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The Value of Critical Thinking
Let us start with you first. Why
would it be of value to you to have the
cognitive skills of interpretation, analysis,
evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-
regulation?
Why would it be of value to you to
learn to approach life and to approach
specific concerns with the critical thinking
dispositions listed above? Would you have
greater success in your work? Would you
get better grades?
Actually the answer to the grades
question, scientifically speaking, is very
possibly, Yes! A study of over 1100 college
students shows that scores on a college
level critical thinking skills test significantly
correlated with college GPA.
[5]
It has also
been shown that critical thinking skills can
be learned, which suggests that as one
learns them one’s GPA might well improve.
In further support of this hypothesis is the
significant correlation between critical
thinking and reading comprehension.
Improvements in the one are paralleled by
improvements in the other. Now if you can
read better and think better, might you not
do better in your classes, learn more, and
get better grades. It is, to say the least,
very plausible.
Learning, Critical Thinking, and Our
Nation’s Future
"The future now belongs to societies
that organize themselves for learning...
nations that want high incomes and full
employment must develop policies that
emphasize the acquisition of knowledge
and skills by everyone, not just a select
few."
Ray Marshall & Marc Tucker, Thinking For A Living:
Education And The Wealth of Nations, Basic Books. New
York. 1992.
But what a limited benefit — better
grades. Who really cares in the long run?
Two years after college, five years out, what
does GPA really mean? Right now college
level technical and professional programs
have a half-life of about four years, which
means that the technical content is
expanding so fast and changing so much
that in about four years after graduation
your professional training will be in serious
need of renewal. So, if the only thing a
college is good for is to get the entry level
training and the credential needed for some
job, then college would be a time-limited
value.
"Critical thinking is the
process of purposeful, self-
regulatory judgment. This
process reasoned consideration to evidence,
context, conceptualizations,
methods, and criteria."
The APA Delphi Report,
Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert
Consensus for Purposes of Educational
Assessment and Instruction
1990 ERIC Doc. NO.: ED 315 423
Is that the whole story? A job is a
good thing, but is that what a college
education is all about, getting started in a
good job? Maybe some cannot see its
further value, but many do.
A main purpose, if not the main purpose, of the
collegiate experience, at either the two-year
or the four-year level, is to achieve what
people have called a "liberal education."
Not liberal in the sense of a smattering of
this and that for no particular purpose
except to fulfill the unit requirement. But
liberal in the sense of "liberating." And who
is being liberated? You! Liberated from a
kind of slavery. But from whom?
From professors. Actually from
dependence on professors so that they no
longer stand as infallible authorities
delivering opinions beyond our capacity to
challenge, question, and dissent. In fact,
this is exactly what the professors want.
They want their students to excel on their
own, to go beyond what is currently known,
to make their own contributions to
knowledge and to society.
[Being a professor is a curious job — the more
effective you are as a teacher, less your
students require your aid in learning.]
Liberal education is about learning
to learn, to think for yourself, on your own
and in collaboration with others. Liberal
education leads us away from naive
acceptance of authority, above self-
defeating relativism, and beyond ambiguous
contextualism. It culminates in principled
reflective judgment. Learning critical
thinking, cultivating the critical spirit, is not
just a means to this end, it is part of the goal
itself. People who are poor critical thinkers,
who lack the dispositions and skills
described, cannot be said to be liberally
educated, regardless of the academic
degrees they may hold.
Yes, there is much more to a liberal
education, than critical thinking. There is an
understanding of the methods, principles,
theories and ways of achieving knowledge
which are proper to the different intellectual
realms. There is an encounter with the
cultural, artistic and spiritual dimensions of
life. There is the evolution of one’s decision
making to the level of principled integrity
and concern for the common good and
social justice. There is the realization of the
ways all our lives are shaped by global as
well as local political, social, psychological,
economic, environmental, and physical
forces. There is the growth that comes from
the interaction with cultures, languages,
ethnic groups, religions, nationalities, and
social classes other than one’s own. There
is the refinement of one’s humane
sensibilities through reflection on the
recurring questions of human existence,
meaning, love, life and death. There is the
sensitivity, appreciation and critical
appraisal of all that is good and all that is
bad in the human condition. As the mind
awakens and matures, and the proper
nurturing and educational nourishment is
provided, these others central parts of a
liberal education develop as well. Critical
thinking plays an essential role in achieving
these purposes.
Any thing else? What about going
beyond the individual to the community?
The experts say critical thinking is
fundamental to, if not essential for, "a
rational and democratic society." What
might the experts mean by this?
Well, how wise would democracy be
if people abandoned critical thinking?
Imagine an electorate that cared not for the
facts, that did not wish to consider the pros
and cons of the issues, or if they did, had
not the brain power to do so. Imagine your
life and the lives of your friends and family
placed in the hands of juries and judges
who let their biases and stereotypes govern
their decisions, who do not attend to the
evidence, who are not interested in
reasoned inquiry, who do not know how to
draw an inference or evaluate one. Without
critical thinking people would be more easily
exploited not only politically but
economically. The impact of abandoning
critical thinking would not be confined to the
micro-economics of the household checking
account. Suppose the people involved in
international commerce were lacking in
critical thinking skills, they would be unable
to analyze and interpret the market trends,
evaluate the implications of interest
fluctuations, or explain the potential impact
of those factors which influence large scale
production and distribution of goods and
materials. Suppose these people were
unable to draw the proper inferences from
the economic facts, or unable to properly
evaluate the claims made by the
unscrupulous and misinformed. In such a
situation serious economic mistakes would
be made. Whole sectors of the economy
would become unpredictable, and large
scale economic disaster would become
extremely likely. So, given a society that
does not value and cultivate critical thinking,
we might reasonably expect that in time the
judicial system and the economic system
would collapse. And, in such a society, one
that does not liberate its citizens by
teaching them to think critically for
themselves, it would be madness to
advocate democratic forms of government.
Is it any wonder that business and
civic leaders are maybe even more
interested in critical thinking than
educators? Critical thinking employed by an
informed citizenry is a necessary condition
for the success of democratic institutions
and for competitive free-market economic
enterprise. These values are so important
that it is in the national interest that we
should try to educate all citizens so that
they can learn to think critically. Not just for
their own personal good, but for the good of
the rest of us too.
Generalizing, imagine a society, say,
for example, the millions of people living in
the Los Angeles basin, or in New York and
along the east coast, or in Chicago, or
Mexico City, Cairo, Rome, Tokyo, Baghdad,
Moscow, Beijing, or Hong Kong. They are,
de facto, entirely dependent upon one
another, and on hundreds of thousands of
other people as well for their external
supplies of food and water, for their survival.
Now imagine that these millions permitted
their schools and colleges to stop teaching
people how to think critically and effectively.
Imagine that because of war, or AIDS, or
famine, or religious conviction, parents
could not or would not teach their children
how to think critically. Imagine the social
and political strife, the falling apart of
fundamental systems of public safety and
public health, the loss of any scientific
understanding of disease control or
agricultural productivity, the emergence of
paramilitary gangs, strong men, and petty
warlords seeking to protect themselves and
their own by acquiring control over what
food and resources they can and destroying
those who stand in their path.
Look at what has happened around
the world in places devastated by economic
embargoes, one-sided warfare,
or the AIDS epidemic. Or, consider the problem of
global warming, and how important it is for
all of us to cooperate with efforts to curtail
our uses of fossil fuels in order to reduce
emissions of greenhouse gases.
Consider the "cultural revolutions"
undertaken by totalitarian rulers. Notice how
in virtually every case absolutist and
dictatorial despots seek ever more severe
limitations on free expression. They label
"liberal" intellectuals "dangers to society"
and expel "radical" professors from teaching
posts because they might "corrupt the
youth."
Some use the power of their
governmental or religious authority to crush
not only their opposition but the moderates
as well -- all in the name of maintaining the
purity of their movement. They intimidate
journalists and those media outlets which
dare to comment "negatively" on their
political and cultural goals or their heavy
handed methods.
The historical evidence is there for
us to see what happens when schools are
closed or converted from places of
education to places for indoctrination. We
know what happens when children are no
longer being taught truth-seeking, the skills
of good reasoning, or the lessons of human
history and basic science: Cultures
disintegrate; communities collapse; the
machinery of civilization fails; massive
numbers of people die; and sooner or later
social and political chaos ensues.
Or, imagine a media, a religious or
political hegemony which cultivated,
instead of critical thinking, all the opposite
dispositions? Or consider if that hegemony
reinforced uncritical, impulsive decision
making and the "ready-shoot-aim" approach
to executive action. Imagine governmental
structures, administrators, and community
leaders who, instead of encouraging critical
thinking, were content to make knowingly
irrational, illogical, prejudicial, unreflective,
short-sighted, and unreasonable decisions.
How long might it take for the people
in this society which does not value critical
thinking to be at serious risk of foolishly
harming themselves and each other?
Currently, world news reports speek of
school buildings and teachers being shot
terrorists and violently extreme religious
zealots. Education which includes a good
measure of critical thinking skills and
dispositions like truth-seeking and open-
mindedness, is a problem for terrorists and
extremists because they want to have
complete control of what people think. Their
methods include indoctrination, intimidation,
and the strictest authoritarian orthodoxy. In
the "black-and-white" world of "us vs. them"
a good education would mean that the
people might begin to think for themselves.
And that is something these extremists do
not want.
History shows that assaults on
learning, whether by book burning, exile of
intellectuals, or regulations aimed at
suppressing research and frustrating the
fair-minded, evidence-based, and unfettered
pursuit of knowledge, can happen wherever
and whenever people are not vigilant
defenders of open, objective, and
independent inquiry.
Does this mean that society should
place a very high value on critical thinking?
Absolutely.
Does this mean society has the right
to force someone to learn to think critically?
Maybe.
But, really, should we have to?
Expert Consensus Statement Regarding Critical
Thinking and the Ideal Critical Thinker
"We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which
results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as
explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or
contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. CT is essential as
a tool of inquiry. As such, CT is a liberating force in education and a powerful
resource in one’s personal and civic life. While not synonymous with good
thinking, CT is a pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon. The ideal
critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-
minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases,
prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in
complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the
selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which
are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. Thus,
educating good critical thinkers means working toward this ideal. It combines
developing CT skills with nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield
useful insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic society."
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