A Set of Skills for Life-Long Learning

I taught a course at the State University of New York, Empire State College entitled "Math for Decision Making" for almost ten years. It was the college math course for people who were either afraid of math or had done poorly at math through their lives.



The course began with two primary activities: self-assessment so that students could understand what they knew and what they didn't know and a journal to support the student's development of critical thinking skills.



The self-diagnosis allowed the student and myself to focus our efforts where learning needed to occur and the journal became a shared dialogue between the student and the class that supported engaging learning in a sometimes playful, often creative way. Asking questions and taking risks are two essential elements to learning and yet most of our formal education has discouraged or worse punished this behavior.

We worked on going from asking data and opinion questions to asking critical thinking questions. Critical thinking questions are those which examine the assumptions and "frames" through which we view the world.

For example, several years ago ethanol became a "cheaper" alternative to petroleum for a variety of reasons. A government funded industry grew up around producing ethanol from food products (mostly corn) and as the price of petroleum raced to its peak in 2008, from a distance ethanol seemed to be a solution.
As a fuel, how does ethanol compare to petroleum? It is a less powerful fuel per unit of fuel.
How much energy does it take to produce ethanol from corn? It takes more energy to produce ethanol from corn (when you include the entire cycle of corn production) than it delivers to the vehicles burning it. The entire cycle is grossly inefficient.
Why was ethanol so cheap several years ago? Corn ethanol was cheap because there was a surplus of corn.
What has the use of food for ethanol production done to food costs? As food was diverted to ethanol production, the price of corn, wheat & rice and many other food staples was driven up globally, deepening the woes of the most impoverished people.

If you read or listened to any media stories promoting corn ethanol did they focus on this when congress was setting money aside for this activity and entrepreneurs were seeking investors for new ethanol production plants?

Engaging in dialogue or journal writing and asking critical thinking questions are extremely useful in developing a broad set of learning skills.