{"ops":[{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"[Missed Part 2? "},{"attributes":{"bold":true,"link":"https://community.criticalthinking.org/blogPost.php?param=149"},"insert":"Read It Here"},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"]"},{"insert":"\n\n\n"},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"There Is a Need to Foster Critical Thinking in the Education of the Ordinary Citizen"},{"insert":"\n\nThere is little hope that the leaders of powerful nations and groups will of their own volition take ethical considerations seriously in formulating policies and practices that bear on the well-being and development of all. They must be pressured by those not deeply involved in the struggle for political and economic power. But such persons are traditionally ill-prepared to exercise the critical thinking necessary to address the problem of development. Though the relevant ethical principles have been formulated, ordinary people have not been taught those formulations. They have not been encouraged to seek out sources of information not readily accessible in their national public media nor in how to analyze the media critically. They have not developed the conceptual sophistication to see through the bias of their own groups’ conceptualizations.\n\nUnless educators in all countries can begin to foster genuine critical thinking in schools accessible to most people, or some other means is developed or generated for helping people free themselves from the self-serving manipulations of their own leaders, it is doubtful that “ethical reasoning” will play its appropriate role in social and economic development. Ethical reasoning, to be effective, cannot be “uncritical,” for ethical principles must be applied in the context of human actions and interest heavily polluted by distortion and one-sidedness, by vested interests portrayed in the guise of ethical righteousness.\n"}]}