I said:

Not Big BIG!

Bloody Hell and Holy Water?

Blood in Water

I long ago puzzled over this saying:

"Blood is thicker than water."

I knew it meant that your blood relatives were closer to you than all the rest of humanity, and thus deserved your loyalty, but why should "water" stand for everyone else?

I went into a deep thunk about it, and the solution eventually came to me: "baptism."

Baptism brought one into the family of God, such that people all the world over, potentially all of us, were relatives.

Relatives by water, of course, and thus not so thick, not so close as blood relatives, but relatives all the same . . .

(I'm not claiming, of course, that this is Christian doctrine . . .)

This gets me to thinking . . .

A Thinker?
Circa 4,000 Years Ago
from Yehud
IAA laboratory
Credit: Klara Amit / IAA

. . . that somebody had his thinking cap on four millennia ago! But what was he thinking about? He appears to be hatching a rather large conception!

Math as Critical Thinking?

Daniel Zaharopol
LinkedIn

In the March 2016 issue of The Atlantic, education expert Peg Tyre writes of "The Math Revolution" that is quietly taking place, among some educators in the US, emphasizing not drills but conceptual thinking in teaching math, and she tells of Daniel Zaharopol, "founder and executive director of Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics" (BEAM), who is intent on locating minority kids with math skills, as in the following anecdote about a kid he found in Middle School 343:

Five years ago, when Zaharopol entered M.S. 343, a boxy-looking building in a rough section of the South Bronx, and sat down with a seventh-grader, Zavier Jenkins, who had a big smile and a Mohawk, nothing about the setup was auspicious. With just 13 percent of kids performing at grade level in English and 57 percent in math, M.S. 343 seemed an unlikely incubator for tomorrow's tech mogul or medical engineer.

But in a quiet conversation, Zaharopol learned that Jenkins had what his siblings and peers considered a quirky affinity for patterns and an inclination toward numbers. Lately, Jenkins confided to Zaharopol, a certain frustration had set in. He could complete his math assignments accurately, but he was growing bored.

Zaharopol asked Jenkins to do some simple computations, which he handled with ease. Then Zaharopol threw a puzzle at Jenkins and waited to see what would happen:

You have a drawer full of socks, each one of which is red, white, or blue. You start taking socks out without looking at them. How many socks do you need to take out of the drawer to be sure you have taken out at least two socks that are the same color?

"For the first time, I was presented with a math problem that didn't have an easy answer," Jenkins recalls. At first, he simply multiplied two by three to get six socks. Dissatisfied, he began sifting through other strategies.

"I was very encouraged by that," Zaharopol told me. "Many kids just assume they have the right answer." After a few minutes, he offered to show Jenkins one way to reason through the problem. The energy in the room changed. "Not only did Zavier come up with the right answer" - four - "but he really understood it very thoroughly," Zaharopol said. "And he seemed to take delight in the experience." Four months later, Jenkins was living with 16 other rising eighth-graders in a dorm at the beam summer program on Bard College's campus in upstate New York, being coached on number theory, recursion, and graph theory by math majors, math teachers, and math professors from top universities around the country. With some counseling from BEAM, he entered a coding program, which led to an internship at Microsoft. Now a high-school senior, he has applied to some of the top engineering schools in the country.

Now, that's progress! I wish I'd been taught that way in my early school years. I did have one outstanding middle-school math teacher, though, and his name was Jerry Moody. I still remember the math formulas that he insisted we learn. I've always wanted to thank him for his successful methods, but I somehow never got around to it . . . so, if you're out there somewhere, Mr. Moody, "Thank you!"

Ah, almost forgot! Math as critical thinking! "Inessa Rifkin, a co-founder of the Russian School of Mathematics . . . [in] the United States" wants "children to ask difficult questions, to engage so it is not boring, to be able to do algebra[, for example,] at an early age, . . . but also to see it for what it is: a tool for critical thinking." Readers interested in Rifkin's views can look further into the article.

William Kilpatrick on Exempting Islam from Criticism

William Kilpatrick
Crisis Magazine

My friend Bill Vallicella posted on an article by William Kilpatrick about "Islam's Religious Exemption From Criticism" (Crisis Magazine, July 23, 2014), and since the article reflects some of my own thinking, I'm excerpting it here:

[The defense of Islam by non-Muslims] comes in the form of "vouchers" for Islam's good character: assurances by world leaders that Islam is a peaceful religion, assurances by religious leaders that it is a model of interfaith tolerance, and assurances by educators that "jihad" is an interior spiritual struggle . . . . Western critics of Islam often find themselves facing fines or even jail time. In most of Europe, you can safely wave a "Behead Those Who Insult Islam" poster in the face of a policeman, but if you are a non-Muslim and you observe that Islamic law allows for beheadings, you'll be standing before a magistrate the next day on hate crime charges . . . . One of the primary arguments . . . [in defense of] Islam is that it's a stabilizing force in the Middle East and elsewhere. But if that's not the case, should we still want Islam to succeed? If Islam is a destabilizing force, wouldn't the world be better off without it? And since Muslims are the primary victims of Islamic violence, wouldn't they also be better off without it? . . . Islam is looking more and more like a world-threatening ideology, but it is . . . immune to criticism . . . because it is a recognized and long-established religion. To challenge it is to court charges of anti-religious bigotry. In addition, something in our conscience makes us . . . . conditioned to have a favorable view of religion -- especially other people's religion . . . . [T]o contemplate Islam's failure ["somehow doesn't seem right"] . . . . [S]ome critics of Islam contend that it is nothing but a political ideology and ought to be labeled as such. But this rebranding effort is a difficult sell because, by most standard definitions of the term, Islam does qualify as a religion. To most people, moreover, it certainly looks like a religion . . . . [with] centuries-old observances . . . . When people prostrate themselves in prayer five times a day, . . . [a critic can hardly] make the case that what they're doing is nothing more than a power play . . . . [In fact,] Islam is a hybrid: it's both a political ideology and a religion . . . . [T]he religious side provides considerable protection from criticism. Because of its religious nature, it seems improper to engage Islam in . . . ideological warfare . . . . Yet the threat to the West and to the rest of the world is, by all appearances, increasing . . . . Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has proclaimed the creation of a new caliphate state, declared himself caliph, and has called on Muslims worldwide to join him in waging war against infidels . . . . [T]he idea of the caliphate is that there should be only one unified Islam . . . . [T]he caliphate is intended to be a borderless community -- a trans-national and ever-expanding empire of true believers . . . . Islam aspires to be a universal belief system . . . . Islam has the advantage of conducting its proselytizing activities under the banner of religion . . . . [But] Mosques are not just places of worship; they are often centers of political activity and, not infrequently, of jihad activity. As a popular Muslim poem puts it, "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers" . . . . Of course, for a non-Muslim to even hint at the possibility that mosques might serve such purposes is to invite accusations of Islamophobia and bigotry . . . . Which goes to prove the point: Islam's religious status puts it beyond criticism. You can criticize very radical Islamic radicals and very extreme Islamic extremists -- just as long as you add that, of course, their activities have nothing to do with the religion of Islam . . . . [T]he theology/ideology of Islam has some very large weak spots. But our sense of propriety, which is nowadays governed by the rules of political correctness, won't allow us to even talk about them. In effect, the sensitive areas are protected by a large sign that reads "religion -- do not touch."

I've long recognized Islam as both religious and political. That dual nature confuses modern people, who usually expect religion to stay in the private realm as a personal piety that doesn't seek to influence politics. Even in its own founding years -- or should I say especially in its founding years -- Islam was deeply involved in politics, as well as in war -- politics by other means, as Clausewitz observed.

In fact, I would argue that Islam -- in its synthesis of religion, politics, and war within an all-encompassing legal system for the total regulation of society -- is a throwback to one of the earliest forms of organized religion: a theonomic state in which the leader combined the roles of priest and king . . . and, of course, of military general.

The De-Radicalization of Maajid Nawaz

Maajid Nawaz

Hey, that man on the far left looks like

my old friend Ben Sommer!
Newsweek

In "Maajid Nawaz: The Repentant Radical" (Newsweek, Oct 15, 2012), an article on former Islamist jihadi Maajid Nawaz, Christopher Dickey believes that he's located the Achilles heel of Islamism:

Nawaz's long path through the shadows of Islamic radicalism suggests that many others may yet be persuaded to abandon their belief in violent jihad. It is not a matter of faith. At the heart of the process is reason. Many of the brightest and most dangerous jihadis are perfectly rational. De-radicalization begins by understanding the logic they think is unassailable, then breaking it down until they have to start rethinking what they are fighting for and why. But that's hard to do when there is so much righteous intolerance to be had on every side of the debate.

Aside from the final sentence, which I find debatable -- given that much of what gets called "Islamophobia" is nothing other than a critical evaluation of Islam(ism) -- Dickey's suggestion is rather intriguing, but perhaps only for application to the Westernized jihadi, who will already have a commitment to rationality that an anti-jihadi can appeal to, and even then, the rethinking might come only if spurred by fellow Muslims who happen to be more moderate, which is the role the Nawaz's think tank, Quilliam, purports to play.

And even if that works, what is yet to be done with all those madrassa-indoctrinated fanatics who have no prior commitment to reason?

Fulbrighter Stephanie Kim: Internationalization of Korean Universities

Stephanie Kim

UCLA Graduate School of Education

Because I was once a Fulbright Scholar (1989/90), I receive invitations to Fulbrighter presentations here in Seoul, but I'd never attended one until this past Friday, when I went to hear UCLA doctoral candidate Stephanie Kim speak about Korean attempts to raise university rankings on the global scale, a topic promised in the description sent to me a couple of weeks ago:

In the wake of the Asian financial crisis and of a continuing neoliberal [i.e., classical liberal economics] trend in higher education reform that emphasizes deregulation, competition, and marketization, the Korean government has attempted to minimize the country's educational trade deficit by pursuing measures that discourage students from studying abroad while encouraging foreign students to come study in South Korea. In effect, this policy shift underscores the need to raise educational and research standards at Korean universities and to create campuses with more international settings so as to better accommodate foreign students. One consequence is the emergence of international colleges housed within Korean universities that adopt a Western liberal arts model and are conducted entirely in English.

Stephanie's Fulbright research provides an anthropological analysis of an international college that examines how various university stakeholders navigate their professional activities in the context of the university. It takes the integration of liberal arts education in South Korea as a point of entry to discuss the social, economic, and political debates surrounding university internationalization. Her presentation ultimately argues that the emergence of international colleges reflects a unique model of university internationalization that embodies the Korean attitude towards globalization.

There wasn't much anthropological analysis in the presentation -- not what I think of as anthropology, anyway -- so I'm assuming Ms. Kim saves that for the thesis itself, but the data and her argument were interesting to reflect upon, especially for a man such as myself who has taught so long in Korea, first in 1995/6 and then from 1999 through 2012, and who has ever attempted to "navigate . . . professional activities in the context of the university" systems where I've taught, with varying success among seven universities (portmanteau for "unique adversities") as I've trod the faultline between academic cultures East and West. Ms. Kim's succinct summary of "the Korean attitude towards globalization" in "university internationalization" clearly articulated the point that each international program set up in Korean universities to train students in critical thinking (often taught by foreign professors) has mostly been sealed off in a 'bubble' from the rest of the university, the intention being to prevent critical thinking from being turned upon the larger university system or the even larger Korean society, where hierarchy and Confucian ethics hold sway.

As example, Ms. Kim related an anecdote about one of the first graduates of Yonsei's Underwood International College (UIC), a woman who was interviewed by a national newspaper here in Korea and was asked about the UIC program. She answered the various questions honestly, using the critical skills in which she had been trained at the UIC, so she had both positive and negative things to say. Later, the dean of UIC called her personally and told her that before she gave any further interviews, she should first check with the UIC administration about what to say.

That kind of demand would almost certainly not happen in a Western university, else the administrative official would be laughed out of office! But it's the sort of reaction still to be expected here in Korea . . .

Jonah Lehrer on Creativity

Jonah Lehrer
Photo by Nina Subin
New York Times

I think this is my third time to blog on Jonah Lehrer, but that shouldn't surprise anyone used to my blog since I'm noticeably intrigued by the art of thinking clearly, critically, and creatively -- though the chronological order for these three might be the reverse if they occur in logically sequential steps. Anyway, I recently read Michiko Kakutani's review -- "How to Cultivate Eureka Moments" (NYT, April 2, 2012) -- of Lehrer's new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. Based on Kakutani's report, the art of thinking outside of the box is largely a matter of taking two or more old ideas and putting them together in new ways for new applications:

The 18th-century philosopher David Hume, Mr. Lehrer notes, argued that invention was often an act of recombination, of compounding an idea or transposing it from one field to another:

"Johannes Gutenberg transformed his knowledge of wine presses into an idea for a printing machine capable of mass-producing words. The Wright brothers used their knowledge of bicycle manufacturing to invent the airplane[, for t]heir first flying craft was . . . [largely] a bicycle with wings . . . . George de Mestral came up with Velcro after noticing burrs clinging to the fur of his dog. And Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed . . . [Google's] search algorithm . . . by applying the ranking method . . . for academic articles to . . . the World Wide Web[, . . . the] hyperlink . . . [being] like a citation."

In each case, Mr. Lehrer points out, "the radical concept was merely a new mixture of old ideas."

That's sort of comforting. We don't need radically new ideas to be creative; we just need to see new applications for old ideas combined with other old ideas. Easier said than done, no doubt, but Lehrer offers advice:

[G]roup interaction appears to play a key role in innovation . . . . Mr. Lehrer makes a strong case for cities as incubators of innovation . . . . [H]e argues that the sheer density of urban life, "the proximity of all those overlapping minds," forces people to mingle and interact with a diversity of individuals. This . . . creates exactly the sort of collision of cultures and classes that often yields new ideas . . . . The jostle and serendipity of city life, he believes, can provide a model for how the Internet might be retooled to accelerate creativity[, . . . . so he suggests that "i]nstead of sharing links with just our friends, or commenting anonymously on blogs, or filtering the world with algorithms to fit our interests, we must engage with strangers and strange ideas . . . . The Internet has such creative potential; it's so ripe with weirdness and originality, so full of people eager to share their work and ideas. What we need now is a virtual world that brings us together for real."

Collaboration? Sorry folks. Like Mr. Incredible, I work alone. On the other hand . . . that working style didn't work out too well for him, did it? And in fact, I have often collaborated with others. That has worked best when the others are open-minded and flexible, for I'm not. Just kidding. I'm also open-minded and flexible, or at least try to be.

Indeed, I try my hardest to be more than one person myself, so you (or I) might say that I never work alone, for I am 'Legion' . . .

Critical Thinking in China

Lei Feng
CCP Hero

Wikipedia

I don't know much about China despite living so close to that enormous country that would border a united Korea if the North and South ever join again, but I do realize how important it is, so I try to keep up with developments over there. Some readers may recall that I even included China in my paper on the necessity for a culture of discussion in East Asia and that I noted the possibility for the rise of critical thinking there, citing the public's skeptical response to the Chinese government's official version of a terrible accident on one of the nation's high-speed railways.

My faith in the Chinese people's potential for critical thought has not been misplaced, for one of the Communist Party's propaganda heros, Lei Feng, is currently being widely ridiculed on the internet in China, according to Andrew Jacobs, "Poking holes in the tale of a propaganda hero" (International Herald Tribune, March 5, 2012):

[T]he Internet has given rise to a legion of Lei Feng deniers who have been merrily poking holes in his story. Using simple math, they have questioned how a poor orphan living on a tiny army stipend could donate so much money to the needy or how he collected 150 kilograms, or about 330 pounds, of cow dung on a single day during Chinese New Year.

Others have questioned the flawless script of his diary and wondered how it is that there are hundreds of photographs recording his every good deed. Liu Yi, a designer in Shanghai, pointed out the absurdity of one famous image that shows Lei Feng in bed reading Mao's collected works by flashlight. In the photo, he notes, the flashlight is off but the room is fully illuminated. "And there just happened to be a photojournalist passing by to capture the moment," he wrote. (page 3, columns c-f)

Unfortunately, many of these examples of critical thinking still available for others to read online might soon become less prevalent, for beginning March 16, 2012, the Chinese government will require real-name registration on the internet, and the anonymous critiques will end, which may force a lot of individuals to fall silent. Moreover, any online post considered 'detrimental' to national interests, always rather vaguely defined, will have to be deleted within five minutes!

Oddly, I haven't yet managed to locate a copy of this critical article on the internet . . .

UPDATE: It's now online.

Decline of American Universities?

Liber ethicorum des Henricus de Allemania (ca. 1355)

Laurentius de Voltolina (1300s)

Wikipedia

The above image of a 14th-century university classroom has been used in a previous post or two here at Gypsy Scholar, and I still don't know anything about Laurentius de Voltolina. So much for my education!

In other areas, I'm also ignorant, as I learned from an article by Anthony Grafton for The New York Review of Books, "Our Universities: Why Are They Failing?" (November 24, 2011). Grafton reviews eight books on the state of American universities, and it's rather depressing -- astronomical tuition, disengaged faculty, overheavy administration, neglected students. This is the world's best system of higher education? Hard to believe, but perhaps not for long. Grafton doesn't despair, and he's not writing a jeremiad, but there seems no easy way out of this mess. Read the article if you want to know more, for it's too complex for me to summarize this morning, given my lack of time.

Instead, let me just quote three paragraphs that I can respond to, Grafton's remarks on a book by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses:

In Academically Adrift, Arum and Roksa paint a chilling portrait of what the university curriculum has become. The central evidence that the authors deploy comes from the performance of 2,322 students on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester at university and again at the end of their second year: not a multiple-choice exam, but an ingenious exercise that requires students to read a set of documents on a fictional problem in business or politics and write a memo advising an official on how to respond to it. Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement, a self-assessment of student learning filled out by millions each year, and recent ethnographies of student life provide a rich background.

Their results are sobering. The Collegiate Learning Assessment reveals that some 45 percent of students in the sample had made effectively no progress in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing in their first two years. And a look at their academic experience helps to explain why. Students reported spending twelve hours a week, on average, studying -- down from twenty-five hours per week in 1961 and twenty in 1981. Half the students in the sample had not taken a course that required more than twenty pages of writing in the previous semester, while a third had not even taken a course that required as much as forty pages a week of reading.

Results varied to some extent. At every institution studied, from research universities to small colleges, some students performed at high levels, and some programs fostered more learning than others. In general, though, two points come through with striking clarity. First, traditional subjects and methods seem to retain their educational value. Nowadays the liberal arts attract a far smaller proportion of students than they did two generations ago. Still, those majoring in liberal arts fields -- humanities and social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics -- outperformed those studying business, communications, and other new, practical majors on the CLA. And at a time when libraries and classrooms across the country are being reconfigured to promote trendy forms of collaborative learning, students who spent the most time studying on their own outperformed those who worked mostly with others.

Concerning this CLA "exercise that requires students to read a set of documents on a fictional problem in business or politics and write a memo advising an official on how to respond," I can readily imagine that I'd have difficulty doing well on such an exam. Such an exercise demands not just skills in analysis, synthesis, and composition but also some sense of what works in the practical world of business and politics, and that sense comes mostly from life experience in those worlds. As an impractical scholar, I'd likely perform worse than some of my students. Well . . . maybe not here in Korea, where undergraduates have far less practical experience than American ones. If I were teaching in the States, I suspect that my students performing best on this CLA would be the young men and women who'd served a few years in the military on tours in Iraq or Afghanistan and had learned to deal with complex situations requiring quick analysis and practical solutions. But there aren't many such students with that sort of experience.

I suppose I ought to feel gratified that students majoring in liberal arts and studying on their own tend to do best on the CLA, for that describes the sort of student I was . . . but if I'm one of those who'd outperform students in other majors, especially if they engaged in group study, then the CLA scores must be dire indeed.

What's the solution? I don't know. I'll just keep slogging away at teaching as best I know how. Encouraging students to think for themselves. Providing critical feedback to students on essays and research papers. Generally showing students the virtues of moderate irascibility. One ought to be a bit put out with the world . . .

Distorted Learning Through Test-Taking Culture

Typical Test-Centric Student?

Free Dictionary

I read two articles this morning that note the distorted understanding of education encouraged by the rise of standardized testing as a measure of learning. The first article, "The China Conundrum: American colleges find the Chinese-student boom a tricky fit" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 3, 2011), written by Tom Bartlett and Karin Fischer, describes the bewilderment of many Chinese students who head to America for higher education. The Chinese have long had a test-taking culture that emphasizes rote memorization, a practice deeply rooted in Confucian educational tradition, but they have adapted this tradition to fit the educational paradigm of standardized testing:

Students in China's test-centric culture spend most of their high-school years studying for the gao kao, the college entrance exam that is the sole determining factor in whether students win a coveted spot at one of China's oversubscribed universities. So it's not unusual for those who want to study in the United States to spend months cramming for the SAT and the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or Toefl, which most campuses require for admission.

Patricia J. Parker, assistant director of admissions at Iowa State, which enrolls more than 1,200 Chinese undergraduates, says students have proudly told her about memorizing thousands of vocabulary words, studying scripted responses to verbal questions, and learning shortcuts that help them guess correct answers.

She has seen conditionally admitted students increase their Toefl scores by 30 or 40 points, out of a possible 120, after a summer break, despite no significant improvement in their ability to speak English. Her students, she says, don't see this intense test-prepping as problematic: "They think the goal is to pass the test. They're studying for the test, not studying English."

The American academic culture is not yet entirely dominated by 'test-centrism' because the professors teaching today were educated in an academic environment that had not yet become dominated by standardized testing. They therefore still try to teach students to think for themselves:

During this past September's orientation on the University of Delaware's Newark campus, Scott Stevens, director of the English Language Institute, stood on the stage in front of a mostly filled theater. Behind him, on a large screen, was a stock photo of two white college students seated at desks. The male student was leaning over to look at the female student's paper. "We are original, so that means we never cheat!" Mr. Stevens told the audience of primarily Chinese students, mixing compliments and warnings. "You are all very intelligent. Use that intelligence to write your own papers."

But these days, even American students are apparently less well equipped for education that does not focus on teaching toward an exam, a fact documented by Kaustuv Basu in "Socratic Backfire?" (Inside Higher Ed, October 31, 2011). Kaustuv writes about the experience of Professor Steven Maranville, who was recently denied tenure at Utah Valley University, partly due to student complaints about his teaching:

Some students didn't take well to Steven Maranville's teaching style at Utah Valley University. They complained that in the professor's "capstone" business course, he asked them questions in class even when they didn't raise their hands. They also didn't like it when he made them work in teams.

Maranville was doing nothing improper, so far as I can see. I'm particularly baffled by the complaint that he asked them questions when they hadn't raised their hands. Asking questions to get students to think is a proper part of teaching. Maranville is now in court over the university's decision to deny tenure, and he's having to defend his teaching style:

Maranville followed the Socratic teaching style and described his way of teaching as "engaged learning," according to court documents. Those records describe teaching approaches designed to go beyond lectures. He would ask questions to stimulate discussion. He divided his students into teams and gave them assignments outside class.

The Socratic style of teaching that Maranville used is hardly novel. But experts say that while it remains popular in law schools, there are reasons many faculty members have never used it extensively with the current generation of students.

"When done well, you simply do not impose the teacher's idea, and try to come up with a solution through dialogue," said Michael Apple, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "In general, it is a guided dialogue." Supporters of the method see it as "a process by which you try to make the best logical argument and you focus on process as much as content," Apple said. But he added that not that many faculty members use it these days. "The reason for its unpopularity sometimes is because we are in a test-based education system. Students can be increasingly impatient where the answer is not clear and when the professor is not giving it to them immediately."

A lot also depends, Apple said, on who the students are. "It is controversial to some people, for example, students who are deeply concerned that they have to learn a certain amount of content and then take a test at the end," he said. Students may also think that they are being treated as if they were not very smart.

What a baffling attitude students have! Socratic questioning presupposes student intelligence, the ability to think for oneself! Apparently, students these days look on learning as little more than the memorizing of class notes written down as the professor lectures, the aim being to pass a test, and any process that departs from the rapid conveyance of information is an inefficient waste of time. They don't see that genuine education means learning how to think, which entails slowing down to ask questions and look at an issue from various points of view as they learn to integrate facts and ideas on their own under the guidance of a good teacher.

I don't know, of course, that Professor Maranville is actually a good teacher. Students may have a reason to complain. But the remarks by Professor Michael Apple are very revealing about the assumptions held by the current generation of students about learning due to the prevalence of a test-based educational system.

Little wonder that my teaching style doesn't quite perfectly fit either East or West these days . . .

James V. Schall on Islam's 'Fragility'

James V. Schall

(Image from Georgetown University)

The Jesuit political philosopher James V. Schall has a recent short, reflective essay "On the Fragility of Islam" published at The Catholic Thing (August 23, 2011). In our time of aggressive Islamism, such a title is surprising, but perhaps it shouldn't be. Aggressiveness is often a cover for uncertainty, for lack of confidence. But why does Schall consider Islam "fragile"? Not out of ignorance, certainly. Schall first notes Islam's military success, its rapid spread through warfare from Arabia to "North Africa, the Mediterranean islands, much of Spain, the Balkans, the Near East, the vast land area from southern Russia to India and Afghanistan and even parts of China." Islam dominates in these places, as Schall notes with especial reference to formerly Christian territory, and appears powerful:

The Muslim conversion of former Christian lands seems to be permanent. What few Christians are left in these lands are second-class citizens. They are under severe pressure to convert or emigrate. Many forces within Islam desire a complete enclosure of Islam that would exclude any foreign power or religion. The Muslim world is divided into the area of peace and the area of war; the latter is what Islam does not yet control.

Given Islam's power, why does Schall consider Islam weak?

So with this background, why talk of the "fragility" of Islam? This instability arises from the status of the text of the Koran as an historical document. The Koran is said to have been dictated directly in Arabic by Allah. It has, as it were, no prehistory, even though it did not come into existence until a century or so after Mohammed.

Scholars, mostly German, have been working quietly for many decades to produce a critical edition of the Koran that takes into consideration the "pre-history" of the Koran. Due to the Muslim belief that any effort to question the Koran's text is blasphemy, the enterprise is fraught with personal risk to the researchers. The idea that the text cannot be investigated, of course, only feeds suspicion that even Muslims worry about its integrity . . . .

The fragility of Islam, as I see it, lies in a sudden realization of the ambiguity of the text of the Koran. Is it what it claims to be? Islam is weak militarily. It is strong in social cohesion, often using severe moral and physical sanctions. But the grounding and unity of its basic document are highly suspect. Once this becomes clear, Islam may be as fragile as communism.

Schall's argument reminds me somewhat of the secularization thesis, the long-held view that the secular forces of Modernity would undermine religious belief through critical thought, among other things. Outside of Europe, that hasn't quite happened yet, and Europe itself seems to be gravitating back toward religion, either through the growth of Islam there or in reaction to that growth among Europeans now becoming more aware of the Christian element of Western identity.

Moreover, if one compares Islam's textual situation with Christianity's, one sees that Christian fundamentalism, with its emphatic declaration of Biblical inerrancy, is partly a reaction to Modernity, especially to the threat of the scholarly world's modern approach to Biblical criticism, characterized by a hermeneutic of suspicion bent on demonstrating the incoherence of the text through focus upon inconcinnities that imply textual development reflecting theological struggles among early Christian communities rather than a divinely inspired textual revelation of theological truth at the outset, e.g., high Christology is seen as a late development of theological reflection rather than an early consequence of divine revelation. Christianity, in both its Catholic and its Protestant forms, has not fallen into theological ruin at such Biblical criticism.

But Schall might have a point. The Qur'an holds a uniquely central place in Islam, roughly analogous to the position of Christ in Christianity, and it is Allah's only verbal communication with mankind that has remained uncorrupted by those who have received it and is therefore as inerrant today as it was when the angel Gabriel dictated it directly to Muhammad. If critical hermeneutics applied to the Qur'an demonstrates that the text developed over time, i.e., that it drew upon previous scriptures and was rewritten in the decades following Muhammad's death, then Islam could suffer a critical shock, particularly if the very early Qur'anic texts found in the attic of an old mosque in Yemen should turn out to have significant textual variants.

But I don't think that a deconstruction of the Qur'anic text will happen without a fight, and not a purely academic one, at that.

Toward a Culture of Discussion: Introduction

Kishore Mahbubani

(Image from Homepage)

As some might have expected, I've been working on an article that deals with the significance of a culture of discussion for society, particularly in the context of Korea since I live and teach here. I spent the weekend composing a first draft based on my posts, and since I'm pressed for time this morning (because the semester begins tomorrow), I'll just paste my paper's introduction below:

In June 1997 at the 7th International Conference on Thinking, held in Singapore, the Singaporean philosopher and diplomat Kishore Mahbubani asked a singularly discomfiting question: "Can Asians think as well as others?" A year later in the National Interest, he followed up on this question by publishing an essay with the even more provocative, potentially insulting title, "Can Asians Think?" This essay became part of a book by the identical title that same year, but it did not have the effect that Mahbubani intended, for as he writes three years later in the second edition, "My main disappointment with this essay is that it has not yet triggered a discussion among Asians on how and why their societies and civilizations fell several centuries behind European civilizations" (Mahbubani, Can Asians Think? Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2004, 19).

Mahbubani might not have triggered the discussion that he desired, but the topic of critical thinking among Asians was being broached by some Asian thinkers. For instance, the Thai philosopher Soraj Hongladarom presented a paper in 1998 on "Asian Philosophy and Critical Thinking: Divergence or Convergence?" and noted several characteristics of Asian cultures that "prevent the full realization of critical thinking skills," among these, "the beliefs that teachers are superior and always right" and "that social harmony is to be preferred rather than asking probing questions." In short, discursive hierarchy and social harmony trump genuine discussion and critical thinking. Far from being dismissive about these things, Hongladarom holds that Asian societies perhaps once had valid reasons for deciding that "social harmony should take precedence over critical argumentation and open debates." In today's competitive, globalized world, however, he argues that Asian societies need real discussion and critical thinking.

Perhaps these interconnected issues deserve some discussion, and this discourse will necessarily be discursive, winding around through such interrelated concepts as culture of discussion, critical thinking, free expression, and various other correlatives of discursive reasoning.

As noted, that's the intro. I've written the rest, too, but am not fully satisfied with it and will spend today reworking what I've composed . . . along with finding some time to prepare for the semester's onset.

Culture of Discussion: Soraj Hongladarom on Critical Thinking

Soraj Hongladarom

(Image from Homepage)

There's probably more to say about Peter Facione's article, "Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts" (2010), but this series needs to be brought to a close, and I'll do so by citing an article by a Thai philosopher, Soraj Hongladarom, on the difficulty that one encounters in attempting to inculcate critical thinking among 'Asian' students.

In a 1998 paper, "Asian Philosophy and Critical Thinking: Divergence or Convergence?" (Third APPEND Seminar on Philosophy Education for the Next Millennium, May 6-8, 1998, Chulalongkorn University), Professor Hongladarom specifies what he believes accounts for the difficulty:

[T]he beliefs that teachers are superior and always right, that knowledge is not to be made here and now, but exists eternally, so to speak, to be handed down by teachers, that social harmony is to be preferred rather than asking probing questions . . .

Professor Hongladarom doesn't mention Korea, but what he says about Chinese Confucianism applies to some extent here in Korea:

In China, the rapid transformation from feudalism to state bureaucratism, coupled with the pervasiveness of the Confucian ethos, while hugely successful in preserving China's cultural identity amidst the great variety of people and localities, nonetheless made it the case that material innovations and proto-scientific and logical theories would be given scant attention. Writings on such matters are relegated to the 'Miscellaneous' category by the mandarin scholars who put the highest priority to moralistic, ethical, or historical writings.

Professor Hongladarom deals with critical thinking mainly within the context of science and logic, and wants to explain why 'Asians' didn't continue to develop these fields, whereas I am interested in a culture of discussion more generally, but his point is similar. I would argue that when Korea adopted China's Neo-Confucianism with the founding of the Joseon Dynasty, it accepted the overarching importance of social harmony as a primary aim of a good society. In a sense, this was a decision, the kind of decision about which Professor Hongladarom has some thoughts:

If . . . [a] culture, for example, once decided that social harmony should take precedence over critical argumentation and open debates, then critical thinking practices would be forever alien to it if the members of the culture always agree that decisions in the past are not to be amended no matter what.

That sort of cultural 'fundamentalism' -- as he goes on to argue -- would be absurd:

But that is surely a very unreasonable position to take. Cultures, like humans, often make decisions which later are amended or revoked, with new decisions made, when things are not the same any longer. Decisions to prioritize one set of values over another are not etched in stone, but even so the stone can be broken down or else taken to a museum or a pedestal where it loses its real meaning.

Koreans, like the Chinese -- and also like the Thais about whom Professor Hongladarom in mainly concerned -- generally recognize the importance of adopting critical thinking if the challenge posed by globalization is to be met, but this recognition doesn't make the adoption easy:

[T]o argue that critical thinking is actually a good thing to have is difficult, because it may run counter to the deeply entrenched belief that critical thinking is just a label for the confrontational and disputatious mode of life which the culture finds unpalatable.

Thus, one continues to hear Chinese and Korean political leaders extoll the aim of a "harmonious society," and this seems to resonate among Chinese and Koreans. I tend to be cynical about politicians, however, so whenever I hear these politicians extoll the virtues of a "harmonious society," I think that what they're really saying is "Shut up and do what we say."

But maybe I'm just being overly critical.

Culture of Discussion: Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking

Lobes of the Brain

Creativity and Critical Thinking?

Somewhere in There . . .

(Image from Wikipedia)

Again, I'm turning to Peter Facione's article, "Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts" (2010), for more on critical thinking.

Yesterday, we saw that critical thinking can be narrowly conceived as a kind of instrumental reasoning that merely tries to adapt efficient, effective means toward ends that might or might not be ethical. Most of the experts upon whom Facione relied argued that critical thinking is a tool that can be used for good or ill. I suggested that their view might derive from an overly narrow view of critical thinking as oriented toward solving problems, whereas I considered it to include reflection upon values. I didn't resolve the tension, of course, but simply indicated a direction to consider.

The possible limit noted today is that of the 'border' between critical thinking and creative thinking:

We have said so many good things about critical thinking that you might have the impression that "critical thinking" and "good thinking" mean the same thing. But that is not what the experts said. They see critical thinking as making up part of what we mean by good thinking, but not as being the only kind of good thinking. For example, they would have included creative thinking as part of good thinking. Creative or innovative thinking is the kind of thinking that leads to new insights, novel approaches, fresh perspectives, whole new ways of understanding and conceiving of things. The products of creative thought include some obvious things like music, poetry, dance, dramatic literature, inventions, and technical innovations. But there are some not so obvious examples as well, such as ways of putting a question that expand the horizons of possible solutions, or ways of conceiving of relationships which challenge presuppositions and lead one to see the world in imaginative and different ways. (Page 12)

Again, while I can see the point of clarifying these two aspects of thinking, I wonder if these two are so distinctly separate. Critical thinkers are not simply 'criticizing' -- as has often been pointed out. Even if we hold to a narrow definition of critical thinking as instrumental reason, those individuals whom we consider critical thinkers must seek new solutions to old problems, or new ways of conceiving old problems, or the like. Surely, this sort of innovation entails creative thinking, which implies that one cannot be a critical thinker without also being a creative thinker.

I therefore do not believe that I was so far wrong in speaking of the two aspects of thinking in the same breath, but I acknowledge that even though the two sorts of thinking work together, teaching someone to ask the questions necessary to critical reasoning is likely to be easier than teaching that same person how to think creatively. How do we teach a person to dream up what hasn't yet been dreamt?

I'm not yet prepared to analyze that, but I do suspect that asking enough questions might lead one to see things in a new way.

Culture of Discussion: Critical Thinking and Ethics

The (Critical?) Thinker

Auguste Rodin

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm still looking at the article "Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts" (2010), written by Peter A. Facione, who summarizes the views "of 200 policy-makers, employers, and faculty members from two-year and four-year colleges" on "the core critical thinking skills and habits of mind" (page 5).

I've already covered these skill and dispositions in several posts, so I'd like to note a point about the limits of critical thinking. In a sense, it is not limited at all:

Considered as a form of thoughtful judgment or reflective decision-making, in a very real sense critical thinking is pervasive. There is hardly a time or a place where it would not seem to be of potential value. As long as people have purposes in mind and wish to judge how to accomplish them, as long as people wonder what is true and what is not, what to believe and what to reject, good critical thinking is going to be necessary. (page 9)

So long as one is concerned with determining effective, efficient means to goals, Facione tells us, then critical thinking will pervade one's reflections, assuming that one has honed the necessary skills. But note that Facione is talking about instrumental reason, the means used to attain goals, and there is a limit in this that the experts call attention to:

We said the experts did not come to full agreement on something. That thing has to do with the concept of a "good critical thinker." This time the emphasis is on the word "good" because of a crucial ambiguity it contains. A person can be good at critical thinking, meaning that the person can have the appropriate dispositions and be adept at the cognitive processes, while still not being a good (in the moral sense) critical thinker. For example, a person can be adept at developing arguments and then, unethically, use this skill to mislead and exploit a gullible person, perpetrate a fraud, or deliberately confuse and confound, and frustrate a project.

The experts were faced with an interesting problem. Some, a minority, would prefer to think that critical thinking, by its very nature, is inconsistent with the kinds of unethical and deliberately counterproductive examples given. They find it hard to imagine a person who was good at critical thinking not also being good in the broader personal and social sense. In other words, if a person were "really" a "good critical thinker" in the procedural sense and if the person had all the appropriate dispositions, then the person simply would not do those kinds of exploitive and aggravating things.

The large majority, however, hold the opposite judgment. They are firm in the view that good critical thinking has nothing to do with any given set of cultural beliefs, religious tenants, ethical values, social mores, political orientations, or orthodoxies of any kind. Rather, the commitment one makes as a good critical thinker is to always seek the truth with objectivity, integrity, and fair-mindedness. The majority of experts maintain that critical thinking conceived of as we have described it above, is, regrettably, not inconsistent with abusing one's knowledge, skills, or power. There have been people with superior thinking skills and strong habits of mind who, unfortunately, have used their talents for ruthless, horrific, and immoral purposes. Would that it were not so. Would that experience, knowledge, mental horsepower, and ethical virtue were all one and the same. But from the time of Socrates, if not thousands of years before that, humans have known that many of us have one or more of these without having the full set.

Any tool, any approach to situations, can go either way, ethically speaking, depending on the character, integrity, and principles of the persons who possess them. So, in the final analysis the majority of experts maintained that we cannot say a person is not thinking critically simply because we disapprove ethically of what the person is doing. The majority concluded that, "what 'critical thinking' means, why it is of value, and the ethics of its use are best regarded as three distinct concerns."

Perhaps this realization forms part of the basis for why people these days are demanding a broader range of learning outcomes from our schools and colleges. "Knowledge and skills," the staples of the educational philosophy of the mid-twentieth century, are not sufficient. We must look to a broader set of outcomes including habits of mind and dispositions, such as civic engagement, concern for the common good, and social responsibility. (pages 11-12)

The basic problem here is one noted by the Frankfurt School, namely, that instrumental reason -- rationality applied to finding effective, efficient means toward goals -- can be applied for any aim, no matter how immoral.

I don't dispute this point directly, for I think that it's largely correct -- so long as we define critical thinking solely in terms of instrumental reasoning. But there has been a distinction, as I've already noted, between Facione's focus and my own. Facione treats critical thinking as a "tool," and instrument for solving problems, whereas I began the critical thinking part of this culture-of-discussion series by focusing on self-reflection, arguing that critical thinking entails applying the 'why-question' to positions that one holds, including one's own values. In short, I began with the assumption, implicit more than explicit, that critical thinking applies to the purposes that one strives for, namely, that one's aims -- one's goals, one's purposes, one's ends -- must be subjected to critical reflection.

Put differently, I don't limit critical thinking to instrumental reason but consider it more broadly to include reasoning about the proper aims in life. Of course, this can be a rather disruptive form of reflection since it questions treasured values and doesn't necessarily confirm the expected virtues that a culture holds valuable.

Hence some of the cultural resistance against encouraging the development of critical thinkers . . .

Culture of Discussion: Critical Thinkers -- More on Disposition

'Why-Question' Mark?

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm still looking at the article by Peter Facione titled "Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts" (2010). In the section of this article under the heading 'The Disposition Toward Critical Thinking,' we find emphasis placed upon asking the question "Why?" (or equivalents):

What kind of a person would be apt to use their critical thinking skills? The experts poetically describe such a person as having "a critical spirit." Having a critical spirit does not mean that the person is always negative and hypercritical of everyone and everything. The experts use the metaphorical phrase critical spirit in a positive sense. By it they mean "a probing inquisitiveness, a keenness of mind, a zealous dedication to reason, and a hunger or eagerness for reliable information." Almost sounds like . . . Sherlock Holmes The kind of person being described here is the kind that always wants to ask "Why?" or "How?" or "What happens if?". The one key difference, however, is that in fiction Sherlock always solves the mystery, while in the real world there is no guarantee. Critical thinking is about how you approach problems, questions, issues. It is the best way we know of to get to the truth. But! There still are no guarantees -- no answers in the back of the book of real life. (Pages 9-10)

Readers may recall my own emphasis upon 'why-questions':

More specifically, critical, creative thinking requires that one rework this 'why-question' by asking two basic but compound (and perhaps complex) questions about a particular belief to be evaluated: 1) What are the reasons for holding your belief and how good are they? 2) What is the evidence supporting this belief and how good is it? These two questions orient one toward sorting out well-grounded from ill-grounded beliefs and toward laying a foundation of more-or-less dependable knowledge.

Beyond these two compound questions is another 'why-question' -- the sort of question that asks about significance. Suppose that a belief is supported by good reasons and solid evidence. One could still wonder why a belief is important and therefore pose the question: "What is the significance of this belief?" This question orients one toward evaluating significant beliefs from less significant ones and determining how coherently they all fit together.

I've already noted that things are more complicated than these three variants of mine on the 'why-question', and my citations from Facione's article demonstrate this as well. Facione's explication of the 'why-question' also has a different emphasis. I've focused upon "why" as a question directed toward one's own beliefs, whereas Facione focuses in the passage quoted above more upon "why" as a question directed toward solving problems. Both focii are necessary in life, of course, for one cannot solve a problem without a willingness to question one's own assumptions.

Moreover, as Facione shows, there are really more than just the 'why-question' -- critical thinkers also ask such questions as the 'how-question' and the 'what-happens-if-question' (which we could shorten to the 'what-if-question').

Questions arise as this point. Why would a society want critical thinkers? How should a society go about developing critical thinkers? What happens if a society changes its educational system to encourage critical thinking?

Korean society, as readers of my previous posts have perhaps noted, needs to be asking such questions.

Culture of Discussion: Critical Thinkers' Dispositions

Edison's Brilliant Idea

(Image from Wikipedia)

As Thomas Edison is posthumously reported to have stated, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration" (Harper's Monthly, September 1932). Apparently, Edison would have agreed that critical thinking is more than a set of cognitive skills, that it is also the expression of a disposition.

On page 10 of "Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts" (2010), Peter Facione summarizes the concensus of experts on what they call the "Disposition Toward Critical Thinking," which is divided into general and specific aspects, and I offer them here below for your consideration:

A. General approaches to life and living that characterize critical thinking:

1. Inquisitiveness with regard to a wide range of issues
2. Concern to become and remain well-informed
3. Alertness to opportunities to use critical thinking
4. Trust in the processes of reasoned inquiry
5. Self-confidence in one's own abilities to reason
6. Open-mindedness regarding divergent world views
7. Flexibility in considering alternatives and opinions
8. Understanding of the opinions of other people
9. Fair-mindedness in appraising reasoning
10. Honesty in facing one's own biases, prejudices, stereotypes, or egocentric tendencies
11. Prudence in suspending, making, or altering judgments
12. Willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest reflection suggests that change is warranted

B. Approaches to specific issues, questions, or problems that characterize critical thinking:

1. Clarity in stating the question or concern
2. Orderliness in working with complexity
3. Diligence in seeking relevant information
4. Reasonableness in selecting and applying criteria
5. Care in focusing attention on the concern at hand
6. Persistence though difficulties are encountered
7. Precision to the degree permitted by the subject and the circumstances

The term "disposition" is perhaps not well chosen, for it generally implies an inherent tendency, some of its synonyms being "temperament, character, personality, nature." However, the Free Dicitionary does also allow that it can mean "a habitual inclination," which is a bit more optimistic since it suggests that individuals can adopt a habit of critical thinking and thereby develop the disposition of a critical thinker.

In a comment to a recent entry in this "Culture of Discussion" series, Hathor offers this dispositional insight:

I don't know how exactly to apply this, but somehow you would have to be dispassionate, but passionate or excited about finding a solution.

I think that Hathor is right, a dispassionate passion is a useful disposition to have as a critical thinker, for it would help provide the energy necessary toward fulfilling number 6 of the specific aspects listed above, "persistence though difficulties are encountered." Indeed, dispassionate passion could be said to be necessary in all of the aspects, both general and specific, for endurance is needed to persist in all of these habits within a world that often does not appreciate critical thinking in open discussion.

Some individuals are optimistic, such as Mr. Carter Kaplan, a scholar who has recently remarked on the Milton List:

I might observe here that the motion of all open and free discussion will invariably move thinking people to positions of ever greater compassion, transparency, honesty, acceptance and understanding. The advantages to statecraft, science and economic development made possible by this open discussion are obvious.

I responded with less optimism:

This hasn't been my experience of "open and free discussion" on the internet . . . or were you speaking ironically? Discussions constantly get hijacked by trolls, flamers, dementors, and similarly mythological-sounding creatures whose intent seems one of destroying all possibility of communicative reason.

Most people don't seem to practice critical thinking, and too many seem to prefer disruption. Granted, Mr. Kaplan qualifies his point. He is talking about "thinking people," and that qualification would likely exclude a great number of individuals.

But my overall point in this series remains that of the importance of developing a "culture of discussion," for the possibility of critical thinking presupposes the right to free expression even though the free expression presupposed includes the right to insult, as I've previously argued.

One sees just how fraught with difficulty the entire enterprise is . . .

Culture of Discussion: Cognitive Skills for Critical Thinking

Insight Assessment Logo

(Image from Insight Assessment)

I'm continuing to look at the issue of critical thinking in light of its importance for a culture of discussion.

In "Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts" (2010), which I noted two days ago, Peter A. Facione lists six essential reasoning skills identified by experts "as being at the very core of critical thinking: interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation."

1. Interpretation: "to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules, procedures, or criteria."

2. Analysis: "to identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation intended to express belief, judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions."

3. Evaluation: "to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person's perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation."

4. Inference: "to identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions; to form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information and to educe the consequences flowing from data, statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation."

5. Explanation: "to state and to justify that reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, and contextual considerations upon which one's results were based; and to present one's reasoning in the form of cogent arguments."

6. Self-Regulation: "self-consciously to monitor one's cognitive activities, the elements used in those activities, and the results educed, particularly by applying skills in analysis, and evaluation to one's own inferential judgments with a view toward questioning, confirming, validating, or correcting either one's reasoning or one's results."

I've gleaned these six critical-reasoning skills from pages 5 through 8 of Facione's article, where one finds them explained in greater elaboration, but they're also explicit in the "Consensus Statement" that I quoted two days ago.

There's a temptation here to look for a simple method, a one-through-six heuristic steps to follow in thinking critically -- e.g., some correspondence to the six-step IDEALS heuristic noted the day before yesterday -- but a closer look shows that such can never strictly be the case even though the numerical sequence chosen by the experts surely has some significance, perhaps a roughly temporal sequence of steps.

But only very roughly, for we see, e.g., that number 4's "Inference" must already have played a role in number 2's "Analysis," for "Analysis" requires one to "identify . . . inferential relationships" (emphasis mine).

And, of course, number 6's "Self-Regulation" should be constantly at work in practicing the other five skills.

I'll perhaps have to return to these for more reflection, but readers are welcome to comment on these six reasoning skills identified by "the experts" and especially to judge whether or not any skill has been left out.

Culture of Discussion: Critical Thinking

Peter A. Facione

(Image from Santa Clara University)

In yesterday's blog entry, I put critical thinking in the context of education because that's precisely where those skills and patterns of thinking ought to be nurtured and developed. I noted that a good liberal arts school -- such as Baylor University -- teaches its students to think critically.

But to be frank, I've not reflected consciously at any great length about what critical thinking is even though I believe that I'm reasonably good at the practice of critical thinking. In yesterday's brief reflection on what it is, I identified two basic questions and one broader one. The three of these, I suggested, were variants on the question "Why?":

More specifically, critical, creative thinking requires that one rework this 'why-question' by asking two basic but compound (and perhaps complex) questions about a particular belief to be evaluated: 1) What are the reasons for holding your belief and how good are they? 2) What is the evidence supporting this belief and how good is it? These two questions orient one toward sorting out well-grounded from ill-grounded beliefs and toward laying a foundation of more-or-less dependable knowledge.

Beyond these two compound questions is another 'why-question' -- the sort of question that asks about significance. Suppose that a belief is supported by good reasons and solid evidence. One could still wonder why a belief is important and therefore pose the question: "What is the significance of this belief?" This question orients one toward evaluating significant beliefs from less significant ones and determining how coherently they all fit together.

I wasn't entirely satisfed with this formulation and wanted to do some more reflecting on what critical thinking is. In looking around on the internet, I found a useful article by Dr. Peter A. Facione, "Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts," which can be downloaded at a site called Insight Assessment. It runs to 24 pages but is quite readable. I won't summarize, not today anyway, but I will post a couple of quotes.

First, let me post what Facione provided as the "Expert Consensus Statement Regarding Critical Thinking and the Ideal Critical Thinker":

We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. CT is essential as a tool of inquiry. As such, CT is a liberating force in education and a powerful resource in one's personal and civic life. While not synonymous with good thinking, CT is a pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, openminded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. Thus, educating good critical thinkers means working toward this ideal. It combines developing CT skills with nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic society. (Page 22)

By the admission that critical thinking is not synonymous with good thinking, the experts mean that critical thinking can be used for self-interested aims at the expense of others, which I don't want to get into at the moment but which would surely imply that critical thinking be broadly taught in order to counter this.

Second, allow me to post a 'cute' little heuristic that Facione provides on page 24, an acronym that serves as mnemonic device and rule of thumb for critical thinking:

Six Questions for Effective Thinking and Problem-Solving: "IDEALS"

Identify the problem. -- "What’s the real question we're facing here?"
Define the context. -- "What are the facts and circumstances that frame this problem?"
Enumerate choices. -- "What are our most plausible three or four options?"
Analyze options. -- "What is our best course of action, all things considered?"
List reasons explicitly. -- "Exactly why we are making this choice rather than another?"
Self-correct. -- "Okay, let's look at it again. What did we miss?"

As I noted, kind of cute. Maybe 'too' cute. But useful nonetheless. I'll leave you with these quotes and maybe get back to this material tomorrow.

Right now, I have other duties that call me away from the computer.