{"ops":[{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"Entreaty to Make Critical Thinking the Highest Priority in American Education"},{"insert":"\n \nDear President Biden:\n \nYou have been elected at another momentous time in our history. We face many overwhelming problems that can only be solved using the highest-level reasoning we can collectively achieve. Therefore, as you consider the earliest moves you will make as president, we implore you to "},{"attributes":{"italic":true,"bold":true},"insert":"place critical thinking at the heart of your education policy."},{"insert":"\n \nThe simple fact is that if we are to come anywhere close to effectively addressing the problems we now face together on this planet, we will have to think seriously about the "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"problems in thinking that are causing these problems. This can only be done through explicit, fairminded critical thinking. The attack on Washington on January 6 exemplifies how far we are away from this reality."},{"insert":"\n \nAt the Foundation for Critical Thinking – an education 501(c)(3) non-profit organization – we have been advancing a rich, integrated conception of fairminded critical thinking for more than 40 years. And though in the last decade the term “critical thinking” has gained in use, it has not gained much in "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"currency"},{"insert":". "},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"American public education, on the whole, has never actively embodied or cultivated intellectual and ethical development"},{"insert":".\n \nEveryone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"precisely on the quality of our thought"},{"insert":". Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.\n \nAnd yet, at present, "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"thinking is virtually ignored in human societies"},{"insert":". The only way we can hope to create "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"critical societies"},{"insert":", societies in which fairminded reasonable thought is a primary goal and collective value, is if we begin to take thinking seriously. \n \nPut another way, critical thinking is essential to reasoning well through any issue or problem, through every subject and discipline. But it is largely disregarded in our schools, colleges, universities, social institutions, government, and, indeed, in all domains of human thought.\n \nMost of our work at the Foundation and Center for Critical Thinking in the past four decades has been with teachers and faculty (from primary grades through higher education). Because critical thinking is essential to reasoning well in every part of human life, it is essential to education. Sadly, because it is far from a cultural value, because teachers have not learned how to foster it, because “leaders” ignore it, because most people have no real conception of it or how to go about engaging in it, we are advancing only very slowly to bring it into the heart of everyday life.\n \nCritical thinking is, whether we see it or not, the missing piece. In schooling today, we do not help students take command of their own minds. Studies show that, for the most part, we are not teaching them to discipline their own thinking. We are not teaching them that the only way to learn a subject or discipline is to think through problems and issues in it "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"using disciplined  thinking"},{"insert":". We are not engaging their intellects. We are not teaching them how to fully and deeply comprehend what they read. We are not teaching them to write with clarity, precision and purpose. We are not teaching students to integrate ideas within and among subjects. We are not teaching them to enter (in good faith) viewpoints with which they disagree. We do not approach them as thinkers. In short, we are failing to develop the intellect. \n \nInstead, we are largely alienating students from education. Most students leave our high schools, colleges and universities without being able to think scientifically, mathematically, historically, sociologically, anthropologically, economically, or psychologically. They are not learning to think as good citizens concerned with the public interest. They are not learning to be good parents or intimate partners. They go out into the world, faced with the tremendously complex realities we all now face, without the intellectual skills they need to survive and prosper in it.\n \nThis is not surprising given that, for the most part, teachers themselves are not learning critical thinking in their own “educational processes.” \n \nIt is true that some students learn some critical thinking implicitly along the way. But, as is evident in the state of current affairs, our collective thinking simply isn’t good enough. In fact, where people do tend to think critically in today’s societies, it is frequently sophistic or selfish critical thinking they become skilled in.\n \nAs a country we have been “reforming” education for several decades, and we continue to fail in this because we ignore the very foundations of education. These foundations are found in a rich conceptualization of critical thinking, which entails:\n \n1.    "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"learning to analyze thinking"},{"insert":" (to identify purposes in thinking, the questions being asked, the information being used, the beliefs being taken for granted, the concepts guiding the thinking, the viewpoint of the reasoning, and so forth),\n \n2.    "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"learning to assess thinking"},{"insert":" using intellectual standards (like clarity, accuracy, significance, depth, breadth, fairness, logic and relevance),\n \n3.    "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"developing intellectual traits of mind"},{"insert":" (like intellectual empathy, intellectual integrity, intellectual perseverance, intellectual humility, fairmindedness, confidence in reason, and intellectual sense of justice).\n \nMoreover, a substantive conception of critical thinking implies a deep concern with the "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"problematics"},{"insert":" in thinking. This entails, for example, recognizing that people need explicit ways to deal with their native "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"egocentricity"},{"insert":" (tendencies toward self-deception, selfishness, narrow-mindedness, rationalization, etc.). And it entails awareness of one’s natural tendencies toward "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"sociocentricity"},{"insert":" (to blindly follow the crowd). \n \nIn sum, critical thinking is necessary because:\n \n1.    though everyone thinks,\n2.    we can’t count on our thinking to be of high quality (in fact we can count on it, quite often, to be biased, to distort information and points of view, to see things from a narrow self-serving perspective, and so forth).\n \n"},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"The simple fact is that any education policy which ignores critical thinking will fail"},{"insert":" for the very reason that skilled thinking is the key to sound education policy and practice. And at the heart of intelligent thought are the concepts, principles, skills and traits of critical thinking.\n \nI leave you with two quotes:\n \nThe critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators. . . . They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens. (William Graham Sumner in "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"Folkways"},{"insert":", 1906)\n \n[Critical thinking is a] desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture. (Francis Bacon, 1605)\n \nWe are "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"homo sapiens"},{"insert":", the thinking species. But we are perhaps centuries or more away from "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"homo criticus"},{"insert":", the species that thinks critically. If we are to reverse the downward spiral we are at present experiencing, we must begin to actively and deliberately foster fairminded critical thinking in our schools, our homes, our social institutions, in government, and indeed, in every part of human life.\n \nIf you are interested in discussing how critical thinking can become an educational value in this country, we are ready to help.\n \nSincerely,\n \nLinda Elder, Ed. D.                                                      \nEducational Psychologist                                           \nSenior Fellow and President\nFoundation for Critical Thinking\n"}]}