How 'Critical Thinking' handles criticism of What 'Critical Thinking' is

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:

1. His overall focus is on structure over content, the 'How' over the 'What'.
2. Having "reasons for belief" is not concerned with reasoning logically, but with convincing people of what 'everyone knows!'
3. 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:

1. 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?
2. 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.

To Indigenous Peoples Everywhere: A Hearty Happy Columbus Day!

It's that time of year again, to speak truth to the power-mad folk who fail to give any thought to the discordant noise of their virtue signaling, while prattling on about wanting to change 'Columbus Day', to 'Indigenous Peoples Day' or 'Heritage Americans Day', which means it's time to re-post this post from Columbus Day, 2015, and to delight in the sad spectacle of failed Pro-Regressives (left & right) expressing their xenophobic hatred of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West, as we wish them all a very happy Columbus Day!

Did some not so good things follow from Columbus's discovery of The New World? Yes. Welcome to human history - and do pay close attention please, because if you're looking for easy answers to such realities, you came to the wrong world. And for those such as my troll, who try to pass off Christopher Columbus' importance as a creation of 20th Century propaganda, I look forward to your accounting for why it was that the history of America which Thomas Jefferson recommended to students, "The history of the discovery and settlement of America", which was written by William Robertson who died in 1793, devotes chapters to Columbus himself, not to mention his voyages?

And after years of being bombarded with unsubstantiated charges and hysterical outrage from the most outrageous folks imaginable, I think it's time, even with as small a nod as this is, to explicitly disregard the rantings of the failed and the botched, and to lift a glass of cheer and celebrate the heroic adventures of those who actually dared to do what others feared; deeds which, even though tinged with a great deal of error, led to the greatest advances for mankind in all of our known histories. Celebrate this day, even more so because everything it represents is loathed and feared today by those who oppose celebrating this day (as the 'Sultan of Knish' said so well) of commemorating the voyage that Christopher Columbus undertook to take in 1492.

It is also good to remember, as the helpful graphic inset between my Columbus Day pictures below shows, celebrating 'Indigenous Peoples Day', instead of Columbus Day, necessarily means celebrating the mass slaughter of indigenous peoples, which some indigenous peoples regularly perpetrated upon other indigenous peoples, to further the customs of their own (literally) blood thirsty religions, such as the tens of thousands of indigenous people that were annually slaughtered in a single day, to appease the 'indigenous' Aztec people's gods.

It seems very much like the one thing the woketivists hate most of all, is that Columbus's discovery of The New World, heralded the beginning of the end of committing such horrors as were systemic to indigenous cultures. And no, none of the atrocities typically attributed to 'The West', come even close to that level of savage barbarity. And no, such barbarity and slaughter wasn't limited to the Aztecs alone (or perhaps you were unaware of what Pocahontas's pop was up to prior to the English landing at Jamestown?).

In Other Words: To Indigenous Peoples Everywhere:

Happy Columbus Day!

"In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue..."

If you don't know the rest, or refuse to repeat it, your ignorance is too deep for me to fix in so little time and space. I won't bother a protest, qualification, any hint of apology, or take any other sort of a defensive stand on what is and should be recognized and celebrated on this day. What we like to think of Captain Kirk doing, Christopher Columbus actually did, and he did it without electronic wizardry, without science officers or communication specialists or even replaceable extras in red shirts, but with only wooden boats, a compass and a number of guesses about how the extent of the world might be shaped. He and some ninety crew, set out on an uncharted ocean with the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, and it was incredibly brave and bold, and resulted in Western Civilization expanding westward around the globe, and even entertaining the notion that we today need to defend or justify that, is not only stupidity on stilts, but a repudiation of all that is good.

In fourteen hundred ninety-twoColumbus sailed the ocean blue. He had three ships and left from Spain; He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain. He sailed by night; he sailed by day; He used the stars to find his way. A compass also helped him know How to find the way to go....

If what Christopher Columbus ventured and accomplished isn't laudable and self-evident bad-assery to you, begone and darken my door no more, but do so with my Happy Columbus Day! ringing in your ears.

How 'Critical Thinking' builds castles in the air

The problem with 'Critical Thinking' is not just with the anti-realist theorists who developed it, or the amoral (at best) theories they developed it with (see previous posts), or that it's somehow 'Good in theory but not in practice', the problem is that it's bad in theory and so is even worse when put into practice.

The stated telos of 'Critical Thinking':
“...a student attains 'higher order thinking'
when he no longer believes in right or wrong..."

Part of the reason why the misosophical poison of 'Critical Thinking' (CT) is so successfully peddled as the cure for the sickness it spreads, is because its name & claims sound so sensible that people cannot imagine associating it with anything as disturbing as C.S. Lewis's warning about the progressive danger of thinking that "...no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other...", and so assume that teaching CT just means improving their kids thinking. Which is at least partly why everyone looks at me so cockeyed when I tell them that CT is not something they should adopt, or promote, or want to be taught to their kids:

"But Van, how can you possibly be against 'Critical Thinking'?!"

What is obvious from such questions, is that people simply accept the marketing of what 'everyone knows!' from promoters of 'Critical Thinking', without giving any actual thought to what it is that the system of thought that's promoted as 'Critical Thinking', actually is, means, and does, because, as we've already begun to see over the last several posts, giving CT even the minimum of consideration, quickly reveals that:

CT's claims about what it 'is', is an obvious case of stolen valor

CT's 'skills' are intended to induce amoral judgement (at best) as an ideal

CT leads to 'knowledge' which comprises very little understanding

, which is bad enough, however as you'll soon see, going past those initial questions that Socrates might've asked (see previous post), reveals what we'll see in this and the next two posts (coming this week), that:

CT's 'Thinking Skills' aren't real or relevant

CT deludes its practitioners into believing they know what they do not

CT's system of seeking after easy 'logical' answers, fosters, ensures, & preserves the fundamental ignorance of its students

The reasons for points of #4-#6, begin to become apparent in what a senior writer for Newsweek, Alexander Nazaryan, wrote about a decade ago when he was startled to hear from a spokesman for a New York State college, and from then President Obama, that

"critical thinking is a "21st-century skill" American students lack"

, and that students needed to be taught CT in order to 'think like a journalist'. His initial reaction to that was that they:

"...might be aghast to learn that I somehow managed to snag a desk in a newsroom without ever flashing my critical-thinking abilities, latent or otherwise, though I suspect knowing how to write a complex-compound sentence helped matters..."

, and he wrote "You're 100 Percent Wrong About Critical Thinking" to explain that despite its marketing, what students were getting through such programs, was not what his or other jobs actually required, yet every step of CT leads them to confidently feel 'as if' they had:

"...In pure lexical terms, "critical thinking" is "the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment." Translated into pedagogy, it's teaching students to be intellectual mavericks, cognitive cowboys who poke bullet holes into every received concept, who duel with Aristotle and Dickinson, who are never complacent, submissive or even quiet. They brim with what Walt Whitman called "original energy."

Our students, according to pretty much everyone, are crappy critical thinkers...."

The thin veneer of 'answers' which that "original energy" generates in students, effectively closes them off to a wealth of knowledge about what is real and true that they're unlikely to further scratch the surface of, and implicitly drills into them Bloom's Taxonomy's view that knowledge is only a technique of recall, a memory trick that "... represents the lowest level of learning outcomes in the cognitive domain", and so they feel assured that the *answers* that their 'critical thinking' skills scored them on their quizzes and tests were all they needed to know about those subjects they'd already studied.

Dennis Hayes, in a rare post for a professor of Education, wrote in "Stop trying to teach 'Critical Thinking'" ten years ago, that a responsible teacher understood that for their students to benefit from engaging in sound criticism of a subject, it required something more than:

"... moaning endlessly about education policies you dislike or telling students what they should think. It means first and foremost that you are capable of engaging in deep conversation. This means debate and discussion based on considerable knowledge – something that is almost entirely absent in the educational world. It also has to take place in public, with parents and others who are not teachers, not just in the classroom or staffroom...."[emphasis mine]

, but it's that need to develop a depth of knowledge on a subject first, that is precisely what 'Critical Thinking' both ignores and effectively conceals from its practitioners behind the appearances that its praxis of 'criticizing' generates, which leaves them unable to see that they amount to no more than sophistic 'gotcha-skills'.

And to the common CT claim of:

"But we have to teach critical thinking in order to train the next generation of experts”

, a professor of philosophy, Michael Huemer, noted that:

"...a) Only a tiny fraction of students will or should try to become experts. It doesn’t make sense to gear teaching toward a tiny fraction, rather than the vast majority of students...."

, and that:

"...People probably mostly use their “critical thinking” lessons to come up with ways of discounting counter-arguments that they don’t like and thereby sticking to the opinions they prefer..."

What's easy for everyone to see, is that practicing 'Critical Thinking' leads students to provide what appears to be an acceptable 'answer' to whichever task its instructors intend for them to resolve, without adequately thinking the issue through.

What goes unseen, is that because both the structure of its lessons and what the time spent on those lessons, has enabled our schools to omit by no longer teaching (from Homer to the Bible, and more), supporters of CT don't need to deny its failings, they simply absorb and redirect them into other 'difficulties' to be railed against. Such students who're educated by omission, are led into an ignorance of the value of having a depth of understanding of those subjects they are practicing 'critical thinking' upon, or even what that might look like.

So as 'Critical Thinkers' quizzes and tests lead them to feel confident that the 'answers' they get from having read a chapter from their textbook, a worksheet of 'tips', or Google/ChatGPT 'research' regarding it, is sufficient for what they need to practice their 'critical thinking' upon, they feel that same confidence in their 'research' on any other such subjects presented to them.

The notion that pursuing an education would (and should) lead to the breadth & depth of knowledge as what was once known for a 'Man of letters', or even the relatively shallow depth of general knowledge of an 1890s grade school student, is not just a foreign concept to the theorists of 'Critical Thinking' - it is counter to their aim of providing students with those 'useful skills' for shaping society by 'boosting the economy!', 'beating the Chinese!', etc. Teachers and students of 'Critical Thinking' are blinded by the practice of it, to the purpose of leading students out of the shadows of ignorance, which an actual Liberal Education once was and should still be intended to accomplish. Instead, their schooling unwittingly swaths them within the shadows cast by their easy answers, and grades & diploma in hand, they go out into the world blissfully un-aware of the vastness of what they do not know that they do not know.

How is that possible? Well... since you asked... have you heard the (in)famous maxim attributed to John Dewey (possibly paraphrased from "How We Think" (1910)), that

"We should teach How to think, not what to think!"

, it seems 'as if' that's such an obviously virtuous and 'objective' maxim, doesn't it? Have you ever considered the possibility that it is a fatal mistake to accept it as such? The reason why, is that in the best misdirection of the skilled philosophical stage magician (wizard), Dewey's maxim presents you with a false dilemma of having to choose between the 'How' of thinking well, and the deplorable notion of indoctrinating kids with 'What' to think, and with the audience distracted by that false dilemma, their attention is no longer on the traditional priority given to the knowledge of What is being considered (a coherent and integrated knowledge of facts, person, place, timeline, etc.), which sound thinking and truly valuable criticism requires, and cannot be had without.

In the place of that knowledge (which 'critical thinkers' consider to be the 'lowest level of the cognitive domain'), Dewey's maxim permits and encourages the student to conduct the most shallow acts of 'research' ('...find relevant facts in these worksheets...'), and to accept that as a sufficient basis for their analysis and synthesis of the subject at hand, because teaching 'How to think', is the template which their every lesson aims at teaching:

scan through text, match 'facts', retrieve 'answers!'

, and that is what our students are learning to do, without ever having been provided the substantive 'What' to think with (and that is what Dewey was after all along, which we'll dig further into in latter posts in this series). Such slight of mind trickery as this, which CT accomplishes out of sight, out of mind, is enough on its own to make me bristle when people talk of the need for more 'Critical Thinking!'.

To his credit, Hayes' article emphasizes that having the ability to offer criticism that's valuable, requires a depth of knowledge, first:

"...The need for teachers to engage in this kind of deep conversation has been forgotten, because they think that being critical is a skill. But the Australian philosopher John Passmore criticized this idea nearly half a century ago:

If being critical consisted simply in the application of a skill then it could in principle be taught by teachers who never engaged in it except as a game or defensive device, somewhat as a crack rifle shot who happened to be a pacifist might nevertheless be able to teach rifle-shooting to soldiers. But in fact being critical can be taught only by men who can themselves freely partake in critical discussion.

, but at the same time, and as a consequence of that, the step-by-step 'critical thinking skills' approach brushes off the need to consider or integrate what little knowledge that students do have, into the whole of what they know to be *true*, and they do so because CT implicitly relies upon the pragmatic view of 'true' as being only 'what works' at the moment (becoming useful), which may change in the next moment as something else becomes more usefully *true* (more on this horror in the latter posts).

The designers of public education knew about these issues long before 'Critical Thinking' was devised as a more efficient means of furthering their ideas, and they haven't been secretive about the fact that they do not think of education as being important for an individual, but as being useful for shaping society into becoming what they think it 'should' become. As I've pointed out often over the last two decades, our pro-regressive 'Progressive Educators' have openly declared that they want a very select few (selected by them) to have what they thought of as being 'Educated', and they thought that it would be best "for the common good" that the rest of the population should be given only that schooling that was needed for them to easily mistake what we call 'Critical Thinking', as an equivalent to being 'educated', as from this post:

Woodrow Wilson, when still president of Princeton University in 1909, advised the Federation of High School Teachers as being an critical purpose to their teaching:

"...We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks..."

, a view which was also echoed by James E. Russell, head of Columbia University Teachers College, who gave a speech there in 1905 called "The Trend in American Education", where he expressed his equally 'pragmatic' concern that:

"...How can a nation endure that deliberately seeks to rouse ambitions and aspirations in the oncoming generations which in the nature of events cannot possibly be fulfilled ? If the chief object of government be to promote civil order and social stability , how can we justify our practice in schooling the masses in precisely the same manner as we do those who are to be our leaders?..."

Continuing on from the article by Dennis Hayes, he makes three critical points about 'Critical Thinking':

1. “Critical thinking” is a skill. No it is not. At best this view reduces criticism to second-rate or elementary instruction in informal and some formal logic. It is usually second-rate logic and poor philosophy offered in bite-sized nuggets. Seen as a skill, critical thinking can also mean subjection to the conformism of an ideological yoke. If a feminist or Marxist teacher demands a certain perspective be adopted this may seem like it is “criticism” or acquiring a “critical perspective”, but it is actually a training in feminism or Marxism which could be done through tick box techniques. It almost acquires the character of a mental drill.
2. “Critical thinking” means indoctrination. When teachers talk about the need to be “critical” they often mean instead that students must “conform”. It is often actually teaching students to be “critical” of their unacceptable ideas and adopt the right ones. Having to support multiculturalism and diversity are the most common of the “correct ideas” that everyone has to adopt. Professional programs in education, nursing, social work and others often promote this sort of “criticism”. It used to be called “indoctrination”.
3. “Critical theories” are “uncritical theories”. When some theory has the prefix “critical” it requires the uncritical acceptance of a certain political perspective. Critical theory, critical race theory, critical race philosophy, critical realism, critical reflective practice all explicitly have political aims.

[emphasis mine]

Reducing an education to a set of skills that students are to accept being drilled in, so as to get the grades they need in order to get a 'good job', leaves those students critically deprived of the fruits of an actual Education rooted in an integrated understanding of what is, what follows, and how you should behave towards that, and without which, no matter how many 'facts' can be recalled, the student is unable to understand any lessons from history.

It's no coincidence that such 'Critical Thinker's are churned out with diplomas by our schools, to become conduits for the circulation of the propaganda that they've not only been trained to accept as 'answers' that 'everyone knows!', but to 'understand' that how to arrive at those same 'answers', from any starting point ('White Privilege!' ,'Systemic Racism!', '...Socialism!' ,'...Capitalism!'), is what they're being trained to do without thinking about what they're thinking, and so they're unaware of how prone they themselves are to becoming the latest products of the most alarming lessons of history (see Fichte's plan for education).

In The Critical Thinking Skills Hoax, classical school educator Martin Cothran points out that:

"...It is an interesting fact that the people who say that they want to improve our schools spend so much time talking about “critical thinking skills” and so little about logic. One of the reasons is undoubtedly that the word “logic” is much more concrete. It implies learning and being able to use a specific system of rational rules that can be taught- what the ancients called an “art.” Logic has an actual history of having been taught, and taught in a certain way. It is not nearly so amorphous as the term “critical thinking skills.”

But for propaganda purposes, it is less useful to use exact words. Vague words with indeterminate meanings are much to be preferred. “Thinking skills, thinking skills, rah-rah-rah!” In fact, “thinking skills” is only one of the terms in a constellation of vague promotional phrases used by education reformers. Others include “problem-solving skills,” “inferencing skills,” main idea finding,” and “higher-order skills.” Again, these sound good, but what exactly do they mean?

And these share with “critical thinking skills” the same problems. Not only are they ill-defined, but in a sense they really don’t exist, at least not as separate areas of study.

Knowledge is unnecessary, goes the thinking of progressive educators, because the only thing necessary is skills. And so we think we can divorce skills from knowledge. ..." [emphasis mine]

This isn't difficult to see for yourself in your own school systems (public and private), and it too follows from Dewey's emphasis on teaching 'How to think, not what to think!', and it is the driving factor behind our cultural drift (plunge) away from our understanding of the West in general, and of America in particular, and those who're providing it know that that's the real value (to them), in their schooling of students in 'Critical Thinking'. And of course any mention of this comes as a complete surprise (or so we hope) to 'The Right', who are always so downright eager to insist on ever more lessons in 'Critical Thinking', and ever more standardized tests to prove what 'answers' they 'know', and that still more is required for them to become useful for 'boosting the economy' and defeating [Japan, Germany, Russia, China, A.I., etc...].

That same misleading emphasis on performing a 'How' while neglecting the 'What', is apparent in the descriptive text in this 'Bloom's Taxonomy Of Learning' pyramid. Starting with what it puts at the pinnacle of the pyramid with 'Create':

"The peak of the domain is creating, where students synthesize various elements to form a coherent, original whole."

, and then in looking at its base with 'Remember':

"Define, duplicate, list, memorize, repeat, state"

, resist the urge to assume that they mean what you think they mean, and clarify by asking about the "What"?

Remember what? Define what? Memorize, repeat, state... what? Committing lists of words & phrases that 'everyone knows!' to memory, and understanding what those words refer to and why it's important to remember them, are two very different things, and they are used to accomplish exceedingly different objectives, and if left unidentified, the unwary student's mind is easily subverted by that metaphysical neglect.

Understanding that what your knowledge is of, what follows from it, and how you should or should not respond to that, follows from your metaphysical awareness of what is, which leads into an epistemology of causality and logical identification, and culminates with an ethical understanding of that knowledge and how to contextually behave in regards to it. That is not what Bloom's Taxonomy intends by 'Remember', and if it were, then the base of this learning pyramid would begin with, or at least be subdivided into, what it is that the student is learning about, how they can reliably recognize that is true, and why it's important to remember that and what they should or should not do in regards to it.

That conception of what Knowledge is, cannot be contained by 'mere remembering' in the 'lowest level of the cognitive domain', and consequently those promoting 'Critical Thinking' as follows from Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning, must either avoid or ridicule any traditional materials that convey more than that, so that they can teach students 'How' to arrive at 'answers' which 'everyone knows!'. They do so by asserting that what pragmatically 'works' is 'true enough' (meaning what you're able to get away with... at the moment), and so ignore in practice (and deny in theory) any necessary connection between the reality of what is real and true, and requiring students to be relentlessly quizzed & tested about what remains afloat on the surface of those narratives as 'facts', 'Critical Thinkers' are trained to 'Remember' to think with what they've been told to remember (hi Fichte!).

What follows from 'remembering' such 'Knowledge In Name Only', is an 'understanding' that rests upon nothing (nihilism being the natural underlying 'ism of all ideology), and cares only for the significance of who, or how many, have said it. The aspirations that form from that flux become the origins of 'higher-order thinking' that have gotten beyond 'right and wrong' to become the capstone of Bloom's Pyramid of Learning, by divorcing its thinker's mind from reality. From top to bottom, Bloom's 'pyramid of learning' inclines those who've learned 'How to think' through its structure, to eagerly speak of the importance of an "original whole" that's spun from words with no known reference in reality, apart from what they were led to 'creatively' think it could be.

The metaphysical vacancy of Bloom's 'Pyramid of learning', fosters the growth and spread of such mental weeds amongst the teachers of 'Critical Thinking', as the notions that criticizing '2+2=5' could be hampering their creativity, as well as insisting that 2+2=4 is a means of imposing whiteness, as well as engineering society with 'investing' $9,000 in stay-at-home moms, each of which illustrates 'Critical Thinking's operating theme for building ideological castles in the air, by boldly claiming to be getting something, from nothing.

The roots of these weeds that are overrunning our discourse today, run all the way back to Rousseau (and further still), and are what you'll see endlessly repeated in 'Critical Thinking's goals, where its students are always promised to be 'becoming' great 'Critical Thinkers', even as their employers complain that they're never actually achieving anything like that in 'the real world', which are quickly met with strident excuses of 'Well of course you don't see it yet, we need more testing! We need more Programs! We need more funding for Critical Thinking to be taught in our schools!'.

The real wonder is not that 'Critical Thinking' builds castles in the air, but how people fail to see that those castles are being built 'up there', as a means to subduing them down here, for believing that you can build foundations in the air, effectively takes away the ground from under your own feet.

How they get away with doing that, is what we'll get into in the next post.

Happy 239th Constitution Day - Have you considered the greatest of all reflections on the perils of human nature?

Today is the 239th birthday of the United States Constitution. Peruse it or lose it... and the liberty it was written to preserve. What was signed as completed upon this day, two hundred and thirty-nine years ago, September 17th, 1787, by thirty-nine of the fifty-five Framers, was the Constitution of the United States of America, and whether you stand in respect for, or disrespectfully turn away from, the Flag, the National Anthem, or the Pledge of Allegiance, you do so in reference to that document which is the oldest existing instrument of its kind, still in operation.

Why?

Is it simply a list of rules for governing by? Is it nothing more than a favorite fossil of 'white people', or something that requires a particular 'heritage' to appreciate and defend? A document of oppression? Frederick Douglass once thought so, but because he was an honest thinker, he didn't stop with the answers that were given to him by others (or his own first conclusions), but continued to think upon the matter, and so he discovered the Truth which such vile falsehoods seek to smother and erase.

But today I'm really not much concerned with your answers to those 'points', but in whether or not you are familiar with the ideas, principles and purposes which animated the writing of it - are you? And if not... what worth can your opinion on it - pro or con - have for me, or for anyone else?

Whether you mouth its praises, or make showy protests against it, without understanding what it is you are referencing - your praises and protestations fail to even rise to the level of being wrong, they are but verbal dust to be brushed away, meaningless and of no consequence. And if you are one of that thoughtless many, you may take comfort in the knowledge that you are in the happy company of millions of such Pavlovian 'Conservatives', Pro-Regressive Leftists, and Libertarians, for whom the United States Constitution is little more than a paper bell which they bark at.

But for those of you who do see it as more than a mere object of ink upon paper; for those of you who don't insult the memory of those who strove to produce it as having been anything other than men of flesh and blood; for you who understand that it was written upon the foundation prepared for up by the Declaration of Independence, so as to give physical form to, enable, and implement, some of the greatest political ideas of Western Civilization:

• that Individual Rights result from the nature of being human ("...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."),
• that men who understand that, are men who are capable of self-governance,
• that well-ordered argument can lead to a self-correcting means of governance,
• that such a system, established by such a people, can enable lives lived in liberty while in society with others, so long as the beast of Power is bound down and limited by laws whose purpose is to uphold and defend the Individual Rights of every person

, then for you and all such people as that, who keep and bear intellectual arms through a document such as this, Liberty is possible.

But it is only possible for those who take the trouble to consider it and understand those thoughts and principles which made it possible.

For those intemperate folk who simply wish to sing the praises of, or rain curses down upon, that which they know little or nothing of, so that they can 'do what they will', as they want, because they desire to... well for them, as Edmund Burke said in the face of the debut of Fascism:

“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Whether you are 'for or against it', especially on this day, in our day, you'd be wise to consider what would happen if we should lose the last vestiges of it, and those protections it uniquely extends to both sides.

For those of you who already do, or who are at least willing to make the effort to understand those ideas which animated the framing of this document, those of you who understand that such principles and ideas as these cannot be owned by any race or culture, but can only be discovered by some for the benefit of all, then by virtue of that understanding, you and I are unified through these thoughts which were so well formed, written down, and 'completed' (and not to forget the first debate on amending its completion), on 'the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven'.

What is it that we celebrate today, Constitution Day, but the efforts of our Founding Fathers, 239 years ago, to harness the pursuit of power, and force it to serve the pursuit of happiness? It is simply the greatest achievement in history, to date, to enable men to live in liberty, with one another, while disagreeing with each other, under the protection of the Rule of Law.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

It's worth noting that our Founding Generation found the efforts of the Framers of the Constitution... wanting.

They very nearly refused to ratify the document, not because it wasn't an elegant solution to the harnessing of power, but because they felt it didn't go far enough in securing our Individual Rights.

But, in the end, they took a risk that politicians could be trusted to provide the lacking Bill of Rights afterwards, and though those politicians almost reneged, James Madison insisted that their word be kept, and though he initially disliked the idea of a Bill of Rights, he submitted a series of amendments which, after vigorous debate, became the original Ten Amendments to the Constitution that we know today as the Bill of Rights, which were amended to the Constitution for the purpose of restraining the power which the Constitution harnessed into the hands of men:

"Begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday, the 4th of March, 1789.
The conventions of a number of the states having, at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added; and as extending the ground of public confidence in the government will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution;--"

Madison didn't dislike the idea of a Bill of Rights because he didn't want to secure our Rights, but because he feared that any list of Rights, in the hands of politicians, would serve as snares and loopholes to all of our Rights, limiting them to only those words written upon parchment. But in the process of writing his amendments, he hit upon the ideas that would become our 9th and 10th Amendments, reserving all those Rights and Powers not listed, to the people and those powers not listed, to the states.

We have recently come through a series of tumultuous elections, followed by a series of events that are "testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." ...

If you have not considered what rests at the core of our Constitution, the balancing of powers against powers, and forcing ambition to serve liberty... you must realize that it is not an easy task. As Madison put it in Federalist #51:

"But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

We've passed through elections with charges of fraud, we've ended our longest war in utter chaos and left Americans behind in enemy territory, we have politicians, generals, media and individuals, behaving as if they have no understanding of, concern for, or interest in this document which for 239 years has served to bind the fearsome power of government down with laws. It is up to you, We The People, to consider whether or not that power is balanced against anything at all, so as to serve your liberty - or to extinguish it.

Our Constitution was devised so as to put Government at the service of your ability to live your own life, in liberty, with your fellows. Is it still serving that function, or imperiling it? That's a question you'd better consider, because it will determine the direction that this government turns towards, or turns forever away from, either enabling you, your children and your children's children, to live their own lives - or not.

One final point, whether you are an old hand with, or relatively new to, this document and its ideas, I take it as an obvious point that your reading of it can be greatly improved and informed by those arguments for, and against it, that were in the minds of those who debated the writing and ratifying of it. One of the best tools I've ever found for considering and reflecting upon the whole or particular parts of the Constitution, is the University of Chicago's site "The Founders Constitution". Scroll down on the contents page and you'll find that it goes through the Constitution clause by clause, and that each is supplied with a list of links to those relevant portions of not only the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, but to documents which the Founders had in mind when writing the Constitution, to what the Anti-Federalists objected to (this is particularly helpful in understanding the arguments for the Constitution which the Federalist Papers make), as well as early Supreme Court opinions and judgments that were relevant to that clause being acted upon, as well as the commentaries by early Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (which are fantastic).

Without further ado:

Constitution of the United States and the First Twelve Amendments 1787--1804

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Article. I.

Section 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Section 3. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.
Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

Section 4. The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

Section 5. Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

Section 6. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

Section 7. All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return in which Case it shall not be a Law.

Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

Section 8. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Section 9. The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Section 10. No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Article. II.

Section 1. The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected as follows

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Section 2. The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Section 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

Section 4. The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article. III.

Section 1. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States,--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Article. IV.
Section 1. Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

Section 2. The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

Section 3. New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Article. V.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of it's equal Suffrage in the Senate.


Article. VI.

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Article. VII.

The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

The Word, "the," being interlined between the seventh and eighth Lines of the first Page, The Word "Thirty" being partly written on an Erazure in the fifteenth Line of the first Page, The Words "is tried" being interlined between the thirty second and thirty third Lines of the first Page and the Word "the" being interlined between the forty third and forty fourth Lines of the second Page. Attest William Jackson Secretary

done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,

Go: Washington--Presidt. and deputy from Virginia

New Hampshire	{	John Langdon Nicholas Gilman	}
Massachusetts	{	Nathaniel Gorham Rufus King
Connecticut	{	Wm. Saml. Johnson Roger Sherman
New York		Alexander Hamilton
New Jersey	{	Wil: Livingston David Brearley. Wm. Paterson. Jona: Dayton
Pensylvania	{	B Franklin Thomas Mifflin Robt Morris Geo. Clymer Thos. FitzSimons Jared Ingersoll James Wilson Gouv Morris
Delaware	{	Geo: Read Gunning Bedford jun John Dickinson Richard Bassett Jaco: Broom
Maryland	{	James McHenry Dan of St Thos. Jenifer Danl Carroll
Virginia	{	John Blair-- James Madison Jr.
North Carolina	{	Wm. Blount Richd. Dobbs Spaight. Hu Williamson
South Carolina	{	J. Rutledge Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Charles Pinckney Pierce Butler.
Georgia	{	William Few Abr Baldwin

Amendments to the Constitution
Preamble to the first ten Amendments:

Congress of the United States; Begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday, the 4th of March, 1789. 

The conventions of a number of the states having, at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added; and as extending the ground of public confidence in the government will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution;--

Article I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Article II - A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Article III - No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Article IV - The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Article V - No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Article VI - In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Article VII - In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Article VIII - Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Article IX - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Article X - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.


The Founders' Constitution
Volume 1, Chapter 1, Document 9

The University of Chicago Press
Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States. Edited by Charles C. Tansill. 69th Cong., 1st sess. House Doc. No. 398. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1927.