The Republican Party of Texas includes in its 2012 election campaign the opposition to critical thinking. ‘We oppose the teaching of…critical thinking skills and similar programs that…have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs’. So fixed beliefs are good? What happens if a student’s fixed belief is that teaching critical thinking is a good thing? Would that not have to be challenged? Is Texas in the country that leads the world in the Nobel Prize league table?
In his new book (‘Rationality: What it is. Why it seems scarce. Why it matters’), the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has argued in favour of