
Critical Thinking: A Necessary Skill in the Age of Spin - tokenadult
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/critical-thinking-necessary-skill-g-randy-kasten
======
tokenadult
To engage in some critical thinking about the article submitted here (which
was recommended to me by a private message from a Facebook friend), I should
point out that it is by no means clear that critical thinking is a coherent
skill that is readily taught.[1] Perhaps the best way to learn critical
thinking as a habit is to learn several traditional knowledge domains deeply
through grappling with problems as well as through mere exercises.[2] There
are some good textbooks on critical thinking for beginning university
students, with miscellaneous lessons about various techniques of skeptical
thinking.[3]

[1] "Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?" by Daniel T. Willingham

[http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Crit_Thin...](http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Crit_Thinking.pdf)

[2] "Word Problems in Russia and America" by Andrei Toom (which I think I
first learned about from another Hacker News participant)

[http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-
NEW.pd...](http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf)

[3] For example, _How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New
Age_ by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-About-Weird-
Things/dp/007803...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-About-Weird-
Things/dp/0078038367/)

~~~
japhyr
I teach high school math and science, and I often give students assignments
that ask them to develop their own questions. I make a point of telling them
we won't be answering all of these questions; some of the best questions would
take a lifetime to answer. This helps break students out of the mindset that
every question asked in school needs to be answered, and the answer needs to
be evaluated as right or wrong.

Many students don't know how to craft a good question, but given the space and
time to do so many of them can develop the skill. Classroom conversations
change significantly when the guiding questions we're focusing on have been
thoughtfully crafted by students.

~~~
lovboat
Don't they feel sometimes defrauded because their long time worked question is
left aside unanswered? Don't they feel that other student are being given full
attention meanwhile they are not considered properly?, don't you think that
asking and not answering my sound like not a fair game to play?

Education has many problems, and the majority of questions about it are
unanswered or the real answer is today unknown.

~~~
nine_k
Unanswered != not paid attention to. Some good questions may be equivalent to
known unanswered (P = NP) or unanswerable (halting problem) questions.

------
nsomaru
Critical thinking, the existence of a rational faculty, is what separates
humanity from animals.

Critical thinking is necessary in order for our race to reach and discover
what it means to be human, and this has been true as long as there have been
humans.

edit: Schopenhauer has a great essay "On Thinking for Yourself" \--
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8915729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8915729)

edit2: A quote from the above:

12-- When you consider how great and how immediate is the problem of
existence, this ambiguous, tormented, fleeting, dream-like existence – so
great and so immediate that as soon as you are aware of it it overshadows and
obscures all other problems and aims; and when you then see how men, with a
few rare exceptions, have no clear awareness of this problem, indeed seem not
to be conscious of it at all, but concern themselves with anything rather than
with this problem and live on taking thought only for the day and for the
hardly longer span of their own individual future, either expressly refusing
to consider this problem or contenting themselves with some system of popular
metaphysics; when, I say, you consider this, you may come to the opinion that
man can be called a thinking being only in a very broad sense of that term and
no longer feel very much surprise at any thoughtlessness or silliness
whatever, but will realize, rather, that while the intellectual horizon of the
normal man is wider than that of the animal – whose whole existence is, as it
were, one continual present, with no consciousness of past or future – it is
not so immeasurably wider as is generally supposed.

------
lovboat
I think critical thinking is not necessary, depending of your personal
circumstances you can be better off with a great net of friends that can help
you to find a good job. For example, my wife found a good job because she,
besides being wonderful at work, has a really splendid net of friends who can
speak wonders of her. I don't think that being critical or having critical
thinking skills is going to help you in your career, sometimes is better to be
quiet and let the powers be. I remember a story of a very good broker with
wonderful ability that didn't follow the herb, he make very good predictions
but he lost his clients, financial markets are not for critical thinking, is
like a beauty contest (in due context by Samuelson).

~~~
lovboat
I must confess that I didn't read the original post, and I am being down
voted. Perhaps there is something interesting beyond the title, but I would be
grateful people down-voting me could give a hint about what they are thinking
about, what their argument is. I know that is easier to move your finger than
to make a real or sound argument, also I am awared that you must not ask why
the down voting (a question of etiquette it seems). But anyway, some feedback
is always welcome.

~~~
cryoshon
I think you're being downvoted because people don't want to accept that what
you are saying regarding critical thinking being anti-adaptive may be true.
The followers of the hacker ethos are revolted by prospects that the less-
skilled. less-disruptive, and less-smart can succeed by social optimization
and conformity. It's a direct threat to the existence they've doubled down on.

~~~
jacquesm
It may simply have to do with him saying that he feels his wife found her job
because of her friends, not because of her skills. She might disagree.

~~~
lovboat
Naughty boy, indeed. In my post I say literally that she is wonderful at work
and people that know her recognize so. A big net of friends and acquaintances
provides plenty of opportunities of finding a good job. Her job don't require
critical thinking skills.

~~~
jacquesm
> Her job don't require critical thinking skills.

So you say. Look I don't mean to say you don't know better but it's hard for
me to come up with _any_ profession that does not require critical thinking
skills. No matter what 'simple' task I want to do - say one that normally
would be someone's day job - I always find that it requires more knowledge,
skill and more thinking than I anticipated.

------
cryoshon
A necessary skill, but honestly, a college-level skill that most
students/people will opt out of because it doesn't sound sexy and it certainly
has no direct-skill applications in the work world. If you put critical
thinking as an item on your resume, only a very small crowd would view it as
information rather than noise.

I guess the other wrinkle is explaining to people that "critical thinking"
encompasses a lot more than destroying opposing arguments and building secure
arguments of your own; critical thinking is a necessary but not sufficient
skill to engage in formal debate, but that's not what most people use it for
anyway. Critical thinking is a modality for interacting with the world, and
its dictum is active engagement of ideas rather than passive reception and
acceptance. Actively engaging with the world involves abstractly de-greasing
the gears of their mental machinery so that they seize up and require hands-on
attention more often. Rather than allowing an advertisement to blare its
claims unchallenged as is default, critical thinking will consider the motives
of the advertisers, their most effective methods, the target audience, the
angles of human nature it is attempting to leverage, and the explicit or
insinuated claims of the advertisement. The author notes broadly that being a
sucker is both the cause and result of passively accepting outside
claims/advertisements and physically acting based on the assumption that those
claims are true. We can not say, however, that learning critical thinking will
undo suckerdom (this was discussed in depth in The Republic), but it may
innoculate people against falling for some future timeshare sale.

I have long thought about assembling course materials to teach critical
thinking, and dreamt about creating an institute for the teaching of critical
thinking. Once again, the trouble is convincing people that critical thinking
is essential, even though to some of us it may seem obvious. The problem with
getting people to take critical thinking seriously is that critical thinking
looks a lot like what you'd learn in a philosophy or English class, which
people identify with being useless because they don't translate into jobs as a
skill directly. Unfortunately people seem to forget that critical thinking is
practiced at a high level as part of science, instead preferring to lump
scientific cognition into its own category which is framed as inscrutable to
the commoners. If I had to teach people to think critically, I'd probably use
a blend of media/propaganda study, formal logic, scientific method, rhetoric,
and literary deconstruction-- I imagine that's enough to scare away all but
the most determined.

~~~
WalterSear
IMHO, starting to teach it in college would be waiting more than 15 years too
late.

------
arca_vorago
I think the trivium is what needs to be learned by most people. Many people,
especially Americans, have never even heard of it, unless they went to a
classical education school.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium)

~~~
bordercases
Deviations from the Trivium are fashionable but I find that the more I deviate
away from it the worse off I end up being in my education. I used to think
that understanding was something that was solely axiomatically derived. Now I
view skills like memorization as being essential for thought. In order to
become fluent in a domain one must have plenty of data, which requires solid
memories to maintain. These facts can be synthesized later, which is what the
next two steps of the Trivium are for.

It does need to be updated for modern times, though. The basic principles are
still worth enforcing. This is where I was introduced to it:
[http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html](http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html)

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hashkb
It's always easier not to think for yourself. We want to assume we are
surrounded and led by trustworthy people. Thinking is hard, and sometimes
frightening; ignorance is bliss. To boot, cynics/pessimists get a bad name for
raining on the parade. Whether it's your government or your boss... same
thing.

------
slicktux
Yes, indeed is critical thinking of importance; but unfortunately it is only
as broad as the subjects tastes, culture and emotions allow for; very few use
logic, reason, or history; and even if objective critical thinking is of the
more reasonable, many go against the grain and follow a path of critical
thinking that is paved by emotive language and bias.. .

