Last semester I attended a Critical Thinking class in connection with the Renaissance Society at Sacramento State University. I was expecting a deep, philosophy-heavy class that would examine the different ways we think and how they have been used at different times in the past. Instead, we got a different but delightful discussion each week that was facilitated more than led by the "instructor" Richard Kowaleski. He also invited guest lecturers in to cover specific topics such as alternative medicine.
But the main point of the classes was that we need to be critical of ideas that are presented to us rather than just automatically assume the ideas are good or bad. Although we had a text, we often used newspaper articles and letters to the editor that sounded factual. Instead, upon closer inspection we found most pieces highly subjective IF (and it was a big if) we could in fact determine what the point of the piece was.
Before taking the class I assumed that I was more critical of pieces that were further from my opinion and less critical when I felt a kinship with the author. That indeed was the case although I'm finding the need to criticize all viewpoints. One side certainly doesn't have a monopoly on rational thinking.
How's your critical thinking?
One of my students had an English text out during class today and it was named something like "Rereading America." From the back cover it seemed to be text that discussed the myths that make up many of our preconcieved notions in the U.S. I thought that it might be interesting to read and it seemed like an excilent book for a 12th grade English class, especially when we are just trying to get most of these kids to think.
ReplyDeleteI checked the listings on Amazon.com and our library database. "Rereading America" appears to be a popular text book (clue is that the current edition costs $55 new while an earlier edition costs $3). Since our library only has one copy in the whole system, I may go for the $3 version. It does sound interesting.
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