Supporters of 'Critical Thinking' are well aware that their programs have not delivered what the public considers to be 'successful stats'.
An academic supporter of 'Critical Thinking', Jonathan Haber, noted back in 2020 in his article for "Inside Higher Ed",
"It’s Time to Get Serious About Teaching Critical Thinking", that:
 |
| Critical Thinking: What do you expect from an 'education system' that produces failure? |
"For close to 50 years, educators and politicians from classrooms to the Oval Office have stressed the importance of graduating students who are skilled critical thinkers...."
, and that:
"...Despite this progress, 75 percent of employers claim the students they hire after 12, 16 or more years of formal education lack the ability to think critically and solve problems -- despite the fact that nearly all educators claim to prioritize helping students develop those very skills...."
Yes, even supporters of CT realize that it is strange that teaching more and more of '
those very skills', has led to matters becoming worse and worse. And yet... he's urging more 'serious' teaching of 'Critical Thinking'. How do you suppose he squares that circle?
Of course to a 'Critical Thinker', 'Critical Thinking'
can't be the problem, because CT is the
cure (to
what...? Shhh...), so how these academics have opted to handle their problem, is first to have
us channel the classic definition of insanity by proposing that we go along with doing more of the same thing in hopes of getting different results, and second, for them to find other 'difficulties' to divert the blame from CT with.
In identifying those difficulties, Haber appears to put a lot of emphasis in his article on the 'content' that students learn, and upon their '
reasons for belief', but despite how sensible that might at first sound, we should take note of how he makes his points, such as in this passage:
"...Structured arguments play a special role in highlighting the importance of reasons for belief (called a warrant in logical argumentation), which gives students the ability to understand why true premises can lead to a false conclusion -- rather than labor under the misconception that the world consists of facts that can be true or false, with everything else falling into the category of opinion (or worse, “just an opinion”). ..."
, and before taking his last point first, I'll first point out that the
definition of a Fact is: "
1 that which actually exists or is the case; reality or truth.
2 something known to exist or to have happened.
3 a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true."
, and then ask: How does his statement that: "
... the misconception that the world consists of facts that can be true or false...", follow from that? Given what a 'fact'
is, how is one not either true or false? And what other category should a logical examination of 'true premises' fit into, than true, false, or (valid or invalid) opinion?
"But Van, you misunderstand! He's saying there's more than only facts in the world!"
Really? So he isn't talking about what is "...
known to exist or to have happened"? Or he's talking about *truth* that isn't "...
known by actual experience or observation..."?
How would he use 'Critical Thinking' to teach either of those? It seems to me, '
as if' he's trying to avoid saying out loud what
the theorists underpinning 'Critical Thinking', from Dewey & Co. to Bloom & Co., have made very clear (
see previous posts), that since *Truth* is only '
what works', 'Critical Thinkers' should 'get beyond' concerning themselves with what's right & wrong and move on to engage in some
'higher-order thinking skills' in the '
cognitive domain' so as to get to those '
answers' that '
everyone knows!' are *true* enough.
Do I go too far? Consider that when he says: "
...called a warrant in logical argumentation...", he is
not referring to a logical inference made from your understanding that there is
"...a relationship between evidence and claim..." - that was foundational to the
old method of logical reasoning that 'Critical Thinking' has replaced. What
his use of 'warrant' refers to, is from the new method of
How to make an argument that comes from
Toulmin's method of argumentation, which the British logician
Stephen Toulmin began advancing in 1958, where
"... a warrant is the statement that certifies such a relationship..." - meaning that the 'warrant' doesn't need to
be true, it only needs to be a
claim stating what someone believes to be *true*, because Toulmin found that to be more effective means of winning an argument.
I kid you not. According to the Toulmin Method, your 'belief' is an acceptable basis for whatever claim you're making, not because you're showing evidence for believing it, but
because you
believe it (
hi Descartes!):
"... the informative statement must be believed by the listener or reader before it becomes evidence in a unit of proof ..."
[emphasis in original]
In one of the better papers on Toulmin's Warrant: "
Toulmin's Rhetorical Logic: What's the Warrant for Warrants?", written by a supporter of it named Bill Keith, he at least identifies many of the contradictory explanations that 'Critical Thinkers' have given for what a 'warrant' is, and notes that:
"...Toulmin claimed, in The Uses of Argument (1958), that not all argument was reducible to logic. He offered an alternative to the material or formal conditional; he envisaged a different inference principle, which he called a warrant...."
, and in a point that's critical to our discussion, he notes that:
"...In a sense, Toulmin is subtly moving ninety degrees from the classical tradition of logic..."
, and in his alternative to the traditional Aristotelian method that a valid conclusion follows from what can be inferred from evidence that can be shown
is true, Toulmin uses 'warrant' as the statement of belief that gives you
permission to refer to a claim that it is *true* enough:
"...A warrant, normally, is permission todo something, and that permission is conditional.2 The common use of the term "warrant" in law is the prototype: a warrant to search a home is permission to search it...."
and that,
"...In many secondary texts on Toulmin's model, the warrant is called an "inference license."3 Despite the innovation of Toulmin's response to classical logic and the popularity of his model for argumentation theory, a problem still remains: Scholars are not in agreement on what a warrant is or how to identify it, either theoretically or for purposes of teaching and criticism. If our understanding of warrants remains unclear, we have made no progress in understanding argument from the innovative position that Toulmin makes possible. ..."
[emphasis mine]
If you've ever tried to pin down a Kantian defending Kant's ideas as true while simultaneously accepting Kant's denial of our ability to know what is real and true, you'll experience a strong sense of Deja Vu as you try to understand the logic of Toulmin's method. But as with Kant's misosophical 'philosophy', as it is spun from the belief that we cannot know what is real and true, it fundamentally
has no real meaning in and of itself, and so what is important is not what it actually means (which none of its supporters can agree upon), but what it is that accepting it
actually does (dis-integrates your understanding from reality), and what Toulmin's Method does, is become a license to seem '
as if' you're being logical, while being as illogical as you need to be, in order to claim that what you want, will be '
what works', and so will be *true* enough.
As Keith notes about one of the many textbook explanations of how 'Critical Thinking' helps you to 'communicate better' with Toulmin's method:
"...The problem, again, is that a student could take virtually any data, and any conclusion, and connect them with the second rule that Vancil gives. Such rules indicate that conclusions are warranted, but don't explain how; they are like markers that announce "This is an OK argument."..."
What Keith seems '
as if' he doesn't understand, is that the Toulmin Method
does
not see that as 'the problem', but as the solution which is its warrant for being. The real problem, is
How it is able to be spoken of '
as if' it is synonymous with Logic when it's useful to seem so, and to deride logic when the rules of logic are not useful to 'warrant' what a 'Critical Thinker' wants you to believe.
I pointed out in
the previous post, how 'Critical Thinking' puts the 'How' before the 'What', especially in regards to the nature of knowledge. What else is it to state that the basis of evidence for your argument doesn't need to be what can be shown
is true, but only
How it's claimed to be
believed to be *true* enough? When Haber uses 'warrant', he's not concerned with what
is true, he's concerned with
How an argument can be structured so as to help convince people that some particular piece of what
'everyone knows!' is *true* enough. Which means that when Haber proposes that we get serious about 'Critical Thinking', the point of doing so is
not to help students to logically consider and understand what
is real and true and right to do in light of that, but to convince students that arguing on the basis of what TWKB (Those Who Know Best) say
'everyone knows!' is *true* enough to be believed, is
How to *logically* win an argument.
The question for you is, is that what
you thought was meant by either 'Critical Thinking' or Haber's argument for getting 'serious' about teaching more of it?
Whether or not these teachers & academics are conscious of these issues or not, these
are what the fundamentals of 'Critical Thinking' are all about, and when considering arguments
for 'Critical Thinking', it's important that you
not assume that what
they mean by the words that they're using, is what
you mean by those words which they are using because they think that those words will help to convince
you to believe what
they say '
everyone knows!'.
And so with that standpoint in mind (ahem), taking another look at the previous passage from Haber reveals that despite his trying to appeal to you with what
you mean by '
content', and/or a concern for the particulars of Logic, and/or about people's '
reasons for belief'; what he's
not saying about what he means by those words, is that:
Logical structure doesn't ensure truth, and vice-versa:
A) Valid logical structure, untrue premises, valid conclusion that is untrue:
Socrates is a tortoise,
All tortoises fly,
Socrates is a flying tortoise
B) Invalid logical structure, true premises, a conclusion that is logically invalid, because it does not follow, yet it
is true:
Socrates was an interesting dude,
It's a bummer Socrates was executed,
All men are mortal.
C) Valid structure, true premises, valid and true conclusion:
Socrates is a man,
All men are mortal,
Socrates is a mortal man
The What precedes the How:
- His overall focus is on structure over content, the 'How' over the 'What'.
- Having "reasons for belief" is not concerned with reasoning logically, but with convincing people of what 'everyone knows!'
- Though he wants to teach "...why true premises can lead to a false conclusion...", the reality is that 'true premises' do not lead to 'false conclusions', and the only way for it to seem 'as if' they do, is if they, or the context they're being used in - or structured around - are poorly understood and/or misleadingly presented.
Haber is also ignoring the fact that a properly structured argument can be thoroughly false (see sidebar), and that having a poorly structured argument full of logical fallacies
does not mean that its claim is untrue, only that it has not been made logically. Haber, 'Critical Thinking', Bloom's Taxonomy, and the Toulmin Method, aren't concerned with what a student understands to be real and true, but only with how to structure an argument so as to seem convincing to themselves and others.
Don't lose sight of the fact that in the 'Critical Thinking' worldview, where 'Knowledge' is a mere trick of memory performed at '
the lowest level of the cognitive domain', the particular difficulty he wants to distract us from CT's disappointing stats with, isn't that students have not studied and understood 'the content' and meaning of the words and thoughts that they're practicing their 'Critical Thinking Skills' upon (that'd be making too much of 'mere remembering'), and it isn't about improving their understanding of and ability to apply the logical method - that's too old fashioned. What Haber wants us to see as being
the difficulty behind 'Critical Thinking's disappointing stats, is that our student's lack those '
higher-order thinking skills' that they need to be trained in, in order to know
how to fit those facts into those arguments that the students are being taught to structure.
Of course structure
is important -
especially to the Logical Method - and good structuring
does improve our ability to understand an argument's clarity and purpose - but that's because good structure is the result of structuring what
is there to be clarified, it cannot add to an argument what
isn't already there in it, and even the most well "
Structured arguments"
cannot substitute for ambiguous terms, or premises that are flawed, out of context, or outright false. And finally, structure alone
cannot tell you
why you came to a false conclusion from true premises (it can point to where you erred in structuring your argument, but not to
why it failed) - it's only
What a person understands about their terms & premises, and how well they integrate lower level facts & abstractions, with higher level ones (which requires a hierarchical view of Knowledge that
cannot be confined to '
the lowest level of the cognitive domain'), which enables them to identify and recognize what it is that they're thinking about, and so understand whether a conclusion does or does not follow from those terms & premises. Structure alone cannot convey that, without regard for their being right or wrong, true or false.
What Haber, Bloom, Toulmin, and Dewey's view of 'mere knowledge' follows from (and Toulmin admiringly traces its roots back through Richard Rorty, Dewey, Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger), can be glimpsed in this quote from Hegel's Logic (which in one way or another, underlies all of 'Critical Thinking'), which
Stephen Coughlin commented on as underling the modernist siren-song of being/becoming (abandoning what
Is, for promises of what will (never) be). The delight that's taken in utilizing ambiguity to get beyond being restrained by right & wrong, is an
inherent part of Hegel's 'worldview':
"...We ought rather to recognize here the speculative spirit of our language, which transcends the "either-or" of mere understanding..."
 |
from Stephen Coughlin's post on being/becoming in Hegel's Logic:
"...the speculative spirit of our language,
which transcends the "either-or" of mere understanding." |
, and as Coughlin rightly notes, that 'either-or' violates the law of identity, and accepting that into your
'worldview', involves you in abandoning metaphysical realism (the importance of understanding what is real and true, and that we should act in accordance with that), and
that worldview is what is being conveyed when urging students to become less worried over "
... facts that can be true or false...", so as to transcend "
... the "either-or" of mere understanding...".
'Critical Thinkers' like Haber, are spreading that worldview when they engage us in their semantic deceptions (just look at how '
content', '
logic', '
reasons for belief' have been utilized to say one thing, while meaning another), and they do so in such a way that it
requires you to think of Knowledge as disintegrated '
answers!' (or memorized lists of 'warrants') to be recalled from memory as needed at '
the lowest level of the cognitive domain'. It is by such means that what it is you 'know', becomes 'Knowledge' In Name Only, so as to transcend 'mere understanding', which naturally leads you into structuring your words in a convincing performance of what is 'Logic' In Name Only.
Those who cling to denying the nature and prevalence of this worldview, may be surprised to find that when those materials & methods that had traditionally been used in educating students were replaced by Dewey & Co.'s new ideas on
How to
teach ourselves to read, it resulted in an ever growing inability of 'educated students' to perform the 3R's of reading, writing, and arithmetic. But those who accept, believe, and promote that worldview (John Dewey, BTW, began as a fan of Hegel, and published his first paper through the St. Louis Hegelian Society), were not only
not surprised by that outcome, that outcome was integral to how they intended to progressively transform our society, into what TWKB believed it should become. They - Dewey & Co. -
intended us to become less concerned with understanding what
is real and true and believing that
we should act in accordance with that, so that we would become more concerned with the
How of saying 'what works' in whichever way best serves whatever the current narrative might be, in that moment's pursuit of power (See
Peiper's "Abuse of Language, abuse of Power").
For 'Critical Thinkers' like Haber, it is this
How with which they go about their thinking, which so easily diverts our concerns over 'difficulties' of 'content' & 'thinking skills', into undermining, fragmenting, and inverting a person's bottom-up understanding of metaphysical realism, that was once the norm for Westerners in general, and Americans in particular. As Haber states:
"...The term commonly used to describe this form of productive, structured thinking is “logic,” but logic describes a number of systems for reasoning systematically.
Formal logic reduces words and ideas to symbols that can be manipulated, for instance, much like numbers and symbols used in mathematics. While formal logic is extraordinarily powerful (just ask any computer programmer), we can also systematize our reasoning using informal logic that allows us to consider the meaning of words rather than reducing them to symbols fit into a structure..."
, two points come immediately to mind:
- Stop for a moment and ask your nearest computer programmer (hi there!), whether his programming somehow starts with the use of symbols, formal logic, and 'machine code', or... begins with the careful use of our very human language to gain a sound understanding of what the program is to do, and then using that same human language to methodically create the instructions and informal logic (AKA: Logic) of operational 'If x, Then y, Else...' instructions (or even wording prompts into a.i., for that matter), it is then possible for those instructions created by a human, for human purposes, to be translated into the 'machine code' that tells the computer what to do?
- Take notice of how that 'misunderstanding' inverts the relation of language, to knowledge and logic, which then becomes the basis for arguing that 'everyday people' need still more expertise in 'Critical Thinking' (or just experts to do it for them).
Haber continues;
"...Since most of the communication we need to think critically about involves everyday human language, rather than machine code, skilled critical thinkers must also be adept at translating spoken and written language into precise statements that can be built into a logical structure..."
, the insinuation being that
we 'need' someone to
translate the difficulties of 'Formal Logic', 'machine code', etc., into 'everyday language' for the rest of us. And again, two points come to mind:
- "Most" communication involves human language?! What 'everyday' communication does not involve human language?
- "Translate"?! We don't translate language into logic (note: Bloom's Taxonomy repurposed what is meant by 'translate', but, IMHO, that only reaffirms the point)! When we use language carefully and methodically, we're able to produce logical statements and arguments which ensure that our language expresses a more precise understanding of what is being considered - that's called reasoning, not translating, and you should ask yourself why he'd portray it that way.
Sorry 'Critical Thinker's, but once again: the
What precedes the
How, and the recognition of that threatens the worldview that's built up around the '
How'. And even the presence of a single student who understands that, interferes with the 'Critical Thinker's ability to convey the impression to the class as a whole that Logic is somehow an alien, external, and mechanistic tool which '
everyday people' must depend upon ever more skilled people for - people who've been specially trained and certified in 'Critical Thinking Skills' which most of us 'everyday people' cannot hope to acquire - in order to apply and 'translate' such arcane structures
into 'human language' so that '
everyday people' can... listen to what it tells them to do (!).
Allowing yourself to be led into losing sight of your relation to reality, takes your mind out of being focused upon what is real and true, and into the illusory promises of 'becoming' whatever is being promised in a given narrative. If all that 'everyday people' know of a premise is what someone else said '
everyone knows!' about it, then the measure of that argument's 'credibility' becomes how many others seem to agree with it (
it gets Clicks!) and its intended purpose, and the less those '
everyday people' actually know about what '
everyone knows!', the more antagonistic and dismissive their responses will become towards any questioning of it. The argumentative churning which that creates, is a key tool which the
Ideological Observatory uses to reshape society, which is central to what made our schools so useful to its purposes.
The Logical Method requires a respect for reality that 'Critical Thinking' cannot emulate
Aristotle, who gave us the first systematic examination of the logical method, didn't arbitrarily contrive, manipulate, assert or invent the rules of Logic, so as to make it easier to arrive at a useful conclusion that 'works' - that was what the Sophists did, and still do. Instead, he began with an examination of the nature of reality (see
Metaphysics), in which he identified the most fundamental rule of thinking about what we know of it (see
the Law of Non Contradiction), and from there he discovered that if you adhered to a method of consciously making particular checks upon your thinking, it was possible to prove what is not directly known to you, by way of what
is directly known by you, and if done properly, you'd be able to see that a conclusion
must follow from the nature of what
is, and how we're able to understand that as such. The particulars and rules of that can be found across several books of his known as '
The Organon', from which we get what we today call The Logical Method.
To put the logical method into practice, there are several prerequisite rules which Aristotle discovered
must be adhered to, in that the Terms you use, and the Propositions formed from those, must be clear and unambiguous; the premises formed from them
must be understood to be true, and the premises must be particularly formed in relation to each other
before attempting to structure them to prove something is logically valid (
it's easiest to see this form in the three line syllogisms in the inset above, but the rules apply to larger logical arguments as well).
If you don't
know that your premises are true ('know' meaning
understanding what something
is and what it relates to, not merely remembering what '
everyone knows!' about it), or if your terms are ambiguous, or if
any of the other prerequisites aren't met, then there is no point in pretending to go any further in a performance of 'the Logical Method', because you've already fully exited from it.
If you think that you can present a 'warrant' for being 'logical' while ignoring the rules of the logical method, you should imagine Aristotle rising up before you with Gandalf's sword and staff and declaring:
 |
| You cannot ignore the prerequisite rules of Logic and be Logical! |
"You shall not pass!"
That being said, you might also ask:
"How are we supposed to know whether terms are unambiguous, or that premises are true, or what follows from them?"
, which is a good question that you
should ask. The answer to that, is what I've been harping on all along:
To be able to say that you have followed these rules, that your premises are true, that your terms are unambiguous, and that something follows from something else, requires you to develop a sufficient depth of knowledge of the subject and giving your attention to the language being used, to understand whether that is, or is not, the case!
What follows from this classical understanding of Knowledge, is that simply following the step-by-step rules of arranging premises in the appearance of using the Logical Method will
not make an argument better than your understanding of the major and minor premises and of the terms they are formed from, all of which form the substance of what it is that you are thinking with, and arguing a point from.
But while sound structure alone
cannot ensure that an argument's conclusion both follows from its premises, and
is true, if you have learned about what a logical argument is, and
why it is that what it is you are considering
should be structured logically, you will also understand the importance of first understanding the material being argued. Knowing that about the logical method, you will know that in the case of any argument presented to you, that you need to identify and examine the premises of the argument, and the importance of ensuring that the terms are unambiguous, and that you need to develop enough knowledge of the subject being argued, to ensure that one thing actually
does follow from another, rather than simply taking the argument's word for it.
In that way, learning to use the logical method involves you in gaining a better understanding of what you do and do not know, and it reveals the integrated nature of sound knowledge and how superior that is to attempting to use a shallow appearance of employing '
logical rules', so as to structurally manipulate various 'conclusions' which '
everyone knows!' to be *true*. For the student that understands the need to understand the material
before accepting an argument about it, while understanding that they need to follow the rules not because they're '
the rules!', but because they understand
why the rules exist, that student will be able to see that a logical argument that fails to prove its point, is
not an anomaly, or a bug, or something to be gotten around or explained away, but that exposing errors hitherto unnoticed, is one of
the primary features, benefits, and purposes of the exercise - respecting the rules of Logic helps you to identify what you need to better understand of the subject at hand, both before and after testing how valid its logic is.
The knowledge and understanding that is required to properly engage in that self-correcting process of the logical method, again highlights the integrated nature of Knowledge and Logic and adds breadth and depth to both, and elevates your understanding of what is real and true and right to do, and it reveals that thinking of knowledge as a mere trick of recall at "
...the lowest level of learning outcomes in the cognitive domain", is absurd.
Students who are taught to understand this, will also realize that attempting to make an argument for what they themselves don't have the knowledge to support, is making an argument that is truly, and literally,
meaningless to themselves, no matter how well it might be structured. And such a student as that, should also be alert to the nature of those who'd attempt to persuade them with a seemingly 'logical argument' about something which they know they don't have a sufficient knowledge of, and realize that such people aren't trying to inform them, they're attempting to
deceive them.
Given all of that, it should be no mystery why the purveyors of 'Critical Thinking' are
not eager for their students to understand that their knowledge does rise above the '
lowest level of the cognitive domain', or that risks connecting their '
higher-order thinking skills' to actual knowledge of what underlies it, as well as the ethical understanding that arises from it. That threat is surely what Dewey had in mind when he said of
literate and independent learners:
"The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school-life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to me a perversion."
, and that:
"...The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat...."
'Critical Thinking' programs are fundamentally threatened by a student who's able to gain a sound understanding of a subject outside of school, and who is familiar with the thoughtful language of quality literature, and they do their best to undermine such efforts, before they ever get started.
How 'Critical Thinking' is inspired to escape the difficulties of Logical Thinking
In writing his article "It’s Time to Get Serious About Teaching Critical Thinking", what does our oh-so serious minded academic want us to 'get serious' about? On the surface, Haber tries to give the
appearance of 'getting' the need for more 'content' and building familiarity with it, as he argues for the need for more 'Critical Thinking':
"...Another myth that has slowed down integrating critical-thinking instruction more deeply into the curriculum is fear that teaching skills, including critical-thinking skills, must come at the expense of teaching academic content. Yet one cannot think critically about a subject one knows nothing about...."
, he also notes the difficulties arising between practicing 'Critical Thinking' skills upon what is taught, citing what another CT Academic, Tim van Gelder, pointed out in his "
Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons From Cognitive Science", that '
studies show' that proficiency in CT requires the same:
"...amount of practice required to become a highly skilled athlete or musician: approximately 10,000 hours. If this suggestion is even partially correct, it points out a problem, since no single class, or even years of education, can provide this amount of dedicated practice time...."
, but once again, accepting his argument at face value, would require losing sight of the fact that his focus is on the
skill of structuring arguments, The How, not on the quality and depth of understanding that a student has in their knowledge of the subject, The What. If you look at what he's arguing, he's not simply fretting about our students lack of knowledge, his argument is structured for us to conclude that only an elite few can be expected to be able to practice 'Critical Thinking Skills' well, and that the rest of us should admit our need for an elite level of experts who have the time to develop those 'thinking skills' which the rest of us will probably never have. If you're familiar with Plato's 'Divided Line', this is that.
That he is not really concerned with the students knowledge and understanding -
the content - is apparent in how he gets past the apparent difficulties of '
you need knowledge to think critically', and '
the need for more CT means less time to learn the knowledge that needs to be learned', and he does so by adding this:
"...That is why professors must not just teach students critical-thinking skills and give them opportunities to put them to use, but they must also inspire them to continue practicing those skills on their own across academic subjects and in all areas of life.
..."[emphasis mine]
Ask yourself: Does it
follow from the nature of what we know about Knowledge and Logic, that feeling 'inspired' can resolve issues of a lack of knowledge or 'thinking skills'? No. But, in true Pragmatic fashion, he expects to get around the reality of
any such 'content' difficulties or even logical contradictions (
hi there Hegel!), by encouraging teachers, faculty, and various promoters of 'Critical Thinking', to 'inspire' their little 'Critical Thinkers' to take action and '
make it work!'.
How should 'Critical Thinking' help them '
make it work!'?
Not by learning more about what they're thinking about, but by
performing (going through the motions of) all too common 'exercises'
like this:
"...6. Start a Debate
In this activity, the teacher can act as a facilitator and spark an interesting conversation in the class on any given topic. Give a small introductory speech on an open-ended topic. The topic can be related to current affairs, technological development or a new discovery in the field of science. Encourage students to participate in the debate by expressing their views and ideas on the topic. Conclude the debate with a viable solution or fresh ideas generated during the activity through brainstorming...."
[emphasis mine]
You might be wondering what happened to the difficulties in "
Yet one cannot think critically about a subject one knows nothing about", and how 'inspiration' solves them, or how students who lack 'thinking skills' can be expected to recognize a 'viable solution' to what they know so little about? But that's because you're probably expecting there to be a connection between the 'serious' academic research papers that are churned out to be used as references for bolstering the legitimacy and salability of 'Critical Thinking', and what teachers are expected to
do when actually 'teaching' CT, but believing that 'knowledge' is just the ability to the recall dis-integrated words and phrases that are useful at the moment, minimizes all such concerns.
If you stop assuming that
they mean what
you mean by the words that they're using, and look closer at what they've actually said and done with them, you'll see that the fact is that they're not concerned with such contextual connections connecting these statements, and that they didn't really intend them as anything other than a pretext for 'answers' which '
everyone knows!', which will be useful for their narrative to gather support for furthering the teaching of more 'Critical Thinking'.
Teaching students to focus not on actual knowledge of a subject and those prerequisites of the logical method, or going through the motions of doing so with little or no Knowledge of their subject, so as to skillfully arrange (or wedge) their facts together to fashion 'structured arguments' in such a way that 'true premises' don't appear to '
lead to a false conclusion', but to a conclusion that's more useful to them,
is manipulating the process. It is definitely
not being Logical, it's not even engaging in Reasoning, rather it is the methodical erasure of both, through a deceptively 'critical' rationalism.
Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (in the Cognitive Domain and Affective Domain) is not just an exercise in faulty or slipshod scholarship, the belief that Knowledge occupies the '
lowest level in the cognitive domain', and 'new' approaches to 'Logic' such as Toulmin's Method, are 'features' that enables the use of pretexts that '
everyone knows!', to pragmatically justify whatever they a student is inspired to feel must be done to '
make things work'. Like Bloom, Toulmin, Dewey, Marx, and Hegel before them, 'Critical Thinkers' believe that the purpose of education is
not to understand what is true, but to reshape society into what
they (as Those Who Know Best (TWKB)) think it
should be. In their worldview, the belief that '
the ends justify the means', fortified with the pragmatic claim that '*truth*' is just '
what works' for the purpose at hand, frees 'Critical Thinking' from those constraints that traditionally expected there to
be a connection between knowledge, action, and ethics, and enables them to freely generate ever more 'answers' to brainstorm with, so that even grade school students might come to 'know' how to detect
'confirmation bias' in talking about Climate Change... how
inspiring is that?!
'Critical Thinking' does
not intend for students to become sound thinkers, it intends for them to become accustomed to, and skilled at utilizing the
appearances of sound thinking, while accepting how important it is that '
everyone knows!' that what the Experts say is 'true enough', and that all should '
follow the science!' because TWKB know
How society can become what they know it should be.
IOW: CT depends upon using the appearances of Logic, so that when it's useful to win arguments over a narrative, they can assert what
is not true '
as if' it were *true*, and feelings of 'inspiration' is one of many motive powers called upon for getting away with doing just that.
If that's not yet clear to you, perhaps the nature of the advice that other teachers, faculty, and various promoters of 'Critical Thinking', are giving to teachers who are actually *teaching* 'Critical Thinking' to your kids, will help you to see that the conclusion does follow, especially as
How they advise that can be found in abundance on the internet in the form of inspirational tips
such as these:
"...Here are 24 critical thinking lessons to engage your Middle School and High School Students!
- Where does bias come from?
- What is fake news?
- How reliable are citizenship journalism posts on social media?
- Can we trust Mainstream Media (MSM Traditional News)?
- Should we trust state-funded news organizations to tell the truth?
- When is social media better than the news?
- Are alternative news sources trustworthy?
- Can students take the time to see things from different perspectives?
- BONUS: Should ChatGPT be allowed in schools? Or, is this cheating?..."
With Aristotle's '
None shall pass!' rule of logic in mind, take note that its prerequisite rules are not simply being disregarded in these exercises, they are never even being considered when offering such tips as these, for How to practice 'Critical Thinking' upon your kids.
Just imagine the nature of the 'answers' our little tikes might become inspired to accept and become attached to in their brainstorming, so as to '
take action' (i.e., become
activists, see the CCC 'grade level expectations' image), as each of these ideological hot-buttons are presented to them under the approving gaze of their teachers! That's
how they inspire our little 'Critical Thinkers' to 'somehow' get past any difficulties or contradictions that might get in their way, while creating the 'structured arguments' of 'Critical Thinking'.
The dismal fact is that what all such 'inspiration' leads to, is what the serious academic's reference to Van Gelder's claims above, that -
being good at CT requires 10,000 hours of practice (in developing a
skill of structuring arguments', and
not in gaining a better understanding of what you
know), which effectively agrees with what the professor of philosophy, Huemer, noted in
the previous post, as:
"... described this as a "makes-sense epistemology"; in empirical studies, he found that students tend to
act as though the test of truth is that a proposition makes intuitive sense, sounds right, rings true. They see no need to criticize or revise accounts that do make sense - the intuitive feel of fit suffices. (Perkins, Allen, and Hafner 1983,186)
Even if humans were naturally inclined to think critically, it would still be difficult to master because it is what cognitive scientists call a "higher-order skill"..."
[emphasis mine]
That unfounded confidence
is 'inspirational' to the spread of 'Critical Thinking', and it's
How radical (or radically duped) teachers in school systems across the nation, were able to begin promoting political activism as part of their lessons in 'Critical Thinking', as is done in the likes of encouraging their protesting of 'global warming' and 'ending poverty', as part of the grade level expectations
for 2nd graders?! That was already the norm in California 15 yrs ago, it became the norm in Missouri by at least 10 years ago, and I can guarantee you that
your schools (public
and private) have similar norms today.
And here again I'll remind you that what the administrators and theorists of 'Critical Thinking' believe is meant by HOTS (Higher Order Thinking
Skills), is that:
“...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong"[emphasis mine]
That my friends, is
How 'Critical Thinking' is inspired to spread its fundamental purpose, which is to produce a populace that
no longer believes in right or wrong, which makes it easier for people to be inclined to accept what they feel that '
they could believe' - not because it's right or wrong -
obviously - but because you can 'clearly and distinctly believe' (
hi Descartes!) what is approved of by TWKB.
If a 'Critical Thinker' no longer believes in right or wrong, what do you think they'll do with political power over you?
'Critical Thinking'
is the means of providing a person with a feeling of satisfaction with what their own thinking skills tell them 'they know' about what
'everyone knows!', which both permits and
endorses their disregard for 'traditional notions' (by which they mean, what
is understood to be real & true and what
is right and wrong to do in light of that), in favor of what they want to believe will become more useful and efficient. After seventy years of 'Critical Thinking' being openly taught to our students, our nation is now chock full of people who're confidently practicing their 'Critical Thinking' skills upon what they have very little knowledge of.
This is all there for anyone who bothers to look, and anyone who asks TWKB about the consequences of that, will be told that they are doing what they
are doing '
because all education is political', as
educationist Henry Giroux informs us, and so they are acting to indoctrinate ideological/political propaganda into the minds of student's who'll then be sure to reflexively bark like Pavlov's dogs when they hear the political buzz words that they've been trained to react to ('
transwomen are women!', '
ICE OUT!', '
free palestine!'), while imagining that their own well structured barkings are fine examples of those same 'Critical Thinking' skills that they've been schooled in for year, after year, after year, skills which, BTW, they have been taught ever more rigorously so, at the behest of 'The Right' in each iteration of "
We need more school reform!".
What it is essential to understand about
understanding what you know (Knowledge) is that it entails each of its parts being integrated into (or at least not contradicting with) the rest of what you know, your understanding of the universals (concepts) involved, and those principles that are derived from them, which is what it means to understand what it
is, what follows from it, and what you should or shouldn't do in regards to it. It is critically important to realize, that contrary to 'Critical Thinking's HOTS ('higher-order thinking skills'), your grasp of Right & Wrong is not something for teachers to nudge students to 'get beyond', it is the capstone of, and its absence indicates a critical void in, their understanding, which indicates whether or not what you know has become sound knowledge with real depth, or is just what '
everybody knows!' at the lowest level of the 'cognitive domain'.
This also means that, as was noted from Martin Cothran in
the previous post, to reduce knowledge to what 'Critical Thinking' teaches as being the lowest level of the 'cognitive domain', is to believe that "...
Knowledge is unnecessary..." and that "...
the only thing necessary is skills...", and that pro-regressive 'educators' fully intend to "...
divorce skills from knowledge...",
because that
is the purpose of 'Critical Thinking' (which, BTW, in what would be horrifying for most CT'rs to realize, is making a deeply
metaphysical proposition! One which is not only doomed to failure, but which dooms those who engage in its practice).
 |
| 'higher-order thinking' divorced from right & wrong, will punish wrong-think |
Those who are habituated to identifying without understanding, incline themselves towards the shallow (and stimulating) labeling of ideology (
The Ideological Observatory doesn't care which 'ism or 'ist you latch on to, only that you do). For the committed 'Critical Thinker', any 'person' (scare quotes present in the CT'rs mind) can be ideologically targeted, so as to defend the Ideology of TWKB against them, up to and including death for being a healthcare CEO, or someone like Charlie Kirk who engages college students in 'wrong think' (which is doubly ironic, as supposedly they've gotten beyond '
right and wrong'), and whose murder was
cheered by some sitting just feet away from him, as he was shot.
Consequently, what this means is that those who're taught to become someone who regards it as a '
higher-order thinking' skill to be someone who "
no longer believes in right or wrong", is being taught to destroy their ability to know and understand not just what is right and wrong, but what is real and true.
In short, the purpose and practice of teaching 'Critical Thinking Skills', is to lead students through the motions of divorcing themselves from reality, and only an ideology that discounts the importance of what is real and true, could see that as a 'good thing'. 'Critical Thinking' does not produce sound reasoning, and what it does produce, as we'll see in the next post, is the biological equivalent of Artificial Intelligence, which is something we should all be very concerned about giving any real power to.
