Discussion: Fatal Vision—The Failure of the Schools in Teaching Children to Think

Throughout this book, the authors have offered us a vision of what education could and should be like in the 21st century. They suggest that the primary purpose of education should be to develop students’ abilities to think and to encourage a disposition toward thoughtfulness. This vision of education is not new; similar ideas have been around since before we last entered a new century. Unfortunately, in the past 100 years little real progress has been made toward achieving these goals. Hundreds of reports from numerous committees and researchers point to the fact that our nation’s children still cannot think well and that our schools are not yet teaching students to think. Sadly, many of the calls for teaching thinking that were made over 100 years ago, rather than sounding archaic, are still pertinent today.