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Efforts to develop critical thinking falter in practice because too many professors still lecture to passive audiences instead of challenging students to apply what they have learned to new questions.

Derek Bok

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Derek Bok
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: March 22
Lawyer
Pedagogue
University Teacher
Writer
Bryn Mawr
Pennsylvania
Derek Curtis Bok
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Still
Students
Professors
Many
Instead
Challenging
Thinking
Learned
Passive
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Lecture
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Critical
Lectures

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Freshly minted Ph.Ds typically teach the way their favorite professors taught.
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The most obvious purpose of college education is to help students acquire information and knowledge by acquainting them with facts, theories, generalizations, principles, and the like. This purpose scarcely requires justification.
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Good teaching is creating really interesting generalizations out of war stories.
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The college that takes students with modest entering abilities and improves their abilities substantially contributes more than the school that takes very bright students and helps them develop only modestly.
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Colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should. Many students graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers... reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems.
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Again and again, universities have put a low priority on the very programs and initiatives that are needed most to increase productivity and competitiveness, improve the quality of government, and overcome the problems of illiteracy, miseducation, and unemployment.
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Despite the hours spent debating different models of general education, the choices faculties make rarely lead to any significant difference in the cognitive development of undergraduates.
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Critics of American colleges typically attribute the failings of undergraduate education to a tendency on the part of professors to neglect their teaching to concentrate on research. In fact, the evidence does not support this thesis, except perhaps in major research universities.
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Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy.
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For some students, especially in the sciences, the knowledge gained in college may be directly relevant to graduate study. For almost all students, a liberal arts education works in subtle ways to create a web of knowledge that will illumine problems and enlighten judgment on innumerable occasions in later life.
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I won't say there aren't any Harvard graduates who have never asserted a superior attitude. But they have done so to our great embarrassment and in no way represent the Harvard I know.
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There are no tests similar to SATs to tell us how much undergraduates know. State legislators, who appropriate billions of dollars each year to higher education, are naturally interested in finding out what they are getting for their money.
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Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability.
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Although professors regard improving critical thinking as the most important goal of college, tests reveal that seniors who began their studies with average critical thinking skills have progressed only from the 50th percentile of entering freshmen to about the 69th percentile.
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If we are prepared to invest the necessary time and effort, affirmative action can contribute to Harvard's quality and not detract from it.
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There is far too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot.
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I think the minority students that we admit to Harvard are every bit as meritorious as the white students that we admit.
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I think it's sort of an outrage that companies should have to hire firms to teach the college graduates they employ how to write.
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Universities are institutions run by amateurs to train professionals.
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An educated man must have a curiosity in exploring the unfamiliar and unexpected, an open-mindedness in entertaining opposing points of view, tolerance for the ambiguity that surrounds so many important issues, and a willingness to make the best decisions he can in the face of uncertainty and doubt.
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