Tag: critical-thinking

“I wasn’t clueless about people’s thinking. But a thing grows teeth once it is put into words.”

(Kingsolver, B. (2023). Demon Copperhead)

I want to salute you for everything you’ve done to make the college so much better, while preserving what always made it great: the conviction that to think clearly, we must be able to speak freely; that to disagree intelligently, we must first understand the views of our opponents profoundly; that to change people’s minds, we must be open to the possibility that our minds might be changed. All of this asks us to listen charitably, argue candidly, consider deeply, examine and re-examine everything, above all our own deeply held convictions — and, unlike at so many other universities, to respond to ideas we reject with more and better speech, not heckling or censorship.

(Bret Stephens, Commencement Speech , University of Chicago)

Critical Thinking Defined

     Each year when stakeholders—parents, students, administrators, teachers, consultants—gather to write their school’s mission statement, the educational goal that appears most often on Post-it notes is critical thinking. While all stakeholders in the conference room agree on this value, when you ask them to define what they mean by critical thinking the responses fall into one of the following three categories:

    Category #1: Verbs from Bloom’s Taxonomy:

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create

    Category #2: A set of steps

• Identify the problem
• Analyze data
• Consider other viewpoints
• Draw logical conclusions
• Communicate the solutions
• Adjust methods based on feedback

    Category #3: A set of skills

• Reflection in action
• Reflection on actin
• Creative thinking (thinking outside the box)
• Communication
• Collaboration

The why, how, and what of critical thinking

      In and of themselves, all these responses correctly identify the inherent meanings of critical thinking. Missing from these definitions of critical thinking is how these verbs, steps, and skills relate to other ideas or situations. What follows is a model of inquiry that reduces the verbs, steps, and skills of critical thought to three components of critical thought: the why; the how, and the factual.

      The why of the model is the intellectual framework (worldview) individuals develop over time that provides the concepts, ideas, and vocabularies that make sense of the problems they confront in their daily lives, occupations, and the social, economic, and political world they live in. Every person assumes that the intellectual framework they grew up with and built their careers around is natural, normal, inevitable, and should be universal.

      The how of the model are the narratives—explanatory frameworks—individuals construct to explain and justify their worldview. The structure of the narrative consists of what is right or wrong with the problem or situation at hand; a strategy—theories, ideas, practices—for how to address the problematic situation; and the resources that will be necessary to resolve the problem. The glue that holds the narrative together is metaphors, analogies, stories, and exemplars, that shape our understanding of events and experiences. There are many different kinds of narratives depending on the problems, the situations, and the experiences under discussion.

      The what of critical thinking are the truths—facts on the ground— that are verifiable from experience or observations as opposed to theoretical or abstract ideas. The truth of a narrative is determined by the verifiability of the facts presented in the narrative—can the facts in the narrative be proven true or false through objective evidence? The obstacles that a narrative must navigate are the feelings, attitudes, judgments, or beliefs expressed in a particular worldview and the verifiable facts written into that narrative. Ideally, as illustrated in the critical thinking model below, the why (worldview), the narrative (how), and the facts on the ground (what) should support each other. The foundation of this critical thinking model is facts on the ground. If the facts on the ground are false or unverifiable then the narratives and worldview that they are built upon crumble.

“False Narratives”

      The model I am proposing is not a list of steps,  or the application of a particular set of skills, or the matching of learning objectives with the appropriate cognitive level. My model asks individuals to listen to the narrative in front of them. In the political realm for example there have been two narratives regarding the role taxes should d play in our economy. The conservative narrative advocates lower taxes, which according to their narrative will spur innovation and business investment, which in turn stimulate economic growth. The facts on the ground do support the claim that tax cuts increase economic activity and potentially some extra revenue, but the revenue gain usually falls short of the initial tax revenue loss. These facts on the ground not only call into question the narrative of lower taxes, but also question a conservative worldview committed to free markets, limited government, lower taxes, reduction in government spending, and balanced budgets.

         Liberals advocate an equity distribution narrative claiming that the middle class pays all the taxes while businesses and the top one percent pay nothing. Liberals claim they can fix deficits and increase spending on safety net programs by taxing the rich at high levels. The facts on the ground, however, tell a different story. In actuality, the rich pay most of the taxes and are taxed a far higher rates than the middle class: the top 1% pay 33%; the middle class pays 12%; the bottom pays 0%. These facts on the ground throw into question an economic worldview that leans towards a more progressive structure to provide more services and reduce economic inequality by making sure that the wealthiest Americans pay the highest tax rate.

“Other Facts on the Ground”

      Not to belabor the other facts on the ground that call into question the conservative and liberal narratives on taxation, but, just a few more to illustrate the fragility of conservative and liberal worldviews on the policies their narratives promote.

The Narrative	Facts on the Ground
Tax cuts will starve the beast (government spending) by forcing Congress to cut spending	When Congress passes tax cuts, they increase spending.
Europe funds its bigger government spending by taxing the rich more	Europe taxes the rich about the same as the United States. They finance their social welfare programs as the result of value-added taxes, which are essentially national sales taxes that hit the middle class.
Corporate taxes are far below international standards	The United States had the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world until 2017. Even now the tax rate is still in the top one-third of the developed world.
“Taxing Millionaires and Corporations Can Eliminate the Deficit”	Even seizing all the wealth from America’s 800 billionaires—every home, business, investment, car, and yacht—and somehow reselling it all for full market value would raise only enough revenue to finance the federal government one time for eight months.

“The Iron Cage of Ideologues”

      The Achilles Heel of my model for critical thinking is what I will term the Iron Cage of Ideologues. The cage houses a narrative about how the world works and how it should work. Unlike other narratives, narratives authored by ideologues have rigid prescriptions for how we should think, how we should act, and how we should interact with other people. Once that cage door shuts any deviation from the theories and rules prescribed in that narrative is not subject to further debate, dissent, reason, inquiry, or criticism.

      Ideological narratives originate from worldviews that inform our every thought and action. What sets these worldviews apart from other worldviews is the certainty of the attitudes, values, stories, and expectations espoused by that worldview and the command that followers of that worldview strictly follow the established rules and norms of that worldview. The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx is the best example of a programmatic statement of how economic systems work, how they should work, and why they are not working the way they should. The many narratives that have supported and promoted a Marxist worldview remain locked in an ideological cage with the theories, vocabularies, and calls to action prescribed by Marx and Engels.

      I am not suggesting that my critical thinking model cannot be applied to Marxist theory and action. Entire libraries are filled with critiques of the problems with Marxist theory. But these critiques originate from outside the ideological cage. Those nations and populations locked within their ideological cage must leave my critical thinking model at the cage door.

“What it Means to be Educated”

      The reason that critical thinking appears in all school mission statements it is a skill, if done well, that best answers the question: “What does it mean to be educated?” Although there are countless definitions of the educated mind, my model of critical thinking lays out a series of habits listed below that signal the educated mind in play.

• The habit is where the listener fully concentrates, understands, and responds thoughtfully to what a speaker is saying.
• The habit of setting aside personal worldviews and narratives to evaluate the worth of opposing worldviews and narratives.
• The habit of gathering and analyzing facts supporting narratives and worldviews.
• The habit of mastering vocabularies from different disciplines opens up pathways to understanding the relationship between worldviews, narratives, and facts on the ground.
• The habit of calling into question personal worldviews and narratives that are not supported by the facts on the ground.

      The Achilles Heel of the educated mind is fragmentation—the learning of facts, vocabularies, and skills designed to pass a test or do academic research. My critical thinking model is designed to perform the habits of thinking necessary to make sense of the issues and problems we confront in our daily lives and undertake courses of action that best support our worldviews and narratives with the facts on the ground.