Author: James M. Skelly, PhD, Director, Centre on Critical Thinking, iAS
The article addresses the challenge for universities and colleges to prepare
students for the world they inhabit through relevant course offerings and
new approaches to teaching. Unfortunately, these structures of higher
education still resemble chapels, where the professor is ‘priest,’ and with a
pedagogy that is informed by monologue, methodological nationalism, and
a general lack of awareness of the rapidly changing social and physical
world around us. Starting with the Gutenberg revolution, and following the
ideas of Marshall McLuhan, Sven Birkerts and Joseph Brodsky, the article
approaches the consequences of the new information technologies that are
profoundly rewiring our minds and replacing our ability to think critically.
The author asks: what might education look like today? How might we
challenge young people to learn how to think? The first task appears to
critique and transform the political architecture of classrooms and the
teacher centeredness of pedagogical activity, replacing monologue with
dialogue. Students need to be shown how to critically distance themselves
from the seductions of information technologies, and educational
institutions should return to requiring deep reading and discussion of
extended narratives.
