PROF. JENKINS: Failure to teach critical thinking is leaving students unprepared

Rob Jenkins is a Higher Education Fellow with Campus Reform and a tenured associate professor of English at Georgia State University - Perimeter College. In a career spanning more than three decades at five different institutions, he has served as a head men’s basketball coach, an athletic director, a department chair, and an academic dean, as well as a faculty member. Jenkins’ opinions are his own and do not represent those of his employer.  

According to Campus Reform, a recent study found that average IQ in this country has declined for the first time in 100 years, with the sharpest drop among 18-22-year-olds. Could that have anything to do with our education system’s utter failure, for at least two decades, to teach critical thinking skills? 

The problem begins in K-12, but I will focus here on colleges and universities, since that is my bailiwick. (Also, those K-12 teachers were all trained at colleges of education, so there’s clearly a trickle-down effect.)  

Every post-secondary institution in the country claims to teach critical thinking, trumpeting their “successes” in social media posts and recruitment brochures. Yet the truth is, they do a poor job of it—or don’t do it all.  

We know this because the companies that hire recent college graduates tell us so. As I have previously argued, studies show that employers consistently rank recruits low in critical thinking ability. 

For example, a survey conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities in 2021 found that critical thinking had the highest “preparedness gap” of all the skills measured. That’s the difference between the importance of a skill, as determined by employers, and new hires’ perceived competence.  

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For critical thinking, the gap was 21 percent, with 60 percent of employers rating it “very important” while only 39 percent had high confidence in the ability of Gen Z degree-holders to do it. No other skill was that far underwater.  

So are colleges lying about teaching critical thinking, or are employers just expecting too much? I would say neither. Rather, there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between what employers mean by “critical thinking” and what colleges mean by it. 

For employers, “critical thinking” denotes the ability to work through a problem logically and arrive at a viable solution. Indeed, that is what it has meant for most of history.  

When today’s “woke” educators use the term, however, that’s not what they’re talking about. They mean “critical” in the Marxist sense, as in “critical theory.” For them, being “critical” means focusing on problems, not solutions—and in their minds, practically everything is a problem. 

Remember Marx’s infamous dictum: “What we have to accomplish [is] the ruthless criticism of all that exists.” He basically wanted to tear down every societal structure and start over. 

That aim, filtered through the Frankfurt School and the writings of postmodernist thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, devolved into the theory of deconstructionism—the idea that nothing has inherent value or meaning—which has infected the modern university like an intellectual Ebola virus.  

If employers wonder why recent college graduates can’t think critically, it’s because they’re not being taught to. Instead, Gen Z has been taught to “critique,” which is something else entirely—something inherently destructive, not constructive, based on subjective feelings rather than reason. 

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They’ve also been told there’s no such thing as absolute truth, male and female are arbitrary categories, and logic, math, and science are all racist. Why bother trying to figure anything out? It’s much easier to dye your hair blue and shout mindless slogans at people who don’t share your worldview.  

Personally, I suspect our failure to teach critical thinking is indeed making young people stupider.  

Conventional wisdom holds that intelligence is static, independent of learning. Yet I have observed that people who consistently apply their brains to solving complex problems tend to become more adept at it—and more sought-after—while those who shun this demanding task in favor of indulging their emotions ultimately become less capable of dealing with the world—and with others.  

Perhaps that’s why nearly three-fourths of managers, in a recent survey by ResumeBuilder.com, reported that “Zoomers” are the hardest people to work with. Twelve percent admitted to firing a young worker in their first week.  

That might not prove those kids are stupid—but it sure doesn’t make them very smart.     

Editorials and op-eds reflect the opinion of the authors and not necessarily that of Campus Reform or the Leadership Institute.