My first idea about critical thinking and the main focus of the Wiki is to get students to surmise, what does this mean for me, and how is this related to my life?
I think critical thinking is the ability to find and make use of information. That involves a complex array of skills, the most important, perhaps, being language. Critical thinking results in some type of articulation. To know something is to be able to articulate it, to struggle to articulate it precisely.
I really like the ideas about truth and about confidence (self-regulation) that came out of the meetings and articles. I hadn't fully articulated those ideas, and I am still working on it. The value of a college education is not the diplomas and credentials; it is the self actualization that occurs. The peaks of my own college experience always involved me (sometimes painfully) overcoming some bias or predetermination in my mind and finding truth. Education should be about growing the mind, and it grows as painfully and slowly as the body. We subject ourselves to this sometimes painful process so that we are not simply driven by our appetites, so that we are not merely leaves on the wind. Even a mollusk filters something.
We are bombarded with information and facts everyday, none of which are true. NONE. One of the most important things we can teach is that a fact is not a truth. We tend to say "that's a fact" to mean something is true, but the truth is that even if a fact is validated it may have little to do with the truth. Much like the fast food industry, we are given shovel loads of substance with no nutritional value. Furthermore, the state of mass media today seems to be completely hapless. It is not a "liberal media" or "Fox" conspiracy. It is clear, though, that the historically constant unethical and unscrupulous methods of the press seem to have been accepted by the industry as the standard. It is of upmost importance for an individual to be able to arrive at some kind of truth.
Critical thinking, though, isn't just arriving at a truth. It is a willingness to arrive at conclusions (deduce, infer, etc.) that challenge a truth one might be comfortable with. A truth or some truth are very different from the notion of the Truth. The only Truth I really understand is that there are a whole lot of constantly morphing truths out there, many of which are designed to get my money, energy, vote, or just to get me to repeat things that I hear. Part of being an adult in the Post-modern world is understanding this. Critical thinking is the ability to navigate these truths and adapt to the changes. It is crucial for an individual to arrive at some kind of truth and be willing to change, but that has to be based on some kind of discernment or objective detachment.
Seeing how something is useful, making something useful, growing mentally and/or emotionally, discerning some kind of truth, a willingness to change internally, navigating external changes.
I am reminded of Robert Pirsig's book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in which he embraces "Quality" as the guiding principle or truth of his navigation. That book really does hit on a lot of the ideas we are dealing with. Isn't quality what we are really after? Imagine how much better Albany would be if we could get four or five thousand people in the community to willingly try to embrace the notion of quality in all of our actions.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should talk about critical abilities or strategies rather than critical thinking. I am not sure we can teach thinking. We can teach strategies.
ReplyDeleteI really like the questions you are asking, Chaz, as I'm struggling with the same issues. I think you've captured a central issue for colleges when you insist that "the value of a college education is not the diplomas and credentials; it is the self actualization that occurs."
ReplyDeleteYet, it appears that the system is so configured to work against that goal. Our students know what is important for their future: a high GPA and a diploma, and in their busy lives, they spend the least amount of resources to reap the maximum amount of benefit (to put it into economic terms, which most of them do). I think this is one of the reasons for the explosion of online, commercial colleges (Univ. of Phoenix): they provide students a quick, more easily accessible way to get a credential.
Those schools don't particularly teach critical thinking, or higher-order thinking skills, which frankly, tend to get in the way of the neat transfer of course content. I fear that too many colleges and teachers have defined higher education as the efficient transfer of content. I think that path is dangerous, however, as the Internet (Google, for instance) is about the best tool available for neatly transferring content from one place to another. In that race, Google Univ. will win.
But how, then, do we convince students and society to accept our process of self-actualization when they are mostly looking for a product? I don't have easy answers here, but I'm convinced that it's a critical issue for higher ed to address.
BTW, it may appear that I am knocking training. I am not. Good training is critical. For instance, my son—a recent US Navy recruit—is being trained to maintain fighter jets. This is where training shines: with a finite skill set and knowledge set that is highly regular with clear and very specific right and wrong answers. Even the problem-solving technics that he uses are highly regimented and therefore amenable to training. Training is valuable in college as well: for learning the correct way to handle dangerous chemicals in a lab or how to stretch a canvas, or mix oils, but those of us who value critical thinking skills (however we define them) will be unhappy if all higher education is reduced to training.
Training can be of high quality, as can teaching, but they are not the same thing, even if done by the same teacher in the same class. Unfortunately, the higher ed game seems rigged for training and not for teaching, for rote memorization and not for critical thinking. It's a tough issue, and I wish I had all the answers. :-)
Chaz,
ReplyDeleteI like your statement that we can teach strategies and not thinking.
I think there is much to that, at the core of this whole topic.