Educating Reason

Harvey Siegel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136085161
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 1988. The critical thinking movement is increasingly important in the philosophy of education. Beginning from the generally accepted view that children should be taught to reason, not simply to repeat what they have been told, it tries to establish whether it is in fact possible to teach children a set of skills which add up to thinking. Siegel here examines three major conceptions of critical thinking and then puts forward his own definition of the critical thinker as one who is appropriately moved by reasons'. He argues that critical thinking is a fundamental educational ideal, and defends the ideal against charges of indoctrination. Chapters on science education and minimum competency testing highlight its practical implications for education policy and curriculum. This book should be of interest to lecturers and students of education and philosophy.

CHAPTER 1

Three conceptions of critical thinking

The whole concept of argument … rests upon the ideal of rationality—of dicussion not in order to move or persuade, but rather to test assumptions critically by a review of reasons logically pertinent to them.¹

The fundamental trait to be encouraged is that of reasonableness…. In training our students to reason we train them to be critical.²

What is critical thinking? Despite widespread recent interest in critical thinking in education, there is no clear agreement concerning the referent of the term. But if that notion is to carry significant weight in our educational thinking and practice, it is essential that it be delineated with some precision, so that we will know what we are talking about when we talk of the desirability of critical thinking, or of educational efforts aimed at improving students’ critical thinking ability. In this chapter I wish to discuss three accounts of critical thinking recently offered, those of Robert H. Ennis, Richard W. Paul, and John E. McPeck. These three thinkers are all identified with the Informal Logic Movement (though the last is generally seen as a critic of, rather than a friend of or participant in, the Movement), and reflect that Movement’s commitment to the improvement of educational practice as well as the promulgation of informal over formal logic (again excepting McPeck, who is committed to educational improvement but is not as taken with informal logic, in education or elsewhere, as Ennis or Paul). In considering the merits of each account, as well as the conflicts among them, I hope to set the stage for my own positive account of critical thinking (in the next chapter), which has affinities with each. I begin with the work of Ennis.

1 Ennis’s conception of critical thinking

Ennis has been concerned with critical thinking for many years; in fact contemporary interest in the notion and its relevance to education can be traced to his highly influential “A Concept of Critical Thinking.”³ In that paper Ennis explicates critical thinking as “the correct assessing of statements,”⁴ and offers both a list of aspects of statement assessment and criteria for the correct assessment of various sorts of statements.⁵ The discussion exhibits Ennis’s usual care and clarity. But the details of the analysis are not germane for present purposes. Here I wish simply to draw attention to the fact that the conception of critical thinking offered in Ennis’s paper focusses entirely on a person’s ability correctly to assess or evaluate certain sorts of statements. A person is a critical thinker, on this view, if she has the skills, abilities, or proficiencies necessary for the proper evaluation of statements. Education for critical thinking, then, involves the imparting to students of the requisite skills, abilities, or proficiencies. (To illustrate with just one of Ennis’s “aspects,” a student would be a critical thinker with respect to inductive conclusions if and only if she had the skill requisite for mastery of and application of the complex set of criteria for correctly assessing the warrantedness of inductive conclusions.) No mention is made of the student’s actual utilization of her skills and abilities—if she is able to assess statements correctly, she is rightly regarded as a critical thinker. Let us call this the “pure skills” conception of critical thinking: a person is a critical thinker if and only if she has the skills, abilities, or proficiencies necessary for the correct assessing of statements.⁶

This “pure skills” conception of critical thinking faces an obvious objection: it sanctions our regarding a person as a critical thinker even though that person never, or only infrequently, thinks critically. It would require us to regard our educational activities aimed at promulgating critical thinking as successful if, for example, students could pass tests designed to assess their critical thinking skills but did not utilize those skills in their ordinary statement-assessing activities (i.e. outside of the testing context). And of course examples abound of people who fit this description—who possess highly developed skills of statement assessment but who, for example, buy cars or vote for politicians for the most uncritical of reasons.⁷ Thus something more than skills appears necessary for critical thinking.

Ennis has, since the paper being considered appeared, become aware of this difficulty, and in his more recent work he has attempted to shore up the “pure skills” conception by adding to skills (and good judgment) a set of tendencies requisite for critical thinking. After presenting his “perhaps overwhelming list of proficiency items,” Ennis remarks that “Proficiency is not enough. There must be a tendency to exercise the proficiency.”⁸ On this “skills plus tendencies” conception, then, a critical thinker has both the skills or proficiencies necessary for the proper assessing of statements (and actions), and also the tendency to exercise those proficiencies in their ordinary statement- (and action-) assessing activities.

The “skills plus tendencies” conception of critical thinking does, I think, overcome the difficulty with the “pure skills” conception noted above, and is an important advance in Ennis’s conceptualization of critical thinking. For, as I argue in chapter 2, critical thinking extends far beyond skills of statement assessment, and centrally includes certain dispositions, habits of mind, and (even) character traits; and the disposition to be a critical thinker—that is, the disposition to utilize appropriate criteria in the evaluation of statements and actions, and to value belief and action which is guided by reasons—is perhaps the most important “non-skill” component of critical thinking. So Ennis’s addition of the tendency to utilize the proficiencies necessary for critical thinking to the list of ingredients of critical thinking is, in my view at least, a welcome one. However, this addition, however welcome, does not put to rest the task of conceptualizing critical thinking. For there remain some difficulties with the “skills plus tendencies” conception which demand attention.

First, there is a problem of emphasis. Ennis’s list of proficiencies is extremely detailed and elaborate; he himself regards it as “perhaps overwhelming.” The bulk of his work over the years has been with various dimensions of the items on the list, their philosophical foundations (concerning, for example, the nature of explanation and causation), and the vicissitudes of testing for them. By contrast, although according to the formal presentation of Ennis’s conception proficiences and tendencies are on a par (along with good judgment), Ennis’s discussion of the tendencies consists solely of a list of them (including, for example, the tendencies to be well-informed, to demand appropriate precision, etc.) with no elaboration. All of the tendencies on the list, moreover, are by his own word “in a way included in the list of proficiencies,”⁹ except the tendency to exercise the proficiencies delineated by the list of proficiency items. So instead of two roughly equal components of critical thinking, proficiencies and tendencies, what Ennis’s conception amounts to is actually a highly complex list of proficiencies coupled with the simple admonition to exercise the proficiencies. In this way, while Ennis’s view is to be praised for its recognition of the importance of utilization of skills, the tendency to utilize critical thinking skills is under-analyzed and under-attended to in Ennis’s work.

The under-attention to the tendency to utilize proficiencies can be seen in its absence from Ennis’s work on testing for critical thinking. I think it is fair to say that Ennis is the leading theorist of critical thinking testing; his work in this area exhibits a rare mastery of both the philosophical and educational dimensions of critical thinking, and the psychology of testing. (In fact Ennis is the co-author of the highly influential and widely used Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, and is the cutting edge of the development of a new generation of such tests.¹⁰) Yet his work on testing for critical thinking focusses, as far as I am aware, entirely on testing for proficiencies. Granting for the moment that testing for critical thinking is important, it is difficult to reconcile the claim that the tendency to utilize proficiencies is as important a component of critical thinking as the proficiencies themselves with the one-sided heroic effort to develop effective tests for the proficiencies in the total absence of effort to develop effective tests for the tendency.¹¹ In this way Ennis’s work on testing for his revised conception of critical thinking, the “skills plus tendencies” conception, while acknowledging the importance of the tendency to utilize critical thinking proficiencies—to be a critical thinker, and not just to be able to be one—nevertheless under-emphasizes and undervalues that crucially important tendency.¹²

Ennis also under-values the tendency to utilize proficiencies in his suggestion that we regard critical thinking, or rational thinking as the “fourth R” of education.¹³ The original three Rs (reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic) are typically regarded not as ideals of education, but as specific skill/competency areas which, because of their central importance in life and because they make possible all advanced study which presupposes them, are vitally important for students to master. On the view to be articulated in the next chapter, however, rational thinking is not simply another of these areas. Rather, it is the guiding ideal of educational endeavor, the “first R” which justifies and makes sense of our commitment to the other three. At present my point is simply that it under-values critical thinking to regard it simply as another (albeit important) skill area. It is, rather, best regarded as an educational ideal which involves dispositions, habits of mind, and character traits as well as skills.

(There is a difference between Ennis’s view about the way dispositions or tendencies enter into an account of critical thinking and my own. (I mention it now; I hope it will become clearer in the next chapter.) Ennis’s list of dispositions is composed of rather specific items—e.g. “Try to be well-informed”—whereas my discussion (in chapter 2) is concerned with the general, global disposition to pay attention to reasons and to regard them as important, i.e. to be “appropriately moved” by them. This latter disposition is best understood, I think, as a sort of character trait; a person who has it is not simply a person with a certain disposition, but a certain sort of person. I am concerned, then, with the global or “macro-disposition” to be moved by reasons and the implications of this for character; while Ennis’s discussion is more concerned with specific “micro-dispositions” which might contribute to the satisfactory assessment of claims and actions. I do not believe there is any incompatibility between Ennis’s discussion of dispositions and tendencies and my own. Our discussions reflect, rather, a difference in focus and target.¹⁴)

Thus far I have been arguing that Ennis’s conception of critical thinking under-values certain dimensions of that notion. I now wish to mention two ways in which Ennis’s conception is underdeveloped; two issues which a full conception of critical thinking should address but which are not addressed in Ennis’s analysis.

First, consider the tendency to think critically, i.e. to utilize the proficiencies Ennis discusses. Ennis and I are agreed that this tendency is an important component of critical thinking (although, as I have argued above, his analysis in several ways under-values it). Why should critical thinkers have this tendency? Ennis does not address this question. But it seems to me that the question ought to be addressed, for the answer tells us something important about critical thinking. The answer, I think, is that critical thinkers should be disposed to think critically, and tend to do so, because (i.e. for the reason that) they recognize the value of critical thinking. This recognition involves the recognition of related values, such as truth, intellectual honesty, and justice to evidence. Moreover, to recognize the value of critical thinking it is necessary that critical thinking has value; consequently, a fully worked out conception of critical thinking ought to demonstrate that value. Thus a full conception of critical thinking ought to offer a justification of critical thinking as an educational goal or ideal. This I attempt to do in chapter 3.¹⁵

Second, I wish to draw attention to the distinction between critical thinking and the critical thinker, and to suggest that a full conception of critical thinking must provide not only criteria for assessing pieces of reasoning, but also a characterization of the attributes of the sort of person who is rightly regarded as a critical thinker. Ennis sees his project as delineating a conception of critical (or rational) thinking, and sees this as involving the development of a set of criteria for determining the goodness of pieces of thinking: “Criteria are needed for determining whether a given piece of thinking is rational. Providing such criteria (that is, providing a conception) is my goal.”¹⁶ Yet what Ennis goes on to provide is not just such a set of criteria, but rather such criteria mixed in with a characterization of critical thinkers.¹⁷ The tendency to utilize proficiencies, for example, may be a characteristic of a critical thinker, but it is surely not a criterion for determining the rationality of a given piece of thinking, since a piece of thinking, while it may be the result of that tendency, surely does not itself possess that tendency. Tendencies to think or act in certain ways are properties of persons, not pieces of thinking. Ennis’s discussion slides over this distinction, but I think that distinguishing between the characteristics of pieces of good thinking and those of the critical thinker is important. For one thing, it underscores the importance of incorporating tendencies, dispositions, and habits of mind into the characterization of critical thinking. In doing so, moreover, it draws attention to the fact that critical thinking, conceived of as an educational ideal, concerns the characterization not simply of a set of cognitive skills or criteria of reasoning assessment, but more importantly of a certain sort of person. To recognize this is to recognize the depth of the concept of critical thinking, and the importance of character, values, and other moral dimensions of the concept. Ennis (and Paul and McPeck) is (are) agreed that the key task, so far as education is concerned, is that of articulating and defending a characterization of a certain sort of person—a critical/rational thinker. But his analysis dwells very lightly on these moral dimensions of the concept, and does not in my view distinguish sufficiently clearly between characteristics of pieces of good reasoning and characteristics of persons who are rightly regarded as critical thinkers. This is a lack that robs critical thinking of a considerable portion of its depth and significance. In chapter 2 I try to give these dimensions their due.

In ending this section I wish explicitly to acknowledge the obvious: Ennis’s work on critical thinking is crucially important, pioneering, and basic to inquiry in the field. His list of proficiencies is by far the most detailed, complex, and useful to be developed; his work on testing for critical thinking is of fundamental importance. My critical suggestions are simply that, first, while Ennis’s conception of critical thinking acknowledges the tendency to utilize proficiencies and be a critical thinker as a component of critical thinking, it nevertheless in certain respects under-values that component; and second, that certain questions which I think a full conception of critical thinking should address are not addressed by Ennis’s conception. I address those questions in the next chapters. First, however, I turn to Richard Paul’s conception of critical thinking.

2 Paul and critical thinking in the “strong sense”

Paul acknowledges, and indeed emphasizes, the importance of including the tendency or disposition to utilize proficiencies, to do critical thinking, in a full conception of critical thinking. This acknowledgment is part of Paul’s more general distinction between two different senses of critical thinking: a “weak” sense and a “strong” sense. Our first task in this section is to explicate Paul’s distinction.

The typical critical thinking students comes to us,¹⁸ Paul suggests, already having:

a highly developed belief system buttressed by deep-seated uncritical, egocentric and sociocentric habits of thought by which he interprets and processes his or her experience.… The practical result is that most students find it easy to questi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Rationality, critical thinking and education
• 1 Three conceptions of critical thinking
• 2 The reasons conception
• 3 The justification of critical thinking as an educational ideal
• 4 The ideology objection
• 5 The indoctrination objection
• 6 Science education
• 7 Minimum competency testing
• Postscript: Towards a theory of rationality
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index