The new US Common Core Standards, now adopted by almost all US states, and along with them the Next Generation Science Standards, have left US teachers both hopeful and uneasyāhopeful that the standards can deliver on their promise to improve teaching and learning but less sure of how to make the most of them. Yet the sense is that these standards can be ignored only at oneās peril. Both the mission and stakes have escalated. If todayās students are to prosper in a rapidly changing world, they are expected to acquire not just traditional content knowledge but a wide range of so-called ātwenty-first-century skillsā to prepare themselves for the demanding and evolving roles that await them in this century. And teachers and schools increasingly are being held accountable for measurable results.
Whatās a Teacher to Do?
Teachersā uneasiness is not surprising, since the new standards stop well short of advising teachers how to achieve what the standards demand. The role of the standards is to define the objectives and nothing more, a fact stressed by the US Department of Education. Yet, on the positive side, this is no small achievement. The standards go well beyond a comprehensive outline of content knowledge to emphasize intellectual skills of critical thinking and problem solving that are less clearly defined.
What does this mean? All teachers will say they want to instill good thinking in their students. Yet discussions of good thinking as an aim of education very often do not go beyond generalities and are prone to get into trouble if they do.1 What, precisely, does the practice of good thinking consist of? Experts continue to debate what the twenty-first-century intellectual skills are that students will need.2 But the Common Core Standards exceed earlier documents of their kind by going beyond global constructs like critical thinking to more specifically and explicitly identify core intellectual skills that students are expected to master. Here is a succinct example from the new standards:
[Students should be able to] Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence. Introduce claim(s), acknowledge alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically. Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant evidence, using accurate, credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text. [W.7.1 (a), (b), (c)]
Now teachers have something more to work with, even if itās not clear how they should go about developing these skills in their students. Importantly, they are skills not confined to a single subject areaāsupporting claims with evidence is as important to language arts and history as it is to science. The thinking processes involved in coordinating claims, reasons, and evidence fall under the heading of argument, a term that we see, above and again below, is prominent in the new standards:
[Students should be able to] Trace and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient to support the claims. [RI.7.8]
Argument as an Educational Objective
Beyond seeking to meet the new standards, why should we care that children acquire skills of argument? What makes argument so important and leads the new standards to emphasize it? Consider this exchange between two young children:
| Amy: | Give me the ball. Itās mine and I want it back. |
| Bess: | No. Itās mine. |
| Amy: | Itās not. Itās mine. |
| Bess: | It is not. |
Whether or not we regard this exchange as a genuine argument, whatās clear is that introducing physical force or an external authority are the means that are most likely to resolve it.
It is the introduction of reasons and evidence that will elevate the preceding exchange to the status of genuine argument. The use of reasons rather than force to persuade another is a uniquely human capacity. It recognizes the role of human minds in mediating behavior. It empowers us as humans, both collectively and individually. Collectively, it enhances our ability to live together peaceably and productively. Individually, it is an essential and powerful tool that helps us to achieve our objectives. An e-mail to oneās boss to argue that the company should pursue strategy A rather than strategy B is likely to succeed only to the extent it contains arguments for and against A and B that are thorough, sound, and effectively supported with evidence.
Arguing, in fact, has been claimed by cognitive scientists to be not just central to human thinking and reasoning but its central objective3 āthe umbrella under which all reasoning lies.4 Possibly, then, the new standards are getting to the heart of the matter of thinking well. In this chapter, we only begin to address the question of why argument skills warrant a central place in the precollege curriculum. In the final chapter of the book, we address this question more fully, examining the implications of mastery of argument for students themselves, in and outside of classrooms, and for society.
What Is an Argument?
The term argument is used to refer to different practices and products. One use of the terms has a negative connotation: An argument is what we tell children they must avoid, by working out their differences in a constructive way. Later on, teachers introduce the term in its positive, constructive sense, the sense reflected in the above examples from the new Common Core Standards: An argument is a claim supported by reasons and evidence. Arguments in this sense are likely to have beneficial consequences. They hold the promise of articulating our respective beliefs, clarifying differences, and ideally even building shared understanding.
When teachers introduce the term argument, they can expect students to have some initial difficulty distinguishing the positive and negative uses of the term. In one study5 we asked 6th-graders this question:
Two candidates, Bo and Le, are running for governor of your state. You are riding the bus with your friend. You know your friend prefers Bo. You prefer Le. Is it a good idea to discuss Bo and Le with your friend?
Almost half of this age group responded that it was not a good idea because āYou could get into an argumentā or āIt could ruin your friendship.ā Others were more favorable, seeing the situation as an opportunity to persuade your friend to your own view. Less than a third saw argument as a constructive process: āIf we talk about it we might be able to come to a conclusion,ā in the words of one such 6th grader, the implication being that the conclusion would be a sounder one than the conclusion drawn by either person alone.
Without some discussion, then, many students will not appreciate the concept of argument in its positive sense. Teachers need to take care to lay this groundwork in introducing the practice and language of argument. This is particularly so because there are some further distinctions to be made in defining what an argument is.
The earlier excerpt from the Common Core Standards specifies that the claim must be distinguished from alternate or opposing claims. This is a critical attribute. A claim that has no alternative is rarely worth making or defending. āAirplanes fly,ā for example, is such a claim, because the feature of flight capability is central to the definition of an airplane. No one needs or wants to make, or oppose, such a claim. It wouldnāt even make sense to do so.
Still, this understanding is not one that we can assume young students have mastered. In one study, children were asked to choose among three options as the best explanation for how something worked.6 For a dishwasher, for example, one choice was āThey work because they make things that you put in them clean.ā Another was:
They work because the inside of the machine is really good at washing things. When you put your dishes inside and turn the dishwasher on, it makes them really clean.
As with āAirplanes fly,ā these statements donāt go beyond definition of the term itself. Only a third option offered more than a circular account:
They work because they spray hot water from lots of directions and it reaches all the dishes and silverware inside. They then get rinsed by clean water and then the machine dries them.
Yet half the time kindergarteners chose as the best explanation one of the circular explanations, and even 4th graders did not always see the noncircular choice as superior.
Distinguishing claims that are worth arguing for from definitional claims like āAirplanes flyā and āDishwashers wash dishesā is thus a skill that itself requires some learning. And it is a skill that will need strengthening in order to address more complex instances than the elementary ones weāve just illustrated. For example, are the claims ā2 + 3 = 5ā or āComputers can be usefulā or āChildren need careā claims worth debating?
Genuine claims are ones that can reasonably be opposed. They are claims open to meaningful challenge. They go beyond definition (Dishwashers wash dishes) or logical truths (2 is less than 3) or personal taste (Bowling is fun). Genuine claims are the only kinds of claims of interest to us in the study of argument and argumentation. They are the claims that are worth making and worth constructing an argument to support or to challenge.
Making and Judging Arguments
There is still more, however, to the skills of argument since we want students (and indeed all people) to be able not just to make and support their own claims with well-reasoned arguments. They also need to evaluate the claims and supporting arguments made by others. Indeed, the latter is exactly the competency that is now emphasized in the āCritical Readingā dimension of the new standards. With increased attention to nonfiction text, as well as narrative, students must be able to:
[c]ite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. [RL7.1]
Thus, both production and comprehension of argument are well represented in the new standards, and argument figures prominently in both of the traditional English language arts subject areas of writing (production of arguments) and reading (comprehension of arguments). These same skills in fact appear across the curriculum, in science and social studies and indeed all academic subjects. Especially in science and social studies, teachers and students face the challenge of coming to appreciate both physical science and social science as consisting of evolving argument, rather than merely accumulated fact.
The boxed text well illustrates the prominence of constructing and evaluating arguments in the reading and writing strands of the new standards. It is a sample question from PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) Grade 7 ELA/Literacy Summative Assessment. These assessments are being developed for use in assessing studentsā progress in meeting the Common Core Standards. To meet the standard required of the sample question, students must evaluate three presented arguments and produce an argument of their own. To do so students must have sufficient reading and writing competence to process and comprehend the writersā texts (which increase in complexity in corresponding items at higher grade levels) and to express their own ideas clearly enough to be understood. The new standards make clear that these expressive skills need also to be demonstrated in oral, as well as written, production.
You have read three texts describing Amelia Earhart. All three include the claim that Earhart was a brave, courageous person. The three texts are:
- āBiography of Amelia Earhartā
- āEarhartās Final Resting Place Believed Foundā
- āAmelia Earhartās Life and Disappearanceā
Consider the argument each author uses to demonstrate Earhartās bravery.
Write an essay that analyzes the strength of the arguments about Earhartās bravery in at least two of the texts. Remember to use textual evidence to support your ideas.
Developing these skills in middle school provides an essential foundation for what lies ahead in high school and beyond. Influenced by the new standards, both middle- and high-school social studies curricula are paying increasing attention to such skills, with argument at the core. In describing the skills that its Advanced Placement (AP) history examination assesses, the College Board makes explicit the foundational role of argument:
Historical thinking involves the ability to define and frame a question about the past and to address that question by constructing an argument. A plausible and persuasive argument requires a clear, comprehensive and analytical thesis, supported by relevant historical evidenceānot simply e...
