I read a nice piece once about how some people tend to have personalities that respond really well to authoritarian leadership and a lack of critical thinking skills seemed to go hand in hand with it.

It also may be how good a conversationalist the host is, or how his or her diction is appealing, or how entertaining (since it usually is a monologue!).

That would be true for any show; the size of talk radio (which is nothing new now; some hosts are passe’ if anything now) was due originally to the still-extant problem of liberal bias and “agenda” or “crusader” “journalism” in the “mainstream” media. (That is more important than the schlocky and tabloidish nature of modern maintream media; in fact FOX, not as liberal by far, is notoriously tacky.)

Sometimes radio voices simply are good, or are better than what you would hear (and endure) on television, so for example, you might want to view a TV broadcast of a sports game but turn off the TV sound and instead listen to a local play-by-play radio announcer.

And I have to agree with superdestroyer, that those CNN shows are not qualitatively superior to (or more objective than) the Fox shows, they’re just misleading in a different way.

Lefty versus often righty

A teacher friend (6th grade) discontinued using political stories for discussion because 2 parents wanted to make sure the ‘wrong’ stories would not be discussed.
In the school my granddaughter attends, there was an uproar among parents when a child brought in a clipping about a homeless man being set on fire = too violent.

I am not claiming that this is what happens as a rule.
It’s just that teachers need to walk on eggs quite a lot.

There was quite an uproar among parents of my granddaughter’s 3rd grade, when a child brought in as story about a homeless man set on fire by teenagers. The teacher handled it very well, but one mother, serving as a techer’s aide, objected to the violence in the story, and she riled up others.
None of the children were upset until after the mothers made an issue of it. The whispering among children went on for the rest of the year

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Generally when teaching students, the material ought not to be the most controversial issues of our times unless the teacher bends over backward to not present his or her own biases. Parents are right to be wary about that, but if you truly know of cases where the assignments were NOT skewed but really had the students critically examining facts or critiquing opinions on both sides of the spectrum then I’m open to seeing such examples.

To repeat my earlier observation, I think that this skill is often neglected simply because many adults aren’t sufficiently aware of the need for it. I think it has little to do with fear or a desire to teach kids to think dogmatically.

Many parents who may not have objections to critical thinking in the abstract, do object when crtitical thinking challenges their own viiews.

It’s not as if there would be a ‘parents against crtical thinking’ group. The objection would be raised against a specific topic or idea emerging in the process of applied critical thinking. one which contradicts the parents’ opinions.

Overall I’d have to agree with the article, but I don’t think there is any parent organized opposition to critical thinking in classrooms. At least I have never heard of it. We should have it though. Right after civics and economics.

When you get right down it, the public has become so used to doing without critical thinking, that they quite enjoy the unchallenged world of being spoon fed opinions. Many parents actually fear the exposure of their children to anything other than a carbon copy of their own opinions.

Any effort to introduce critical thinking in school will often be underminced by parents who are scared of the very idea.

The children, our future public, lose.

So, that is one possible explanation for Fox having all opinion shows on during their prime time slots. We have an entire legion of buffoons who don’t know how to think for themselves. They need the television to tell them their opinions, to tell them what is right and what is wrong. These people can’t make their own opinions because they lack the tools that are necessary: rational, critical thought.

Thats a mighty wide swath you cut there fella. And on a post about critical thinking no less. An entire legion of people that don’t know what is right or wrong because they don’t watch the right news channel? I watch Lou dobbs a couple times a week and he ends every peice he does with, thats right, his opinion.

Frankly, its hard to give credence to a post on critical thinking when the author describes those who have a different view than him as buffoons and pinheads.

In reality, I’d say that since most adults have not been taught about critical thinking, the absence of this skill in public education stems from people not knowing what they don’t know. Likewise, the tendency for media groups to offer opinion journalism and the tendency for large groups of the public to be engaged by it stems from this lack of realization. I highly doubt your premise though, that the absence of education about this skill stems from any kind of opposition to questioning on faith issues.

And I have to agree with superdestroyer, that those CNN shows are not qualitatively superior to (or more objective than) the Fox shows, they’re just misleading in a different way. There are many ways to propagandize and pander; I think your initial premise was probably more accurate about the different receptiveness of conservative and liberal audiences. The liberal side tends more toward a “watchdog” role for the media, and investigative journalism which purports to expose the excesses or impropriety of the system are popular. On the conservative side, Fox has tapped into the popular conservative belief that the media itself needs a watchdog, so their reporting has a bias toward the establishment and attempts to show how the “liberal MSM” distorts.

I read the summary, it’s interesting, but I’d like it better if it weren’t so student oriented. Being that I have a stack of work-related papers to read now I unfortunately won’t be able to read the original paper at present. It would be interesting to see how stages break down amongst the science or humanities oriented. In the wider population it would be good to see how they break down at different educational, economic, religious and other levels.

I think that at most the division could roughly be made between the educated and engaged and the uneducated and uninterested. There are people who LIKE to know things, both conservative and liberal, like to snoop around wikipedia when they hear a term they don’t know, who watch more than one TV news program and have actually read whole articles, not just highlights given to them in their blogs. They may agree more with a conservative side or a liberal side, but have usually made at least some effort to construct their own justifications. On the other side there are people who can’t be bothered, who AT THE MOST listen to and regurgitate their favourite talking points. I say at the most because outside this comparison is a huge mass of people who don’t watch ANY news that isn’t gossip/sports related and whose political opinions, when they have them, are gotten only from social osmosis from the people who have surrounded them from childhood on up.

The bad news is the very low level at which most people typically operate on the scheme, and the worse news is how little effect most of our educational system (Kindergarten – College) has in moving people to higher levels in the hierarchical scheme.

I have been wondering for some time now whether the PSoIED could explain a lot about what has been going so wrong with our political system. Incidentally – and I think this is what originally motivated me to compose this comment – it has also occurred to me that it provides a very reasonable context for understanding how such divergent opinions could arise on whether blogging for opinion and news is likely to have a positive or negative impact. Can you look at the scheme and figure out where someone is operating when they maintain that opinions and news should only come from the professionals? Can you tell at what level someone is operating when they respond positively to an authoritarian?