Nativist Conservative MPs for Fossil Fuels versus Science, Education, Research, Analysis & Society

Interesting article from a science journalist at The Guardian on comments made about ‘woke’ science by the Tories in the UK at the Conservative Conference in  ‘Science hasn’t gone ‘woke’ – the only people meddling with it are the Tories’ by Philip Ball.

However, this is neither unique to the UK Conservatives nor dissimilar elsewhere, but it is a long game strategy against grounded science, research and analysis, like Trojan horses to disrupt curricula and universities, why? 

It’s both protection for fossil fuels and avoiding climate science (Covid too) while denigrating centre right through left moderate attitudes and policies as e.g. ‘woke’, to energise older right (and too many left) voters including Brexit, Trump and now in Australia ‘The Voice’ Referendum on Aboriginal recognition.

The fulcrum globally is Koch Network think tanks found at Tufton St. London, of course the US, Australia and other parts including links via Atlas Network and in Hungary, Heritage Foundation partnered with Danubius Institute, sharing anti-EU and pro fossil fuels sentiments, shared with Putin’s Russia and fossil fuels oligarchs, also includes the EU’s regulation for environment and financial transparency.

Overall, like Covid and climate science denial, denigration of experts, analysis and universities, with the nativist Tanton Network that shares donors with Koch in the US, is used to deflect from climate science by highlighting immigrants and population growth as environmental hygiene issues.

The end game is more alarming with their and e.g. Murdoch media support for corrupt nativist authoritarian leaders and governments who deny climate science and humanity?

‘Science hasn’t gone ‘woke’ – the only people meddling with it are the Tories

Michelle Donelan’s plan to “depoliticise” science with new guidelines on sex and gender research is a chilling move

The science secretary, Michelle Donelan, told the Conservative party conference this week that the Tories are “depoliticising science”. Or as a Conservative party announcement later put it, in case you didn’t get the culture-war reference, they are “kicking woke ideology out of science”, thereby “safeguarding scientific research from the denial of biology and the steady creep of political correctness”.

Scientists do not seem too delighted to be defended in this manner. “As a scientist, I really don’t know what this means,” tweeted Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. “This is totally shocking and is something I never thought I would see in the UK,” said Buzz Baum, a molecular cell biologist for the Medical Research Council.

What exactly does Donelan think science needs protecting from? What is this woke threat? At the conference, she expanded on that. “Scientists are told by university bureaucrats that they cannot ask legitimate research questions about biological sex,” she claimed, adding that Keir Starmer thinks the “legitimate concerns of the scientific community” on these issues of sex and gender “don’t matter”. She said she will launch a review of the use of gender and sex questions in scientific research, apparently to be led by Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology at University College London, which will be used to formulate guidance.

You would need to have been hiding under a rock not to appreciate that questions of sex and gender have become controversial, bordering on incendiary, in some areas of academia. As a recent exchange by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and professor of humanities Jacqueline Rose in the New Statesman revealed, academics are often talking at cross-purposes: Dawkins defended the binary nature of human sexes from an evolutionary angle, Rose the socially constructed aspects of gender identity. On top of that, there are the complications of developmental and cognitive biology, which, among other things, can produce intersex individuals and conditions where, say, people with a Y chromosome can be anatomically female.

But one doesn’t need to take a strong stand about rights or wrongs in these debates to recognise that they are difficult and subtle – and to acknowledge it is proper that they be rigorously discussed. Arguably, this is an area where science can’t supply definitive answers to all the germane societal questions.

This is not a case of academic research being trammelled by an imposed ideology, but rather, of a range of differing views among academics themselves. Besides, rather than await clarification, Donelan has evidently formed her opinion already: she called guidance that data on sex should only be collected in exceptional circumstances “utter nonsense” and a “denial of biology”. What is the point of a review if you have decided already what it must say?

More to the point, why is the government getting involved in the first place? What chills Baum is the idea of “politicians telling scientists about the nature of biology”. Some scientists can’t help thinking of previous instances where governments imposed their views on the subject: the spurious “race science” of the Nazis and the anti-Darwinian denialism of Stalin’s regime. While that might sound a slightly hyperbolic response to a transparently desperate ploy to stoke culture-wars division, the principle is the same: a government deciding an approved position on science and demanding that academics toe the line.

Much as Donelan tries to position herself as a champion of the objectivity and freedom of science, this intervention supplies more evidence of the government’s distrust of academics in general and scientists in particular – it’s of a piece with Rishi Sunak’s assertion that scientists were given too much power during the pandemic. Witness the disturbing way this policy direction is framed. However contested and emotive this particular issue, it is hardly relevant to the large-scale practice of science – yet Donelan is seeking to leverage it to imply that all of science somehow stands at risk from “woke ideology”, as if the integrity of truth itself were at stake.

That is perhaps the most ominous aspect of this announcement. The creation of a fictitious, ubiquitous enemy to scare the population is indeed straight out of the fascist playbook. It was thoughtful of the Conservatives to drive this point home with the spectacle of party member Andrew Boff, chair of the London Assembly, being escorted from the conference hall by police on Tuesday when he voiced protest at Suella Braverman’s criticism of the term “gender ideology”.

The notion that science can be “depoliticised” at all, let alone by an agenda-driven political party, is understood to be nonsensical by those who study the interactions of science and society. Of course political agendas should never dictate research results. But the questions asked, priorities decided and societal implications of advances made absolutely make science inextricably tangled with the political landscape – not least in a controversial area like sex and gender. That entanglement can get messy, but no true democracy tries to control the narrative.’

• Philip Ball is a science writer and the author of the forthcoming book, How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology

For more related blogs and articles on Climate Change, Conservatives, Environment, EU European Union, Fossil Fuels, Koch Network, Media, Science Literacy, Tanton Network and University Teaching Skills click through

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Anglosphere Oligarchs – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

BBC: 55 Tufton Street London – Libertarian Think Tanks – Koch Network

Rishi Sunak and US Radical Right Libertarians in UK – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

55 Tufton Street London: US Koch & Tanton Networks’ Think Tanks – Radical Right Libertarians and Nativists

Koch Industries: How to Influence Politics, Avoid Fossil Fuel Emission Control and Environmental Protections

Climate Change Science Attitudes Australia and Koch in USA

Trojan Horses – Ultra Conservatives Disrupting Education Curricula to Influence Youth

Critical Thinking or Analysis: Importance for Education, Media and Empowered Citizens

AC Grayling on the Need for more Educated and Informed Citizens

When people question seemingly uninformed voter choices, they are averting their gaze from politicians of the right, right wing media and related who are desperate to keep or put right wing parties in power, by attacking the centre and sensible legislation, why or how?

Not understood that across the Anglosphere and Europe mostly ageing voters dominating, with politicians, media and influencers, who are less educated and less diverse than younger generations, backed up by ‘collective narcissism’ and ‘pensioner populism’; see Brexit, Trump, Meloni, Orban et al.

However, in the ByLine Times article excerpts below from AC Grayling, his explanation of how we arrived here cites education as the issue; though this ignores amongst older dominant voters who are informed by activist right wing legacy media, influencers and including US fossil fueled think tanks versus younger who are outnumbered; not education now but the past?

Further, there are attempts through influence and lobbying to dilute education standards from the same fossil fueled Koch Network think tanks, in support of far right policies now adopted by ‘conservatives’ including more Christianity or religion in schools vs. attacks on supposed ‘woke’ or LGBT friendly policies.

However, this masks concerted efforts in the Anglosphere replicating education curricula from less developed authoritarian states including teaching, curriculum syllabi and content e.g. more religion &/or nationalism, less analysis, less maths/science and basically avoiding the hidden curriculum i.e. developing essential soft skills a la Bloom’s Taxonomy and well rounded citizens.

There is a collective need to avoid attempts getting at young people in preparation for when demographics balance out, neutering the dominance of less educated but more active above median age voters, especially in regions.

From ByLine Times:

‘Who or What to Blame? Education, Education, Education’

Too many voters are insufficiently informed and reflective to vote other than tribally or self-interestedly in exploitable ways due to failings in how we conceive of ‘education’, writes 

AC Grayling  2 August 2023

Let us ask why so much influence has been exerted by a dishonest and ultra-partisan media owned by non-dom billionaires with a vested interest in destabilising the country so that their preferred version of anarcho-capitalism can flourish. And let us ask why social media has found the British population such a plastic, malleable, easy playground for its bubble-creating, conspiracy-promoting, false-fact-spreading downside.

And then let us reflect on the answer: because well-informed and reflective people would not be so easily duped by either a dishonest press or unreliable and distorting social media, it must be that enough of the British population is insufficiently well-informed and insufficiently reflective – more bluntly: ignorant enough and unthinking enough – to be ripe for serving as their dupes.

How has this happened?

The Need for Active Enquirers

The fact remains that, in 2019, 43% of those who voted chose Conservatives, and enough Uxbridge voters – blaming a Labour London Mayor for Tory policies on the environment – voted Tory in a seat formerly held by Johnson. What explains them? Indeed, even supposing half of these were principled, loyal, Conservatives who had thought hard about the Government of the past 13 years and somehow liked what it saw – what explains how they could?

From among a plethora of answers let us focus on one very central one: the failure of our education system to achieve a good standard of active intelligence in enough of the population.

By ‘active intelligence’, I mean the useful general knowledge and the constructive scepticism that prompts people to test claims and promises made by those who want their money or their votes.

The price we pay is careless voters exploitable by a system and its career politician operatives into putting someone as grossly unfit as a Boris Johnson into Downing Street – to say nothing of the inadequacy of the compeers such an individual surrounds himself with.

To educate – not merely to train in enough basics of literacy and numeracy to qualify as a squaddy in the economic infantry – classes need to consist of fewer than 10 pupils, so that teachers have time to work with the individual grain of each pupil’s mind and personality.

Pupils should be active enquirers, not just passive learners sitting behind desks in a classroom: that means getting out and about, doing, travelling, finding out, making.

The value of musical education and art on general cognitive development, enhancing its capacities for success in maths and applied sciences, has been all but lost in the English education system.

Historical and geographical ignorance, and wholly inadequate levels of competence in a second and third language – plus frequent and active travelling in the countries where they are spoken – make for narrow, parochial, limited mindsets. 

I defy anyone to claim that the level of achievement represented by GCSE today is comparable to that of the ‘O’ levels of yore – and even the ‘O’ levels of yore did not pass the test of what is necessary for the informed and thoughtful populace that is the minimum requirement for any version of democracy.

Democracies are being made to fail all round the world today because increasingly larger portions of already significant percentages of populations are too easily taken for a ride by the political and politically-motivated agencies which benefit from their incapacity.

This problem with education means that efforts to explain why some claim or promise does not stack up simply go over the heads of enough people to make it possible for those who claim or promise to get away with it. This happens all the time.

As we know too well, serious newspapers and current affairs programmes get little traction because they speak to tiny minorities only, while tabloid media cleave to the parochial interests and prejudices of their consumers because that is what makes money – with little if any concern to inform or engage beyond the usual sodden fare of celebrity gossip and whatever is the hysteria of the moment.

The landscape of our democracy is accordingly a dismal one indeed. Its poverty and barrenness have been cruelly exposed by Brexit – arguably inconceivable in a better-educated nation (look at Scotland) – and its emblems will forever be Johnson and the gang of coarsely unsuitable appointments he has made over the past three years. 

Too many voters are insufficiently informed and reflective to vote other than tribally or self-interestedly in exploitable ways, and a large part of the reason for this is that our education system is too poorly funded to achieve in enough cases the kind of intellects that would be more resistant to such exploitation.

I argue that the systemic failure of our political order, for which this insufficiency of education is responsible, led to Brexit: and that Brexit is the ultimate condemnation of both.’

AC Grayling is a philosopher, Master of the New College of the Humanities, and Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College at Oxford University

For more related blogs and articles on Adult learning, Ageing democracy, Conservative, Critical thinking, Demography, Koch Network, Media, Populist politics, Science literacy and Younger generations, click through:

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Developing Better Asian Capability Education in Australia

Australian article from the Conversation on ‘Supporting our Schools to Develop Asia Capable Kids’ to develop Asian capabilities not just on China, but neighbours in the Asian century. 

It’s the opposite of UK PM Sunak’s policy idea of mathematics till the end of secondary school, due to issues with maths literacy in society, amongst adults, who also need education.

However, on Asian capability, school is important along with general society, especially our influential middle aged elites in media, politics and the corporate world of ‘skip’ or Anglo-Irish heritage of the past decade, many seem to have shared antipathy towards the region?

An example is how many Australians have been to Bali, but neither understand that it’s part of Indonesia, nor the significance of the Indonesian economy now and in future i.e. it is expected to become the 7th largest economy in the world by 2030.

For Australia’s influential elite cohorts, many seem more interested in the ‘Anglosphere’ of UK and USA, than Australia’s role in our region?

‘SUPPORTING OUR SCHOOLS TO DEVELOP ASIA CAPABLE KIDS

Asia capable initiatives that only target adults and young adults leaves it far too late – it has to start in our schools

By Chris Higgins, University of Melbourne

As the world becomes progressively more connected and interconnected, it’s increasingly important for all people to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to engage with different cultures and countries.

This is particularly important for our young people who are growing into an increasingly complex and dynamic world.

More than ever, they need to possess the capabilities to navigate a fast-changing and diverse world and work together to overcome complex global challenges.

For Australia, the world’s largest island, physically located in the Asia-Pacific region, this is of paramount importance.

Our Indigenous peoples have more than 60,000 years continuous connection, histories and culture, and have been trading with international partners for many thousands of years.

These deep economic, social and cultural ties to other countries continue today.

We are one of the most multicultural countries in the world, with a diverse population made up of people from over 200 different countries with a long history of immigration, shaped by successive waves of migrants from different parts of the world.

Today, almost a third of Australia’s population was born overseas, and more than 400 different languages – including 167 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages – are spoken in Australian homes.

Our diversity is reflected in our cities, towns, communities and homes, where people from diverse cultural backgrounds live side-by-side, sharing traditions, customs, languages and experiences.

The Australian government has long recognised our multiculturalism, the benefits of social cohesion, respect for cultural diversity and our place in the Asia-Pacific region.

In 2012, the Australian Government released the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, which outlined a vision for Australia to deepen its engagement with the Asian region and the advantages of the region’s growth and rising influence.

The White Paper called for a comprehensive approach to developing Asia capability across all sectors of Australian society, including government, business, education and the community.

It also highlighted the need to increase language skills and cultural awareness as well as knowledge of Asian markets and regulatory frameworks across the ‘whole-of-nation’.

Since the release of the White Paper, the Australian Government continued to support development of Asia capability in many areas including initiatives like the New Colombo Plan, which provides funding for Australian university students to study and undertake internships in the Asia-Pacific region.

But, all too often, initiatives like this focus on economic priorities and adults in tertiary education or the existing workforce.

Rarely do they support our young people who will become our adult learners and workforce of the future.

Despite recent references from the Australian government to strengthen ‘whole-of-nation’ Asia capability there has been almost no support for Asia capability in Australian schools since 2012.

Asia capable initiatives that only target adults and young adults leaves it far too late. There needs to be support for our young people to develop Asia capability.

Australian schools and classrooms reflect the very multicultural and diverse nature of our nation. Our students and teachers represent a broad diversity of cultures, languages, experiences and perspectives – which are becoming more diverse each year.

Students need the support to develop these essential skills.

Often economic explanations are cited as the main arguments for developing Asia capability

The Asia-Pacific region is one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic regions in the world, with significant economic, political and cultural influence.

Young people who develop Asia capability will be well-placed to take advantage of the opportunities to collaborate and prosper from shared regional growth and influence.

Another well-worn reason is that Asia capability is essential for promoting national security and diplomatic relations.

As Australia’s relationships in the region deepen, it’s important for our students to develop an understanding of the strategic and geopolitical dynamics of the region, as well as the cultural and linguistic skills necessary to engage with people and organisations.

However, these explanations miss the far more relevant and immediate benefits. Asia capability promotes cultural understanding and social cohesion. By developing an understanding of different cultures and languages, our young people can develop empathy and respect for different ways of life – building bridges between different communities and promoting social harmony.

It’s essential our students and teachers are supported to have the knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes to create cohesive, inclusive, diverse schools. In turn, they will become adults who have the capabilities to support cohesive communities, societies, nation and a shared, prosperous Asia-Pacific.

The means to deliver this already exist.

The Australian Curriculum recognises our diversity and includes several Cross-Curriculum Priorities and General Capabilities all educators and schools are expected to support for students.

The Cross-Curriculum Priority of Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia and the General Capability of Intercultural Understanding that all teachers are expected to support, regardless of subject areas taught, are crucial components of the Australian Curriculum.

But they are often perceived as add-ons, the responsibility of other discipline areas like languages. Many teachers don’t have the resources or time to embed them in their classrooms or don’t feel they have strong Asia capability.

Investing in supporting our Asia capability, by making teaching knowledge and resources available to the entire Australian school education workforce is crucial to achieving the intention of the Australian Curriculum and the Australian government’s priority of whole-of-nation Asia capability and strengthened ties with the region.

The Asia Education Foundation has released a Pre-Budget Submission to the Australian Government calling on the Commonwealth to support Asia capability in all schools.’

For more related articles and blogs on Adult Learning, Asian Century, Cross Cultural Communication, Media, Pedagogy, Soft Skills, Teaching in Australia and Younger Generations click through

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University versus Vocational Careers & Financial Outcomes

Interesting article from NPR US on how many high paying vocational or trade jobs are vacant due to deference towards higher education, college or university, but often uncertain employment outcomes and lower salaries from the latter?

Why? Too many middle class see university as a path to upward mobility, but may indicate that some occupations guarantee employment and high salaries whether vocational or university? 

Conversely, many university or college graduates struggle to find related employment and reasonable salaries versus many trade or vocational occupations, in demand.  Meanwhile many developed nations have unskilled and skilled worker shortages made worse by ageing and decline in the working age population that has passed the ‘demographic sweet spot’, but compounded further by many deferring to higher education.

From NPR National Public Radio:

High-paying jobs that don’t need a college degree? Thousands of them sit empty

Like most other American high school students, Garret Morgan had it drummed into him constantly: Go to college. Get a bachelor’s degree.

“All through my life it was, ‘If you don’t go to college you’re going to end up on the streets,’ ” Morgan said back in 2018. “Everybody’s so gung-ho about going to college.”

So he tried it for a while. Then he quit and started training as an ironworker, which is what he was doing on a weekday morning in a nondescript high-ceilinged building with a concrete floor in an industrial park near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Morgan and several other men and women were dressed in work boots and hard hats, clipped to safety harnesses with heavy wrenches hanging from their belts. They were being timed as they wrestled 600-pound I-beams into place.

Back then, the demand for ironworkers was rising – and it still is: the sector is growing 4% annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Ironworkers earn, on average, $27.48 per hour, or $57,160 per year. Morgan was already working on a job site when he wasn’t at the Pacific Northwest Ironworkers shop. At 20, he was earning $28.36 an hour, plus benefits.

Five years later, he’s on the job full time, working “six-10s” — industry lingo for 10 hours a day, six days a week. He helped build the Rainier Square Tower in Seattle and a data center for Microsoft. “I’m loving it every day,” he said. “It was absolutely the right choice.

As for his friends from high school? “Someday maybe they’ll make as much as me.”

Raising alarms

While a shortage of workers pushes wages higher in the skilled trades, the financial return from a bachelor’s degree is softening, even as the price, and the average debt into which it plunges students, remain high.

But high school graduates have been so effectively encouraged to get a bachelor’s that high-paid jobs requiring shorter and less expensive training are going unfilled. This affects those students and also poses a real threat to the economy.

“Parents want success for their kids,” Mike Clifton, who taught machining for more than two decades at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology before retiring, said in 2018. “They get stuck on [four-year bachelor’s degrees], and they’re not seeing the shortage there is in tradespeople until they hire a plumber and have to write a check.”

The Washington State Auditor found in 2017 that good jobs in the skilled trades were going begging because students are being almost universally steered to bachelor’s degrees. Recent labor statistics suggest that’s still the case – in Washington State and around the country.

President Biden, in his State of the Union address this month, spoke of “jobs paying an average of $130,000 a year, and many do not require a college degree.”

Among other things, the Washington auditor recommended that career guidance — including choices that require less than four years in college — start as early as the seventh grade.

“There is an emphasis on the four-year university track” in high schools, Chris Cortines, who co-authored the report, said after it was issued. Yet, nationwide, nearly three out of 10 high school grads who go to four-year public universities haven’t earned degrees within six years, the most recent figures from the National Student Clearinghouse show. At four-year private colleges, that number is nearly one in five.

“Being more aware of other types of options may be exactly what they need,” Cortines said. In spite of a perception that college “is the sole path for everybody,” he said, “when you look at the types of wages that apprenticeships and other career areas pay, and the fact that you do not pay four years of tuition and you’re paid while you learn, these other paths really need some additional consideration.”

And it’s not just in Washington state.

Today, nearly 90% of construction companies nationwide are having trouble finding qualified workers, according to the Associated General Contractors of America; in Washington, the proportion is 88%. Ironworkers remain in particularly short supply, along with drywall installers and sheet metal workers.

The $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure plan – Biden’s signature legislation passed by Congress in 2021 – will create 1.5 million construction jobs per year for the next 10 years, the White House says, boosting the share of all jobs that are connected with rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure from 11% to 14%, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Median wages for construction jobs are higher than the median pay for all jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

“The economy is definitely pushing this issue to the forefront,” Amy Morrison Goings, president of the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, which educates students in these fields, said in 2018. “There isn’t a day that goes by that a business doesn’t contact the college and ask the faculty, ‘who’s ready to go to work?’ “

In all, some 30 million jobs in the United States that pay an average of $55,000 per year don’t require bachelor’s degrees, according to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce.

Yet the march to bachelor’s degrees continues. And while people who get them are more likely to be employed and make more money than those who don’t, that premium appears to be softening; their inflation-adjusted median earnings were lower in 2018, the most recent year for which the figure is available, than in 2010.

“There’s that perception of the bachelor’s degree being the American dream, the best bang for your buck,” said Kate Blosveren Kreamer, deputy executive director of Advance CTE, an association of state officials who work in career and technical education. “The challenge is that in many cases it’s become the fallback. People are going to college without a plan, without a career in mind, because the mindset in high school is just, ‘Go to college.’ “

It’s not that finding a job in the trades, or even manufacturing, means needing no education after high school. Most regulators and employers require certificates, certifications or associate degrees. But those cost less and take less time than earning a bachelor’s degree.

Tuition and fees for in-state students to attend a community or technical college in Washington State, for example, came to less than half the cost last year of a four-year public university, and less than a fifth of the price of attending the cheapest private four-year college.

Washington is not the only state nudging students into education for the trades. At least 39 states have taken steps to encourage career and technical education, and many have increased funding for it, a 2017 Brookings Institution review found.

At the federal level, legislation introduced in Congress in January would make some short-term workforce programs eligible for federal Pell Grants. “For too long, the college-for-all mentality drove Americans toward expensive and often ineffective education pathways,” its sponsors said. “As our country stares down a historic worker shortage, fewer Americans are getting the skills they need to be successful.”

The branding issue

Money isn’t the only issue, advocates for career and technical education say. An even bigger challenge is convincing parents that it leads to good jobs.

“They remember ‘voc-ed’ from when they were in high school, which is not necessarily what they aspire to for their own kids,” Kreamer said. Added Kairie Pierce, apprenticeship and college director for the Washington State Labor Council of the AFL-CIO: “It sort of has this connotation of being a dirty job. ‘It’s hard work — I want something better for my son or daughter.’ “

The Lake Washington Institute of Technology, about 20 miles from Seattle, changed its name from Lake Washington Technical College, said Goings, its president, to avoid being stereotyped as a vocational school.

These perceptions fuel the worry that, if students are urged as early as the seventh grade to consider the trades, then low-income, first-generation students, and students of color will be channeled into blue-collar jobs while wealthier and white classmates are pushed by their parents to get bachelor’s degrees.

“When CTE was vocational education, part of the reason we had a real disinvestment from the system was because we were tracking low-income and minority kids into these pathways,” Kreamer said. “There is this tension between, do you want to focus on the people who would get the most benefit from these programs, and — is that tracking?”

In a quest for prestige and rankings, and to bolster real-estate values, high schools also like to emphasize the number of their graduates who go on to four-year colleges and universities.

Jessica Bruce enrolled in community college after high school for one main reason: because she was recruited to play fast-pitch softball. “I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life,” she said.

But she “couldn’t quite figure it out,” she says today. She was an apprentice ironworker in 2018, making $32.42 an hour, or more than $60,000 a year, while continuing her training. At 5-foot-2, “I can run with the big boys,” she said at the time, laughing.

Five years later, now 46, she’s starting a job installing 500 tons of rebar for a Boeing hangar near Seattle, working mostly outside, which she likes. She’s also back in school, of sorts, taking online courses to get her certification to become a fitness instructor as a side gig. And she’s bought a Harley.

Bruce says she has “absolutely no regrets,” herself. As for her own daughter, who’s 15, “if it’s college then it’s college,” she says. “I fully support that.” But students now in high school “are becoming maybe a little bit more aware” of the potential for making good money in the trades, she added. “I know my daughter is aware. I’ve told her there’s every kind of trade out there.”

The original 2018 version of this story was co-reported with Ashley Gross of KNKX.

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Critical Thinking or Analysis: Importance for Education, Media and Empowered Citizens

Throughout the world, especially now with social media, the digital volume of information and velocity, all citizens need skills of critical analysis, especially through the education system, community and media.

While newsrooms cut costs, headcounts and resources, many journalists or reporters now have less time and fewer resources to produce more news content.  However, this comes with the commensurate risk of media being gamed by corporate and political forces of the right, due to media using heuristic shortcuts on any issue and inherently biassed towards parties of the right.

Gaming media is done in various ways including using think tanks masquerading as academic or research institutes. In fact too often they are PR or lobbying groups, staffed by pseudo intellectuals producing ‘research’ reports which are promoted in media, for adoption or approval by both voters and the politicians or government; avoiding commentary or analysis that actually conducts analysis and may preclude policy initiatives?

However, they are never publicly subjected or exposed to expert analysis, including claims of non-scientists linked to fossil fuels who dismiss climate science, with neither informed challenge nor expert input.

What can journalists or media and citizens do? 

Acquire skills or understanding of critical thinking and related through informed analysis e.g. science or research process, statistics 101, demography, history, language and geography. 

Following on, allowing media and society to function versus receiving content including science, data or opinions that too often go unchallenged, while media not on the right is subject to constant challenges, intimidation and constraints?

Two articles first from the University of Tennessee and the second from Rasmussen University:

Basic Elements of Critical Thinking

A set of information and beliefs, generating and processing skills, and the habit of using those skills to guide behaviour.

Critical thinkers:

• Ask questions
• Gather relevant information
• Think through solutions and conclusions 
• Consider alternative systems of thought
• Communicate effectively

They’re willing to admit when they’re wrong or when they don’t know the answer, rather than digging into a gut reaction or emotional point of view.

Truth-Seeking – Ask questions and follow the evidence

Judicious – Able to make judgements amid uncertainty

Inquisitive – Strive to be well-informed on a wide range of topics

Confident in Reasoning – Trustful of own skills to make good judgements

Systematic – Organized and thoughtful problem solving

Analytical – Identify potential consequences of decisions

Open-Minded – Tolerant of different views and sensitive to own biases

6 Critical Thinking Skills You Need to Master Now

No matter what walk of life you come from, what industry you’re interested in pursuing or how much experience you’ve already garnered, we’ve all seen firsthand the importance of critical thinking skills. In fact, lacking such skills can truly make or break a person’s career, as the consequences of one’s inability to process and analyze information effectively can be massive.

What is critical thinking?

Even if you want to be a better critical thinker, it’s hard to improve upon something you can’t define. Critical thinking is the analysis of an issue or situation and the facts, data or evidence related to it. Ideally, critical thinking is to be done objectively—meaning without influence from personal feelings, opinions or biases—and it focuses solely on factual information.

Critical thinking is a skill that allows you to make logical and informed decisions to the best of your ability. For example, a child who has not yet developed such skills might believe the Tooth Fairy left money under their pillow based on stories their parents told them. A critical thinker, however, can quickly conclude that the existence of such a thing is probably unlikely—even if there are a few bucks under their pillow.

6 Crucial critical thinking skills (and how you can improve them)

While there’s no universal standard for what skills are included in the critical thinking process, we’ve boiled it down to the following six. Focusing on these can put you on the path to becoming an exceptional critical thinker.

1. Identification

The first step in the critical thinking process is to identify the situation or problem as well as the factors that may influence it. Once you have a clear picture of the situation and the people, groups or factors that may be influenced, you can then begin to dive deeper into an issue and its potential solutions.

How to improve: When facing any new situation, question or scenario, stop to take a mental inventory of the state of affairs and ask the following questions:

• Who is doing what?
• What seems to be the reason for this happening?
• What are the end results, and how could they change?

2. Research

When comparing arguments about an issue, independent research ability is key. Arguments are meant to be persuasive—that means the facts and figures presented in their favor might be lacking in context or come from questionable sources. The best way to combat this is independent verification; find the source of the information and evaluate.

How to improve: It can be helpful to develop an eye for unsourced claims. Does the person posing the argument offer where they got this information from? If you ask or try to find it yourself and there’s no clear answer, that should be considered a red flag. It’s also important to know that not all sources are equally valid—take the time to learn the difference between popular and scholarly articles.

3. Identifying biases

This skill can be exceedingly difficult, as even the smartest among us can fail to recognize biases. Strong critical thinkers do their best to evaluate information objectively. Think of yourself as a judge in that you want to evaluate the claims of both sides of an argument, but you’ll also need to keep in mind the biases each side may possess.

First and foremost, you must be aware that bias exists. When evaluating information or an argument, ask yourself the following:

• Who does this benefit?
• Does the source of this information appear to have an agenda?
• Is the source overlooking, ignoring or leaving out information that doesn’t support its beliefs or claims?
• Is this source using unnecessary language to sway an audience’s perception of a fact?

4. Inference

The ability to infer and draw conclusions based on the information presented to you is another important skill for mastering critical thinking. Information doesn’t always come with a summary that spells out what it means. You’ll often need to assess the information given and draw conclusions based upon raw data.

The ability to infer allows you to extrapolate and discover potential outcomes when assessing a scenario. It is also important to note that not all inferences will be correct. For example, if you read that someone weighs 260 pounds, you might infer they are overweight or unhealthy. Other data points like height and body composition, however, may alter that conclusion.

How to improve: An inference is an educated guess, and your ability to infer correctly can be polished by making a conscious effort to gather as much information as possible before jumping to conclusions. When faced with a new scenario or situation to evaluate, first try skimming for clues—things like headlines, images and prominently featured statistics—and then make a point to ask yourself what you think is going on.

5. Determining relevance

One of the most challenging parts of thinking critically during a challenging scenario is figuring out what information is the most important for your consideration. In many scenarios, you’ll be presented with information that may seem important, but it may pan out to be only a minor data point to consider.

How to improve: The best way to get better at determining relevance is by establishing a clear direction in what you’re trying to figure out. Are you tasked with finding a solution? Should you be identifying a trend? If you figure out your end goal, you can use this to inform your judgement of what is relevant.

6. Curiosity

It’s incredibly easy to sit back and take everything presented to you at face value, but that can also be a recipe for disaster when faced with a scenario that requires critical thinking. It’s true that we’re all naturally curious—just ask any parent who has faced an onslaught of “Why?” questions from their child. As we get older, it can be easier to get in the habit of keeping that impulse to ask questions at bay. But that’s not a winning approach for critical thinking.

How to improve: While it might seem like a curious mind is just something you’re born with, you can still train yourself to foster that curiosity productively. All it takes is a conscious effort to ask open-ended questions about the things you see in your everyday life, and you can then invest the time to follow up on these questions.

“Being able to ask open-ended questions is an important skill to develop—and bonus points for being able to probe,” Potrafka says.

Become a better critical thinker

Thinking critically is vital for anyone looking to have a successful college career and a fruitful professional life upon graduation. Your ability to objectively analyse and evaluate complex subjects and situations will always be useful. Unlock your potential by practising and refining the six critical thinking skills above.

Most professionals credit their time in college as having been crucial in the development of their critical thinking abilities. If you’re looking to improve your skills in a way that can impact your life and career moving forward, higher education is a fantastic venue through which to achieve that.

Other Blog, Articles and Links on Adult Learning, Business Communication, CPD Continuing Professional Development, Critical Thinking, Digital Literacy, Media, Science Literacy, Soft Skills and Statistical Analysis click through below:

Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center and the Carnegie-Knight Initiative, The Journalist’s Resource

Gapminder Foundation Resources

Covid Misinformation – Gut Instinct & Beliefs vs. Science & Critical Thinking

Skills of Critical Thinking

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

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