We have been down this road before

One of the more costly casualties of the last decade has been the systematic attack on education and on critical thinking. Why is critical thinking so important?

Critical thinking empowers us to recognize patterns rather than just isolated events. While memorization helps us recall specific historical moments, critical thinking allows us to identify the underlying structures and dynamics that connect seemingly different situations across time and context. This pattern recognition is precisely what makes critical thinking so valuable.

Symbols and their presentations evolve, much like fashion, but their signifiers and the narratives that fuel them often remain the same. Critical thinking allows us to look beyond surface-level differences to recognize familiar patterns of rhetoric, persuasion, and manipulation.

This skill enables us to:

- Evaluate claims independently rather than accepting them at face value;

- Recognize when familiar ideologies are being repackaged in new terminology;

- Identify logical fallacies and rhetorical techniques designed to bypass rational thought;

- Connect disparate events to reveal broader societal patterns and trajectories;

When education prioritizes memorization over critical analysis, we lose this crucial ability to navigate complexity. We become vulnerable to manipulation precisely because we lack the tools to recognize recurring patterns dressed in new symbols, and we fail to see that we have been down this road before.

We have been down this road before.