The children in my elementary school classes were curious and asked questions. In a biology lesson in which some sort of beetles were raised from larva, every student was -fascinated-. These same students, three years later (discontinuity after that point—I changed school districts), were bored speechless by dissections, and wouldn’t even answer questions, much less ask them, in lessons.
It was a lot more obvious to me, because I typically dropped out of public education less than halfway through the year, bored. So the changes weren’t slow and subtle—I’d come back with the new school year, and the students would be noticeably more apathetic.
I don’t know for certain that the apathy translated into reduced critical thinking skills, but certainly they weren’t using them in the lessons anymore.
So there was a change over time, but that doesn’t establish that school was the cause. It doesn’t even show a correlation as compared with different styles of education.
The children in my elementary school classes were curious and asked questions. In a biology lesson in which some sort of beetles were raised from larva, every student was -fascinated-. These same students, three years later (discontinuity after that point—I changed school districts), were bored speechless by dissections, and wouldn’t even answer questions, much less ask them, in lessons.
It was a lot more obvious to me, because I typically dropped out of public education less than halfway through the year, bored. So the changes weren’t slow and subtle—I’d come back with the new school year, and the students would be noticeably more apathetic.
I don’t know for certain that the apathy translated into reduced critical thinking skills, but certainly they weren’t using them in the lessons anymore.
So there was a change over time, but that doesn’t establish that school was the cause. It doesn’t even show a correlation as compared with different styles of education.