Every year, freshmen and seniors in the USA take the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus (CLA+), issued by the non-profit Council for Aid to Education. Its goal is to measure critical-thinking skills of students entering and leaving 200 institutions of “higher learning.”
The results in 2017 are disastrous. The College Fix summarized The Wall Street Journal’s analysis:
“The Journal found that at about half of schools, large groups of seniors scored at basic or below-basic levels,” according to Newsweek. For many of these seniors, this means that “they can generally read documents and communicate to readers but can’t make a cohesive argument or interpret evidence.”
Let’s repeat this astounding conclusion: Many seniors cannot make a cohesive argument or interpret evidence.
Parrot, React, and Follow
Should anyone be surprised? As you can read in Brand Is Destiny, universities and colleges are teaching students not to think, not to question, not to analyze — just to parrot, react, and follow.
Conclusion: so-called higher education is an expensive, counterproductive catastrophe.
Critical thinking, the objective analysis of facts to form a judgment, is discouraged at every level — from gender fluidity to climate science to food — by the government, the media, the universities, and the mobocracy.
The fascist mob in Portland forced two white women to close their burrito truck — because they were appropriating Mexican culture. In a free society, nobody even fought back. Does this mean Mexicans aren’t “allowed” to make hamburgers, either?
President Barack Obama oxymoronically told us that climate change is settled science. As Charles Krauthammer wrote in a 2014 article: “There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge.”
Albert Einstein, with his Theory of Relativity, historically unsettled the science of his day.
But, today’s brainwashed, robotic students, armed with safespaces, microaggressions, and condoned protesting, know nothing about objective analysis and thinking.
Unhinged snowflakes rioted at Evergreen College because a white professor refused to leave campus on anti-white day. The administration capitulated. Lesson learned: thinking and maturity and Supreme Court decisions have no place in society.
Crippling Enterprise Effectiveness
These unthinking, unchallenged students are now joining the corporate ranks. Because political correctness (PC) is rampant in the modern enterprise, which practically worships them, critical thinking has become scarcer and competitiveness is suffering. Adults have suspended logic to accommodate spoiled children.
In “Justify Your Artificial Intelligence,” I wrote, “Any decision made without critical thinking will backfire.”
Example: The board’s lack of critical thinking allowed CEO Marissa Mayer to run Yahoo into the ground. In 2008, Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo for $45 billion. Instead, the board went in circles for four years, then hired Ms. Mayer in 2012. For five years, she made one blunder after another — and even tried to purge male employees — with impunity.
Why did Yahoo’s board fail to stop Mayer? Fear of sexism accusations, perhaps? In June of 2017, Verizon purchased Yahoo’s core Internet assets for $4.5 billion; Mayer departed with at least $186 million.
Employees who, because of political correctness or inabilities to make cohesive arguments and interpret evidence, will communicate dysfunctionally (if at all) and turn your enterprise into an entroprise, akin to a hunk of Swiss cheese, thereby crippling its effectiveness.
That’s right: Every poor communicator is a hole in your organization.
How can you expect to create a strong, unique brand, which sets your company’s purpose and direction, if said company resembles Swiss cheese?
Parting Advice to CEOs
Generals and soldiers incapable of critical thinking will die and lose wars.
Enterprises incapable of critical thinking will lose customers and disappear. Think Sears.
If your employees fear criticizing each other’s ideas and tasks — because of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, country of origin, or other reasons — expect dysfunctional communication and failure.
Never hire, promote, or seek the advice of those who can’t analyze and challenge trends, make cohesive arguments, or interpret evidence — even if corporate PC pressures you to do so.
The ultimate cost of no critical thinking: defeat.
© 2017 Marc H. Rudov. All Rights Reserved.
About the Author
Marc Rudov is a branding advisor to CEOs,
producer of MarcRudovTV, and author of four books