I believe needs to be a catalyst of all kinds of personalities and talents). If one is not metacognitive, they may not ever, or even begin, to reach their full potential. Correspondingly, if one does not how to reason, one may not be able to see how to mentally conceive of and apply many other subjects, both of the arts (subjective) and sciences (objective). If these two qualities can be shown to the students at an early age, then they may develop the motivation and want to take the class, and their education, seriously.

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