I worked in higher ed for nearly 20 years, and in my experience, most institutions weren’t looking for critical thinkers. They were looking for followers. It’s hierarchical for a reason.
When you step outside that hierarchy and start questioning the status quo, even with viable solutions, ideas that would improve workflows or ease the burden on both staff and students, you’re often met with resistance. Sometimes even outright targeting.
So it goes a lot deeper than just not being rewarded for thinking differently. You’re actively discouraged from it.
This resonates so much. You’re right that it often goes beyond just failing to reinforce thoughtful questioning; many institutions actively discourage it. I think hierarchies reward compliance because it feels safer and easier to manage, even when it comes at the cost of better ideas, better systems, or better outcomes for everyone.
I believe that shifting the reinforcement structures is crucial in preventing the continual reproduction of the same compliance-driven patterns.
You wrote: “facts” consistently ranked the highest, while “evidence” and “sources” lagged quite a bit behind. “Opinions” got more attention than “misinformation.”
Somewhere along the line, K-12 education declared that only facts and opinions exist. My students constantly think this way because it is how they were taught. Everything is either a fact or an opinion. There are no principles. There are no ideals. There are no hypotheses. Everything abstract or conceptual must be opinion, because they aren't facts. Unless they are facts. Either way, everything is a fact or an opinion. Ontology and epistemology (what is and how do we know) have gone out the window.
Even meaning has been squashed. What's the meaning of a fact? All by itself, do facts have any meaning? If they don't then even facts are ultimately opinions, once a person gives the fact its meaning. But this is the consequence of postmodernism: the meaning of the world is up to the subjective individual. And even the obsession over facts is a consequence of positivist materialism.
Postmodernism and Positivism: the evil twins of contemporary days.
This is such an important point, and I completely agree. The way we’ve framed everything as either “fact” or “opinion” has overlooked a significant aspect of how we actually come to know things: through hypotheses, theories, reflection, and questioning.
You’re right that this shift flattens meaning and makes it almost impossible to talk about how we know what we know (epistemology), or why it matters (ontology). It also feeds into the exact loop I’m describing: valuing what’s quick and easy to prove over the harder work of real understanding.
I am a teacher. I work in schools. Even in my program, IB PYP, most administrators are calling that themselves, "data-driven" as a sort of performative alignment with the current trend. It used to be "agency" and "student voice" but since those trends weren't "measurable" they are tagging their resumes with being "data-driven".
This is a great example of how language shifts in education often reflect trends more than deep, meaningful practice. You’re right: when “agency” and “student voice” weren’t easily measurable, they fell out of favor, replaced by the safer, more quantifiable banner of being “data-driven.” Then it becomes performative rather than a genuine commitment to using data to build richer, more thoughtful learning environments. This loop also contributes to why teaching thinking in schools has become such a challenge...
I worked in higher ed for nearly 20 years, and in my experience, most institutions weren’t looking for critical thinkers. They were looking for followers. It’s hierarchical for a reason.
When you step outside that hierarchy and start questioning the status quo, even with viable solutions, ideas that would improve workflows or ease the burden on both staff and students, you’re often met with resistance. Sometimes even outright targeting.
So it goes a lot deeper than just not being rewarded for thinking differently. You’re actively discouraged from it.
This resonates so much. You’re right that it often goes beyond just failing to reinforce thoughtful questioning; many institutions actively discourage it. I think hierarchies reward compliance because it feels safer and easier to manage, even when it comes at the cost of better ideas, better systems, or better outcomes for everyone.
I believe that shifting the reinforcement structures is crucial in preventing the continual reproduction of the same compliance-driven patterns.
You wrote: “facts” consistently ranked the highest, while “evidence” and “sources” lagged quite a bit behind. “Opinions” got more attention than “misinformation.”
Somewhere along the line, K-12 education declared that only facts and opinions exist. My students constantly think this way because it is how they were taught. Everything is either a fact or an opinion. There are no principles. There are no ideals. There are no hypotheses. Everything abstract or conceptual must be opinion, because they aren't facts. Unless they are facts. Either way, everything is a fact or an opinion. Ontology and epistemology (what is and how do we know) have gone out the window.
Even meaning has been squashed. What's the meaning of a fact? All by itself, do facts have any meaning? If they don't then even facts are ultimately opinions, once a person gives the fact its meaning. But this is the consequence of postmodernism: the meaning of the world is up to the subjective individual. And even the obsession over facts is a consequence of positivist materialism.
Postmodernism and Positivism: the evil twins of contemporary days.
This is such an important point, and I completely agree. The way we’ve framed everything as either “fact” or “opinion” has overlooked a significant aspect of how we actually come to know things: through hypotheses, theories, reflection, and questioning.
You’re right that this shift flattens meaning and makes it almost impossible to talk about how we know what we know (epistemology), or why it matters (ontology). It also feeds into the exact loop I’m describing: valuing what’s quick and easy to prove over the harder work of real understanding.
I am a teacher. I work in schools. Even in my program, IB PYP, most administrators are calling that themselves, "data-driven" as a sort of performative alignment with the current trend. It used to be "agency" and "student voice" but since those trends weren't "measurable" they are tagging their resumes with being "data-driven".
This is a great example of how language shifts in education often reflect trends more than deep, meaningful practice. You’re right: when “agency” and “student voice” weren’t easily measurable, they fell out of favor, replaced by the safer, more quantifiable banner of being “data-driven.” Then it becomes performative rather than a genuine commitment to using data to build richer, more thoughtful learning environments. This loop also contributes to why teaching thinking in schools has become such a challenge...