When does a word become poisoned enough that we have to stop using it? In today's discussion, there was mention of reading online criticism of the Abeka curriculum on a number of fronts, one of which was that it did not encourage "critical thinking." I don't know much about it, but I browsed, and I could see that it did not seem to encourage what is commonly called "critical thinking" skills. It focused on the dreaded "rote learning." Drill and kill, they used to sneer, and possibly still do. But depending on the grade we are talking about, I'm all for it. Children cannot begin to do abstract reasoning until about 13, some adults never get very advanced in it, and the imitations of it that get passed off in schools are disguised forms of indoctrination. Bright children can follow abstract reasoning much younger, and then imitate it a few years later. But doing this is much harder. As evidence, I recalled diagramming basketball plays for the junior high boys' team, which included two math-wizards. They couldn't quite get it. Walking them through it on the court worked much better. I hypothesised that having that group bring dolls, or action figures, or stuffed animals to move around on a tabletop would work better for boys and girls that age to learn how to position themselves. Someone please try this for me.
My next go-to example has always been the fifteen year old arguing with his father about back-to-school clothes. "I don't tell you what to wear! Why do you tell me what to wear?" This is actual abstract reasoning. It is bad reasoning, because it neglects an enormous amount of cultural information, but it is not something he learned from any adult. He came up with it on his own (or a friend of the same age did, and he's not far behind).
I approve of reasoning and logic. I think it should be taught to schoolchildren. It was one of the things I liked about algebraic and geometric proofs, that they were inarguable. Logic drove you, willingly or no, to the conclusion. I remembered Max Shulman's short story "Love is a Fallacy" for decades. (But note it is about college students, and most often read by high school, not fifth-grade students.) Yet red flags should be going up everywhere when we see discussions of Cognitive Macro-Abilities for middle-school students. They can follow such things, they can imitate them, but as they can't really do them, what you will be teaching is to answer another set of concrete questions about what the pieces are in Questioning Assumptions, Choosing a Strategy, and Consulting With Others. Those all sound lovely, but they aren't real. I grant that teaching junior high kids what the process should look like someday and making them walk through the steps is valuable. Yet we should not pretend that any critical thinking has occurred.
All this by way of introduction, as I often say.
When I looked at the online discussions of the Abeka curriculum and its critical thinking, I found there were (at least) two meanings for this. One was the discussion of logic, evaluating facts, discerning opinions versus conclusions versus facts, stepping back and finding general strategies, and that sort of lovely "critical thinking" stuff. I have already signaled my suspicion that many educators are unconsciously calling things Critical Thinking when what they ultimately mean is Getting the Answer I Want Them To. But at least they are hanging on to the important scraps of meaning. Far more common was the use of lack of Critical Thinking to mean "they don't criticise American racism in their history lessons enough...they don't believe in climate change...they teach that Christianity is true." They have switched from the formal, technical meaning of critical that is related to critique, to the everyday one of "says that X is wrong."
They aren't the only ones. but we should expect them to be especially careful. They aren't.
There are still some people using the phrase "critical thinking skills" in a manner I would approve of, and agree that such things should be taught. Something close to "logical thinking skills," or "perspective skills." I hate to cut the ladder out from under them on this one. But I have to, because even amongst the people who should be using it with precision - educational researchers, educators, psychologists - too many have lazily followed political rather than scientific thinking and use the phrase "critical thinking" to mean "saying important, properly negative things about stuff I and all decent people don't like."
Critical Thinking Skills should now be retired. I shall use it no more.
Not that I have used it for twenty years anyway, because I have sensed this coming. But now I want you to eschew it too.
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