America's Critical Thinking Crisis

Even though 95% of Americans consider critical thinking an essential skill that schools should teach, our students’ problem-solving skills rank among the lowest in the world.  Students actually show lower brain activity in class than while watching TV or sleeping, and most college students, as well as half of American adults, fail critical thinking tests. But why?  Written by an expert who trains educators and executives, America’s Critical Thinking Crisis shows that the problem doesn’t fall on educators or Gen Z, but on a fundamentally flawed conception of what education means.  Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, and educational research, it demonstrates how we can create legions of divergent thinkers and problem solvers by tapping the hardwiring that innately makes children think all the time, in all areas of life — just not so much in school.

Pearlman’s timely book is an essential text for understanding why our students don’t think critically. It also demonstrates what education should be and how it could transform our students and our culture. The book is a needed addition to the library of any educator or parent, or just anyone concerned about the direction our culture is headed.

Chris Hakala

Director, Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship

Springfield College


Pearlman calls us to reimagine our education system as a whole and redefine what it means to teach and learn. We must understand that reason and critical thinking should be the primary outcomes of any quality education. America’s Critical Thinking Crisis speaks to us with urgency, and calls educators at every level to rethink, revise, and repurpose our work.  Heeding Pearlman’s call may well be our only existential hope.

Matthew Bristow-Smith

2019 North Carolina Principal of the Year

Principal, Edgecombe Early College High School


Pearlman's America’s Critical Thinking Crisis is a book written by a true college classroom pedagogue--one who eats, breathes, sleeps, and, for all I know, smokes college pedagogy as well. Filled with quirky asides, the book is flush with ideas about learning that only someone who has spent a life at the lectern (and deconstructing “the lectern”) could imagine. Easygoing in its tone and passionate in its commitments, the book is strongly recommended for all of those dismayed at the state of American higher education and willing to get their hands dirty to fix it anew.  


Dr. Jacques Berlinerblau

Author of  Campus Confidential

Professor, Georgetown University

Helping students develop critical thinking is at the core of what most educators and society see as the essential role of higher education. In clear prose and with a dose of dark humor, Pearlman eviscerates current practices and lays out the urgent necessity for change. He also suggests strategies that could actually work, strategies that must become part of ongoing conversations in every facet of our society.

Anton Tolman, Ph.D., Co-author, Why Students Resist Learning