Critical Thinking in School

         It seems that much of the work that is assigned in school is assigned with a particular method in mind.  This often seems to result in a situation in which the teacher is as concerned with the way that the student does the work as she is with the end result of the work.  This being the case, the teacher will frequently give meticulous directions for the step-by-step completion of any given assignment.  In this scenario the student is regularly put in a situation where he need not use his own thinking powers, but instead merely develop the ability to fallow directions.  Although this might have been quite useful when many students were bound to become unthinking factory workers, in this day and age, when the ability to critically think and problem solve is of utmost importance to many employers, step-by-step directions seem slightly observed.  It seems that it would be better for teachers to assign projects in which the end result is the most important goal.  The teacher could give little instructions and instead give the student the task of figuring out how to solve the given problem.  In this way the student would be forced to think critically, not only about the end goal, but how to achieve the end goal.  This, it seems, would help to raise the level of critical thinking in today’s schools.