This idea surfaces from time to time and is commonly found with the same central tenets as are found here:
- critical thinking is not a skill - thinking of it as a skill reduces it to second-rate applications of tricks of logic
- critical thinking means some form of indoctrination, typically feminist or Marxist
- critical thinking is itself uncritical and typically involves adopting some perspective
As a long-time teacher of critical thinking as well as a student of the ideas behind it, I think I can unequivocally say that these three points are nonsense. Critical thinking is a set of tools that help you correct errors in your own reasoning and resist being persuaded by errors in others. It has the same status as mathematics, and failing to teach it has similarly devastating consequences.
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