Warning: This episode may provoke strong reactions from 5-paragraph-essay devotees.  Not for the faint of heart! Listen in as Steve and Dave unfairly blame all of the world's problems on the 5-paragraph essay format frequently used in secondary and higher education.  Also news of the week: Why even young children possess strong critical thinking skills, and how the Air Force explores "forecasting" as a critical thinking goal.

Why the 5-Paragraph Essay is from Hell

Brought to you by The Critical Thinking Institute (theCTInstitute.com), Headagogy disrupts the soft-spoken, NPR-mold for education discussion and does justice to the vibrant, challenging, meaningful, frustrating, empowering, complicated, fulfilling thing that is education, as well as the hardworking, dedicated, heartfelt, and (too often) pissed-off people who are educators.  Ferociously serious, chronically sardonic, intolerant of anti-intellectualism, and fed up with disrespect for education and educators, Headagogy is hosted by Steve Pearlman, Ph.D., founder of The Critical Thinking Institute, author of America’s Critical Thinking Crisis, and educator of 30+ years.

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Headagogy Update!

Steve interviews Louis E. Newman, author of Thinking Critically in College: The Essential Handbook for Student Success.  What's the relationship between thinking and studentship?  How can we -- and why should we -- move students to think about disciplinarity?  Are colleges promoting the thinking of which Newman advises students?  And how can they benefit from his ideas regardless?

Thinking Critically in College with Louis Newman

Is ChatGPT friend or foe?  Should the whole world, as Australia has done, relegate essay writing to inside classrooms?  Is "the academic essay dead"?  Or is ChatGPT, as some have contended, a tool for critical thinking that we should embrace as a new ally in teaching students?As Steve discusses, ChatGPT certainly is a revelation, but no one is really talking about why, and it might not be what you expect.

ChatGPT - A Loaded Blessing In Disguise?

Continuing their discussion of the pedagogical, institutional, and societal implications of rubrics and rubricizing, Joe, Michelle, and Steve get into rubrics and questions of ...privilege and the expression of structuralized racismthe effort to dismantle public education through standardizationhow rubrics as a concept contribute to the undermining of teaching as a profession, and so much more.

Rubric Nation: Are We Rubricizing Our Humanity (Part 2)

Steve and the authors of Rubric Nation -- Michelle Tenam-Zemach and Joseph E. Flynn, Jr. -- get into it about all things rubrics and rubricization, as well as whatever it is that we are doing, good and bad, as an educational system regarding teaching, learning, democracy, assessment, studentship, dialogue, politics, critical thinking, teacher training, privilege, race, class, and our greater (and lesser?) humanity.  Spoiler alert: it's "a mess."  But that's what makes this...

Why the 5-Paragraph Essay is from Hell

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