Rethinking Thinking
Mark Clayton,
Christian Science Monitor,
Oct 17, 2003
As a former logic teacher and the author of a widely popular site about logical fallacies, I have thought often about the role of (what is called) critical thinking in learning. At first blush, critical thinking is the capacity to evaluate and assess presentations of fact and argument, a skill my own teaching showed me had been virtually eliminated from students' skill sets. In the traditional educational setting, after all, the teacher and the text are the oices of authority, and by the time students reach the point where they should be forming their own opinions, they find themselves lacking the tools to do this. Even in discussions among educators, I find a striking lack of critical capacity. This article reflects some of these concerns, but in my mind it fails to address the key point: teachers must want to instil in their students the capacity for doubt.
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