As an undergraduate senior, I took a money and banking course in which my professor asked a few students about their political affiliations. When the professor found out that the students were Democrats, those students were treated like gold for the rest of the semester. As the course progressed, a couple of classmates began to question, with politeness and genuine intrigue, some of the political statements and macroeconomic assumptions made by the professor, who was a dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian economist. The professor often responded with snarling vitriol and even personal attacks.

My story is probably not unique, but that’s exactly why some professors’ tendencies to reaffirm the “acceptable” point of view and teach students what to think, rather than how to think, have become so problematic: such instruction is now so common that it’s accepted as a fact of campus life, even though colleges everywhere claim to enhance students’ critical thinking skills.

In this recent Pope Center article, English professor David Clemens examines the disconnect between campus reality and campus buzzwords. “Critical thinking,” argues Clemens, is a term often used by higher education leaders, but one that’s not very well understood or defined. “Real critical thinking didn’t stand a chance in the hostile education culture that denies its relevance. You can still find the remains of the critical thinking movement, but you will have to look in the math, science, and business enclaves where reality still matters,” he writes.