Teaching To The Middle Of The Road
Gifted Education Resource
June, 2005, by The Critical Thinking Co.™ Staff
The Critical Thinking Co. has been heavily involved in the development of gifted education resources for most of its 50 year history. They realized early that the practice of teaching to the middle in public schools did not serve the best interests of many students. Students who are not being challenged in their classes are prone to boredom and acting out and suffer the real possibility of never achieving their full potential.
Gifted education materials from The Critical Thinking Co. (as the name implies) focus on critical thinking. Critical thinking is the use of core logic to analyze and evaluate evidence in order to create a deeper understanding of what is being learned and to foster better communications skills. A student that has a deeper understanding of the subject at hand and who can distinguish between valid and invalid arguments inevitably becomes a better communicator.
Products from The Critical Thinking Co. serve to expand the minds and capture the imaginations of students at all levels of development. They are particularly well suited, however, to those students who already show a propensity for higher level thinking. Critical Thinking products challenge gifted students to think in new ways and to search for the logic and reasoning behind the correct answers rather than asking them simply to know the correct answers.
Critical Thinking products make learning fun and exciting but they are keenly focused on education while striving to be entertaining. Too many educational games take the reverse approach and leave students entertained but none the wiser. After all, the purpose of education should be to educate.
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