1y, Posted for: Whole Community
Intellectual Standards--Going Deeper
Posted by: James Brent
{"ops":[{"insert":"The main organizing ideas of the podcast was that intellectual standards are essential to assessing how well we are thinking, as we attempt to think through the elements about any issue or topic, and that it is important that we do this explicitly rather than unconciously in order to not just come up with useful conclusions but also in order to communicate our thinking more clearly to others and as part of the process of improving our thinking.\n\nInsights that I received involve my own teaching--in that I do not explicitly reinforce the standards enough and that leads me to take shortcuts that I shouldn't take in presenting content. Ironically, developing online resources may actually be beneficial in uncovering where I do this and maybe getting me away from doing it. Another insight related to teaching consists in doing things that may actually be disrespectful to students, such as being unwilling to say \"I don't know,\" but instead pulling up what I do, and saying what I suspect about the rest. I think it would be better to be \"intellectually humble,\" and say \"I don't know. How do you think we can find out?\" A third insight related to this is giving homework that is largely passive and not enough that stretches them. \n\nQuestions relate to the overlap between intellectual standards: If we push for depth and breadth, aren't we also working toward sufficiency? Something can be relevant but not significant, of course, but not significant without being relevant. So if we have significance, you can say that relevance is somewhat \"irrelevant.\" That sounds a little flippant, maybe, but I just wondered what makes the theoretical distinction? \n"}]}
Posted by: Linda Elder
{"ops":[{"insert":"Thank you for your comment James. For those reading this, you may view the podcast James is referring to at this link:\n"},{"attributes":{"link":"https://community.criticalthinking.org/watchEmbeddedVideo.php?id=305"},"insert":"https://community.criticalthinking.org/watchEmbeddedVideo.php?id=305"},{"insert":" \n\nIn terms of your last point/question, something can be significant without being relevant. If someone asks you where you want to go for lunch and you reply with a comment on the problem of the danger of nuclear war, your comment may be significant but is not relevant t"},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"o the question at issue"},{"insert":". Still there may certainly be overlapping standards in a given situation such as when precision is needed to achieve clarity, or when through clarifying a thought, you also manage to achieve accuracy, depth or breadth or any other intellectual standard... We need to see intellectual standards as clusters of concepts. Read more on intellectual standards here:\nhttps://community.criticalthinking.org/viewDocument.php?doc=../content/library_for_everyone/60/Thinker__sGuidetoIntellectualStandards.pdf&page=1. \n"}]}