One of the greatest complaints I hear from other teachers about Asian immigrant students is that they have limited to non-existent critical thinking skills. This is primarily due to the Asian style of teaching by rote and repetition (aka "drill and kill") rather than comprehension and analysis. This style of education should not be completely dismissed by Western style teachers, however - it is one of the many reasons why the Asian nations leave Western nations far behind in the dust when it comes to mathematics and scientific principles. The problem with this kind of education lies in the sectors requiring more innovation (scientific discovery) and problem solving (engineering), rather than cold, hard facts. Some economists have gone so far as to suggest that Asian workers will never be profound innovators, but will instead continue to rely on darn good imitation technology for economic growth.
This summer, I have begun teaching an English Literature class for incoming high school sophomores. We are required to finish one novel a week, so the pressure is quite intensive. The novels range from the classics (Tess of the D'Urbervilles) to modern fiction (The Kite Runner). The ongoing theme for our class is "The Human Condition." Although I had no say in which novels were assigned, I did find this theme to be a consistent, as the novel choices literally take the readers around the world and through space and time. The stress on international stories and writers (thank you, California political correctness!) is actually not a bad thing for developing critical thinking, I have found; it forces the readers to try and understand radically different viewpoints and character backgrounds, including political situations and alternative lifestyles.
There are two native-born students (male) and two fairly recent immigrant students (female) in my small group, and the differences in critical thinking abilities so far is subtle, though definitely present. We just finished reading Lord of the Flies. I myself had not read it since high school; I remember learning to HATE the book through too much close reading, so I was determined to focus on themes and archetypes, rather than reading comprehension and random plot points. Accordingly, each class period, we breezed through the required course multiple-choice questions (most of which were esoteric and/or downright silly) and focused instead on discussion and inquiry into motives and themes. I gave a fifteen minute lecture on the Nature vs. Nurture debate, and asked the students at the end of the week to write a literary analysis of Lord of the Flies and whether the events, characters, etc. of the novel support one side or the other particularly.
I have found that, in general, my native Korean students are very reluctant to open up and challenge an argument (or each other), especially if one classmate is perceived to be the class genius or teacher's pet. As I have only fours students, I instead focused on each individual student justifying each answer or opinion expressed. No one was allowed to repeat anything another student had said, and I got some very interesting answers as a result. I do not necessarily think that dead silence is a bad thing, by the way; it shows that the student is thinking.
As for the essays I received, well, it's clear that no one has been taught how to correctly format a reading-analysis essay (spawning this week's writing class focus!). That said, there were some attempts at real critical thinking. We still need to focus on, well, focusing our topics and using concrete examples, but I was impressed with the amount of thought that was put in to the actual content. That said, I also found a lot of my original "lecture language" fired back at me a bit too obediently; I would like to see more thought put into the issues that I and the other students raised, such as the nature of evil in Lord of the Flies. I suspect that this will come with time as we get deeper into discussion about "The Human Condition."
This week, we will be studying Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
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