Please do not pass this message by.

CRITICAL THINKING IS AT RISK.

Here are some of the big reasons why:

  1. Many people believe that critical thinking should be free and that scholars qualified to teach critical thinking should do so for free. Accordingly, they do not think they should have to pay for critical thinking textbooks, courses, or other resources when there is "so much free material online" - despite how erroneous that material may be.
  2. There are many misguided academicians, and some outright charlatans, pushing forth and capitalizing on a pseudo-, partial, or otherwise impoverished concept of critical thinking.
  3. Little to no funding is designated for critical thinking professional development in schools, colleges, or universities, despite the lip service widely given to critical thinking (as is frequently found in mission statements).
  4. Most people, including faculty, think they already know what critical thinking is, despite how few have studied it to any significant degree, and despite how few can articulate a coherent, accurate, and sufficiently deep explanation of it.
  5. People rarely exhibit the necessary level of discipline to study and use critical thinking for reaching higher levels of self-actualization. In part, this is due to wasting intellectual and emotional energy on fruitless electronic entertainment designed to be addictive and profitable rather than educational and uplifting.
  6. On the whole, fairminded critical thinking is neither understood, fostered, nor valued in educational institutions or societies.
  7. People are increasingly able to cluster themselves with others of like mind through alluring internet platforms that enable them to validate one another's thinking - even when their reasoning is nonsensical, lopsided, prejudiced, or even dangerous.
  8. Critical thinking does not yet hold an independent place in academia. Instead, "critical thinking" is continually being "defined" and redefined according to any academic area or instructor that, claiming (frequently unsupported) expertise, steps forward to teach it.

As you see, increasingly powerful trends against the teaching, learning, and practice of critical thinking entail extraordinary challenges to our mission. The continuation of our work increasingly relies on financial support from you and others in our community.

We are extremely grateful for your ongoing participation in this community, which plays a crucial role in keeping our doors open. If you have the means for a year-end charitable contribution to our 501(c)(3) non-profit, we humbly invite you to click here and share what you can with the critical thinking movement. Any help that you provide will significantly aid us in continuing our work.

Thank you very much for your support. You are an important part of advancing ethical critical societies.

Join Now and Start Your Free Trial
Institutional Memberships Available
Visit Our Tasting Room
Login
Welcome to the
Center for Critical Thinking
Community Online
Our community invites all to join who want to advance fairminded critical thinking across your work and life. This community is sponsored by The Foundation for Critical Thinking and its donors.

Our community members advance and foster basic concepts and principles in critical thinking.
Please note that this site is separate from The Foundation for Critical Thinking's main site, criticalthinking.org. You will need to create an account specifically for The Center for Critical Thinking Community Online.
Membership Benefits

Welcome and Tutorial from the President - Play Video
  • Access to the entire online library published by the Foundation for Critical Thinking.
  • Digital access to all the educational materials published by the Foundation for Critical Thinking, - including posters, and laminated cards that you may freely print and use.
  • Digital access to partial copies of the Thinker’s Guide Library.
  • Digital access to decades’ worth of videos and audio files produced by the Foundation for Critical Thinking. This includes classic and rare video footage of Dr. Richard Paul, as well as video footage of other Foundation for Critical Thinking Fellows and Scholars, including Dr. Linda Elder and Dr. Gerald Nosich.
  • Get current critical thinking news every day in our newsroom. Comment on these articles, share them with your colleagues, and rate them according to their levels of clarity, significance, relevance, and depth.
  • Read the active blog of the Foundation for Critical Thinking.
  • Through our ConneCT section,
    • Communicate and network with any member of the Critical Thinking Café through our internal messaging system.
    • Post your work products to share with your critical thinking colleagues and friends.
    • Post your critical thinking research.
    • Highlight critical thinking articles from our newsroom that you believe to be significant.
    • Set up your own exclusive forum of critical thinking colleagues, with whom you prefer to communicate.
    • Choose departments to connect with, including professional departments.
    • For educators, Post and Share your instructional design strategies and activities with your critical thinking education colleagues, and discuss your classroom trials, tribulations, victories, and challenges.
    • Access and create job postings in which employers are seeking employees who strive to be increasingly skilled critical thinkers.
  • Join with up to five other critical thinking colleagues to form Study Groups, held online, in real time, and which you can customize according to your schedules. (Sign up in Study Groups with Members section.)
  • Learn the foundational tools of critical thinking, as well as how to apply these tools in everyday life and in the professions, through our Critical Thinking Academy. These involve reading and working through written activities. For many of our activities, we offer our specimen answers for you to read after working through them yourself. You may print and share your work with colleagues, friends, family members, and partners. Our academy includes:
    • The Wheel of Reason (which teaches the Elements or Parts of Thinking).
    • Criteria Corner (which teaches the Universal Standards or Criteria for Thinking).
    • The Wall of Barriers (which warns us to pay attention to the intrinsic problems of egocentric and sociocentric aspects of your thinking).
    • The Triangle of Thinking, Feelings, and Desires (which teaches the conceptual relationships between thoughts, emotions, and desires while targeting thinking as the fundamental key to emotional intelligence and a healthy emotional life).
    • Reading and Writing Alcove (which teaches close reading and deep comprehension of any text worth reading, while also fostering and developing your writing abilities).
  • If you are in higher education administration, register as an institutional member so all your faculty and students can learn the tools of critical thinking here. We can work with your institution to offer college level credit for your students at undergraduate and graduate levels.


What We Do with Your Membership Fees

Your membership fees support the work of the Foundation for Critical Thinking, which has been advancing and cultivating fairminded critical thinking in education and society for almost 40 years.

Your membership fees contribute to the following projects and events, among others, under the auspices of the Foundation for Critical Thinking:
  • Development and coordination of our annual Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking, which is the longest-running annual conference on critical thinking in the world.
  • Scholarships for deserving teachers and administrators to attend our Aannual International Conference.
  • Worldwide open Access to our research and assessment tools, as well as many other resources for outreach at CriticalThinking.org, (the official website of the Foundation for Critical Thinking).
  • The maintenance of the Foundation for Critical Thinking Archives, which begin before the establishment of the Center for Critical Thinking in 1980.
  • The development of our audio and video library, including classic audio and video footage from the Foundation for Critical Thinking Archives. Much of this material has never been accessible to the public and will increasingly be made available exclusively through the Critical Thinking Community website.
  • The development of our extensive and unique library of critical thinking print materials housed at the Foundation for Critical Thinking.
Join Now Membership Fees Member Sign-In
logo
The Foundation for Critical Thinking, a 501(c)(3) organization, is one of the longest-running think tanks in the world advancing fairminded critical thinking. The Foundation for Critical Thinking advocates freedom of speech and freedom of thought throughout the world. CriticalThinking.org
Top ▲