Critical Thinking: The Path to Responsible Citizenship
By: Richard Paul and Linda Elder
From: The High School Magazine, April 2000
Exercises: J. Geffen
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1.
The world is swiftly changing. Complex economic, social, environmental, and
ethical realities are rapidly working their way into the deepest structures of our lives –
realities citizens must face, understand, and deal with if we are to solve our shared
problems. But are our students learning to face and deal with complexity? Are they
developing the intellectual humility to recognize their shortcomings and the
intellectual perseverance to replace their ignorance with knowledge that goes beyond
slogans and oversimplifications? Are they learning the intellectual skills and
developing the values without which civic responsibility cannot successfully be
discharged? We believe that the most defensible answer to all three of these questions
is, “No.”
2.
Why? Here are two suggestions:
1)
We tend not to recognize poor thinking in civic life because we often
share that thinking.
2)
We do not have a clear idea of how skilled thinkers develop to which
we might compare our teaching.
3.
Consider the important civic problem of crime and punishment that touches all
our lives and takes up an increasing share of our national budget. Unfortunately, this
is a problem that most people have not thoughtfully considered. The most common
thinking on this problem is blatantly simplistic and superficial: “Get tough on
criminals!” “Three strikes and you’re out!” “Adult crime, adult time!” Few look
beneath the surface of this rhetoric to the consequences that follow from putting them
into practice:
 The United States now has more than two million members of its population
in jail. More than 26 percent of the world’s prisoners are in U.S. jails – though
we have less than 4 percent of the world population. We have recently gained
the dubious honor of replacing Russia as the country with the largest percentage
of its population in jail.
 As growing numbers of school districts follow a similar line of thinking,
children are now being expelled from school for such offenses as bringing an
aspirin to school, having a butter knife in a lunch pail, saying a swear word on
the playground, or kissing a kindergarten playmate.
 In Dallas, Tex., an 11-year-old boy faces 40 years in jail in a sexual assault
case.
 In New York City, homeless people are being arrested if they refuse offers of
shelter.
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 In Oberlin, Ohio, a mother who is an ardent amateur photographer was
arrested for pornography for taking pictures of her 8-year-old daughter at
various stages of taking a bath. She now faces 16 years in prison.
 Across the country, district attorneys are routinely evaluated by the percentage
of people arrested they convict (based on the absurd assumption that virtually
everyone arrested is guilty). The higher the conviction rate, it is assumed, the
better the district attorney. No statistics are kept on the percentage of persons
wrongfully accused or convicted.
 In California, a defendant with two previous convictions for felonies receives
25 years to life if convicted of a third felony, even though statistics indicate
those facing a third felony conviction show the same level of violence as those
with no strikes. (Most sentenced are convicted of burglary, drugs, and other
non-assault crimes.)
5.
The fact that these implications of the “get tough on crime” rhetoric are so little
recognized speaks volumes about the low state of civic literacy in this country. If we
were teaching our citizens to think critically about civic issues, simplistic answers to
complex social issues would not dominate public policy and law.
Is Critical Thinking Being Taught?
6.
We conducted a large study of teaching across the disciplines in 38 public and
28 private universities for the California legislature and the Commission on Teacher
Credentialing (Paul, Elder, and Bartell 1997). The study revealed that although
virtually all professors identify critical thinking as a primary goal of their instruction
and believe that they are regularly teaching for it, few can:
 Give an intelligible definition of critical thinking;
 Explain the intellectual standards on which it is based;
 Explain how they teach for it;
 Identify any component abilities;
 Discuss intellectual traits or dispositions essential to critical thinking.
7.
While lip service is frequently given to the concept of critical thinking on
ceremonial occasions, it is not taught to students in general or prospective teachers in
particular. In addition, there is an absence of any conception of the stages that the
realistic development of critical thinking entails. We will never recognize that critical
thinking is missing until we recognize what classrooms would be like were it to be
cultivated in instruction.
What Characterizes Critical Thinking?
8.
Improvement in thinking is like improvement in basketball, ballet, or playing
the saxophone – it is unlikely to take place without a conscious commitment to learn.
As long as we take our thinking for granted, we don’t do the work required for
improvement.
9.
Development in thinking is a gradual process involving plateaus of learning and
just plain hard work. One does not become an excellent thinker simply because one
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has a college degree. Confidence in one’s thinking is not evidence of critical thinking,
neither is a high score on an I.Q. test. Critical thinking requires the development of
particular habits of thought – habits of thought that no one is born with. It also
requires staged practice over an extended period of time.
10. Excellence of thought and skill in learning are real possibilities for all of us.
However, we must learn how to become effective “critics” of our thinking and to
make learning about thinking a priority.
Good Thinking Requires Hard Work
11. To become students of thinking, we must be willing to do the work that skilled
improvement always requires. We say, “No pain, no gain!” when thinking of what
physical conditioning requires. In this case, it would be more precise to say: “No
intellectual pain, no intellectual gain!” It is not easy, for example, to undergo the
intellectual pain required of a nuanced response to the problem of crime and
punishment. It is disturbing if ideas that, without reflection, seem obviously correct
are revealed to be ungrounded or illogical. We tend to reject “challenges” to our nonreflective righteousness. Yet, acceptance of our fallibility and willingness to discipline
our minds by systematic intellectual work are the keys to growth as thinkers.
Put Your Thinking to the Test
12. Stage One: The Unreflective Thinker
We are all born, and most of us die, as largely unreflective thinkers,
fundamentally unaware of the role that thinking plays in our lives and with no useful
conception of what thinking entails. For example, we don’t know how to analyze and
assess our thinking and don’t notice that we are continually making assumptions,
forming concepts, drawing inferences, and thinking within points of view. We don’t
know how to determine whether our purposes are clearly formulated, our assumptions
justified, or our conclusions logically drawn. We are unaware of intellectual traits and
so are not striving to embody them. As a result, for example, we don’t notice that our
response to the problem of crime – “Get tough on criminals!” “Three strikes and
you’re out!” “Adult crime, adult time!” – is based on superficial thinking and leads to
huge costs and grave injustice.
13. Egocentric tendencies play a dominant role in thinking at this stage, yet we lack
the skills and the motivation to recognize how self-centered and prejudiced we are,
how often we stereotype others, or how frequently we irrationally dismiss ideas
because we don’t want to change our behavior or our comfortable way of looking at
things.
Might you be at this stage? Test yourself.
1)
Can you describe the role that thinking is playing in your life? (Be as
clear and as detailed as you can.)
2)
What was a recent assumption you made (that you should not have
made)?
3)
What is a recent concept you formed (that you previously lacked)?
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4)
List five inferences you made in the last hour.
5)
Name and explain a point of view that you sometimes use to guide
your thinking.
6)
Briefly describe how you analyze and assess thinking.
7)
Name some intellectual standards you use. Explain how you apply
them.
8)
Explain the role of egocentrism in your thinking.
9)
Take one or two intellectual traits and explain what you are doing to
try to embody them.
14. If you have trouble answering these questions, you may well be at the
unreflective stage in your development as a thinker. If you are, there is no need to
apologize or feel “bad” about it. Most people are at this stage and don’t know it.
However, once we recognize explicitly that we are this stage, we are ready to move to
the next stage and become honestly reflective, noticing significant problems in
thinking, and recognizing when thinking is egocentric and irrational, acknowledging
that changes in thinking are essential.
15. Stage Two: The Challenged Thinker
We cannot solve a problem we do not own. We cannot deal with a condition we
deny. Without knowledge of our ignorance, we cannot seek the knowledge we lack.
Without knowledge of the skills we need to develop, we will not develop those skills.
A responsible citizen cannot be an irresponsible thinker.
16. We move into the second stage of critical thinking development, then, as we
begin to become aware that as “normal” thinkers we often think poorly. We also begin
to recognize that the “normal” citizen is ill-informed about the complexity of civic
issues and social problems and is strongly inclined to vote for those who talk in
slogans and shibboleths. We begin to notice that we often:
 Make questionable assumptions
 Use false, incomplete, or misleading information
 Make inferences that do not follow from the evidence we have
 Fail to recognize important implications in our thought
 Fail to recognize problems we have
 Form faulty concepts
 Reason within prejudiced points of view
 Think egocentrically and irrationally.
17. We move to the “challenged” stage when we become aware of the way our
thinking is shaping our lives, including the recognition that problems in our thinking
are causing us problems in our lives. We are beginning to recognize that poor thinking
can be life-threatening, that it can lead literally to death or permanent injury and hurt
others as well as ourselves. For example, we might reflect upon the thinking of:
 The teenager who thinks that smoking is sexy
 The woman who thinks that pap smears are not important
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 The motorcyclist who reasons that helmets obstruct vision and therefore it is
safer to ride without one
 The person who thinks he can drive safely while drunk
 The person who decides to marry a self-centered person with the thought that
he or she will change after marriage.
18. We also recognize the difficulty involved in improving our thinking. If you are
at this stage in your own thinking, you recognize that changing your habits of thought
is an important problem requiring extensive and difficult changes in your normal
routines. Here are some signs of emerging reflectiveness as applied to civic thinking:
 You find yourself striving to analyze and assess social, political, and
economic issues in a way that does justice to their complexity; you notice how
frequently the media feeds simplistic thinking.
 You find yourself thinking analytically about your thinking (noticing, for
example, assumptions you are making, implications that follow from one policy
or another, conflicting points of view, etc.).
 You find yourself thinking about the qualities that make thinking sound –
clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, logic. You begin to notice how
frequently these qualities are absent in political discussion.
 You begin to notice the role of self-deception in civic thinking and how
frequently vested interests dominate the discussion.
Teaching Critical Thinking
19. Critical thinking cannot be successfully taught by those who have not developed
themselves as thinkers and are not ready to accept the challenge that critical thinking
presupposes. What is more, it cannot be successfully integrated in only one dimension
of the curriculum (say, civics). To improve the quality of thinking and help students
evolve as thinkers, good thinking skills must be manifested in every dimension of
thinking, and so in every dimension of the curriculum.
20. To learn how to teach to foster these ends requires the long-term development
of teachers as thinkers. Students will not take their development as thinkers seriously
if their teachers are not taking their development as thinkers seriously. We have not
yet faced this challenge. It is time we did. Only long-term staff development in critical
thinking for teachers will help them transform themselves, and their students, into
skilled, reflective, critical thinkers. And only when we work to develop critical
thinking across the curriculum are we likely to be successful in introducing it, as we
must, into civic education.
Reference
Paul, R.; L. Elder, and T. Bartell, 1997. California teacher preparation for instruction
in critical thinking: Research findings and policy recommendations. Sacramento,
Calif.: California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
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Answer in your own words.
Choose the best answer.
1.
The title itself should make one wonder
a.
whether critical thinking is all that important.
b.
whether people are capable of critical thinking.
c.
whether critical thinking can be taught.
d.
whether thinking should be taught.
Answer the following question in English.
2.
What makes critical thinking – paragraph 1 – absolutely essential to us
moderns?
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
3.
Answer the following question in English.
Discuss the view most Americans would adopt – paragraph 3 – on the issue of
crime and punishment.
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
Answer the question below in Hebrew.
4.
Provide the information that might suggest – paragraph 4 – that the American
policy of dealing with crime is in fact counter productive.
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
Choose the best answer.
5.
A critical reading of the information provided in paragraph 6 might conceivably
suggest that critical thinking is perhaps
a. over rated.
b. inaccurately described.
c. best left alone.
d. not readily definable.
Answer the question below in Hebrew.
6.
Discuss – paragraphs 8-10 – some of the obstacles the road to critical thinking
seems to be strewn with.
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
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7.
8.
9.
Answer the following question in English.
What makes the abandonment of long cherished notions – paragraphs 11-13 –
so painful or difficult? (Inferential)
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
Answer the following question in English.
In what sense – paragraph 14 – are most of us, or perhaps all of us, in the same
boat?
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
Answer the following question in English.
What does the information provided in paragraph 17 illustrate?
Answer: _____________________________________________________________
Choose the best answer.
10. A critical reading of the whole article might further suggest that the writer is
a. a deep thinker.
b. a methodical thinker.
c. well equipped to teach thinking.
d. rather presumptuous.