>I've noticed that many elementary school's mission statements specifically state in some way an attainable challenge in critical thinking but I've not heard of any elementary school actually providing a course in it. I wonder where it would fit into the schedule given the current curriculum and the limited number of hours?
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>math
>science
>reading
>english
>social studies
>keyboarding or computer science
>health
>physical fitness
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>were the classes my daughter took in the 4th grade. Reading was a separate course and still was last year in the 7th grade. English was actually called Communications but the subject matter was the same as the old English classes. There are not enough hours in the day as it is to cover all of the required material and the core subjects are lacking in attention...

I don't see music or art here either

There are plenty of quick solutions to something like this. The course I'm talking about could be once a week, or perhaps run just part of the school year.

But ignoring that, lets put it this way: if the student is taught some critical reasoning, and if my hypothesis is confirmed that these courses make the student more thoughtful and make the time spent in the rest of his classes more effective, you could easily shorten the class periods to add the new class without having an adverse effect on the schooling.

You could also... erm.. creatively make critical reasoning apart of the science curriculum :-)