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Bashayer Hammad

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Human rights and philosophy should be taught in school!

As a member of the Sudanese community, where human rights are constantly violated and where people, mostly the younger generations, do not tend to engage in critical issues affecting the whole nation, I believe that Education should be changed and transformed into teaching the students how to think philosophically and lay the foundation for that since nursery school, rather than indoctrinating them with ideologies and beliefs that would just dull their minds and make them incapable of questioning things, and taking initiative to find solutions to problems.
Many people here are very unaware of their rights, know nothing about vital issues like economics, for example, and completely oblivious to what's written in the Constitution.

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    Fritzie Reisner 100+

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    Feb 5 2013: I hope an education focused on questioning and critical thinking is in the future of the children of the Sudan.
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      Alan Russell

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      Feb 6 2013: and everywhere else
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      Questions First

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      Mar 4 2013: i agree with Alan. it doesn't really happen anywhere and if it does happen in school sometimes, those people will end up working in corporations where they'll be told that it's not that important
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        Fritzie Reisner 100+

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        Host
        Mar 4 2013: I think that critical thinking is a focus in many classrooms and has been increasingly so over decades.

        I also do not think people in corporations are told that critical thinking is not important.

        I know many people hold these beliefs about schools and corporations, but that does not mean these assumptions are empirically justified.

        The first speaker on the last day of TED 2013, a scholar from New Zealand, spoke to this issue. He attributes the large increase in measured IQ to these sorts of changes over the twentieth century, sharing which parts of IQ measurements have increased by so much- the parts that involve critical and abstract thinking.

        • Louise Kyte

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          Mar 5 2013: "A 2006 study from Brazil examined data from testing children during 1930 and 2002–2004, the largest time gap ever considered. The results are consistent with both the cognitive stimulation and the nutritional hypotheses."

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

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