The Lack Of Critical Thinking In Our Colombian Students

Today, Colombian students lack critical thinking. This has been happening for many decades and many claim that the Colombian government is incapable of training students towards a critical thinking that allows them to transform their reality. On the other hand, there are some who affirm that the education our students are receiving is the correct one for our development. However, It is my dissent that our students cannot think critically because teachers are not imbued with a critical thinking that could give students the skills and attitudes necessary to become critical thinkers.

 It has been argued that students go to schools to become more intellectual people. People who can transform their reality and solve problems. However, our recent history in the field of education has shown that our students are incapable of coming up with solutions. This is in part because our teachers have been indoctrinating our students into becoming greedy young capitalists. This is happening owing to the fact that our students are influenced by a democracy which has allowed the market values become the template for shaping all aspects of society even our educational system. In happening this, our students are enslaved under this new form of slavery that keeps them out of critical thinking as Henry Giroux states in his Critical Pedagogy lecture at McMaster University. " the free possessive individual has not obligation to anything beyond his self-interest. Market fundamentalism trumps democratic essays. Consumerism becomes the only obligation of citizenship.

There are others factors which influence on the student's ability to think critically. Another of them according to Peter Macclaren, is that teachers have seen schools as arenas of indoctrination where the aim is to reproduce dominant class interest directed at creating obedient, docile and low-paid future workers… (Mclaren, pg. 62) so, to that extent, students are incapable of thinking critically. Another important reason, it is that teachers are instructing students with huge amounts of content without having in mind the question " what this knowledge will be useful for? By not doing this, much of the knowledge and time that teacher provide is being wasted. So, students lose their first ages learning useless content and start becoming lazy learners.

As a consequence of this, students do not develop the skill to resolve social issues. For the only purpose of them under educational instruction is the competitiveness and the repetition of knowledge. This even knowing that the purpose of a critical student is to struggle for a better life for all throughout the construction of a society based on equal relations and social justice. In many cases, students are not to blame for their lack of critical thinking because their mind has been fossilised through the years with useless schools subjects which stayed in forgiveness because they were never brought to practice.

In conclusion, I must say that, on one hand, teachers are to blame because they lack critical thinking to teach children to become critical thinkers. On the other hand, they are not to blame because they are under a capitalist system that only cares about buying and selling. In addition to this, it also makes them act and teach according to this law system. Besides and more importantly is the fact that, students are the ones who are paying the high cost for the quality of education they receive. This is due to the fact that they are not being training by teachers to acquire skills and attitudes which can help them to become critical thinkers. Skills and attitudes that can help them to transform their reality.