To the Editor:

Democratic operatives love to paint with a broad brush when painting their picture of the ignorant troglodyte average Republican. Good old Ben from Salado did that in his critical thinking letter to the editor on the 15th of July.

 I particularly enjoyed his copied statements  from the internet, on “Critical Thinking” starting in the third paragraph. Ben used this little canard as a way of bashing Texas, the Republican Party and every hard-working teacher in Texas, because he thinks critical thinking is more important than skills training, is all I can critically deduce.

Like most supposed semi-educated intellectuals in our state, this Democrat looks down his nose at the rest of us, and is sure that the problem is the ignorant Republicans holding us back, while never looking at the real problem in the school systems. Critical thinking skills in the classroom will not help Johnny or Jane read, write, do math, understand science or even understand how government is supposed to work.

In his letter, he says, “To think critically is to justify and support your values and decisions.” Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but being mentally ill or prejudiced can give me the same outcome. As a Sociology 101 or 102 class, this little “Critical Thinking” exercise might have been fun, but as a way to bash those who you disagree with politically, it falls flat. 

If Ben would have used his analogy with city/county government rather than the school system and thrown in the failure of not asking “And then what,” I might have agreed, if he had just kept his partisan politics out of it.   

Phillip L. Newton

retired first sergeant, U.S. Army

Killeen