What Is Critical Thinking?
A Brief Preface to the Next Few EntriesTeaching a school-reform-themed writing class to college students (most of them freshmen) affords me a fascinating view of what ideas and understandings are (and are not) "sticking" in American secondary schools.
Many--though certainly not all--of my students come from historically high-achieving public and private schools; their presence at the University already guarantees that, in any number of ways, they are educational "success stories." And as is clear every time they open their mouths, they are a scary-smart group of young scholars. In addition, my writing class is one among a large menu of themed writing classes that fulfills the academic writing requirement for students at the University, but one thing the sets my class apart is a semester-long school reform project that amounts to a significant bit of "extra" work for those who choose to enroll. In short, operating on the theory that students don't like extra work, the undergraduates taking my class tend to arrive with a strong prior interest in American school reform.
So I'm fascinated listening to my students, most of whom are only a semester or so out of high school, discuss and critique and propose reform initiatives in American public schools. I want to spend the next few entries noting some interesting things that have tended to come up in class over my three semesters offering this course.
And Now to the Point
Students have a strong intuitive sense for the useless in school. Though they disagree about whether everyone should learn chemistry and read Shakespeare during high school, they agree that much of what their teachers asked them to focus on was disappointingly useless, and they seem to enjoy the project of proposing a revised curriculum for the kind of school each of them would design if they had the chance (in this class, however briefly, they do have a chance).
One of the goals of a good school that they seem to agree on is the development of critical thinking skills in students. It's striking how consistently they advocate for this. But just as striking is how difficult it seems to be for students to define this term, one that they all agree is crucial. There's a bit of "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it" going on, but from my position as a listener in their discussions, I hear some of these definitions emerge:
- Critical thinking means "thinking"; its opposite is thoughtlessness
- Critical thinking means "really thinking"; its opposite is pretending to think
- Critical thinking means "strategizing"; its opposite is guessing
- Critical thinking means "evaluating" and maybe "resisting"; its opposite is unreflective acceptance
This certainly is not an exhaustive list of ways "critical thinking" is conceived. Consider, by contrast, its uptake by teachers and education researchers who are interested in "critical literacy," a program that might define critical thinking as "looking at what is included and excluded in a text and how that relates to struggles for power and control." Is this what teachers mean when they imagine themselves teaching students to think critically?
So what exactly IS critical thinking? And what is revealed by my students believing in its necessity but not being sure how do describe/define it?
Post a Comment
0 Comments: