Notes
- What follows is based heavily on the writings of Israel Scheffler. Professor Scheffler has long urged that we endorse critical thinking as a primary educational desideratum. My treatment of critical thinking is intended, then, not so much as an original treatment, but as a systematization and explication of a notion that has been “in the air” for quite some time. My debt to Professor Scheffler is large;
- Israel Scheffler , Reason and Teaching ( New York : Bobbs-Merrill , 1973 ), p. 1 .
- Karl R. Popper , “Back to the PreSocratics,” in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge ( New York : Harper & Row , 1965 ), p. 151 .
- The central reference to Kuhn is his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , 2nd edition , enlarged ( Chicago : University of Chicago Press , 1970 ). I have discussed the general relationship between Kuhn and the ideal of critical thought in my “Kuhn and Critical Thought,” Philosophy of Education 1977, pp. 173–79; and I have examined specific aspects of Kuhn's views on science education in my “Kuhn and Schwab on Science Texts and the Goals of Science Education,” Educational Theory 28 (Fall 1978):302–9, and “On the Distortion of the History of Science in Science Education,” Science Education 63 (1979):111–18. See also my “Rationality, Objectivity, Incommensurability, and More,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (forthcoming).
- Israel Scheffler , Conditions of Knowledge ( Chicago : Scott Foresman and Company , 1965 ), p. 107 .
- Fruitful expansion of this paragraph can be found in Scheffler, Reason and Teaching , pp. 76 – 80 and 142–43. A more detailed account of that aspect of critical thinking concerning the correct assessment of statements can be found in Robert H. Ennis , “A Concept of Critical Thinking,” Harvard Educational Review 32 ( Winter 1962 ): 81 – 111 Ennis' treatment of critical thinking as the correct assessment of statements is more narrow than the conception being developed here, since that (latter) conception involves much more than the assessment of statements. Nevertheless, Ennis’ treatment of that portion of critical thinking concerned with the assessment of statements is an illuminating and important one.
- A helpful discussion of critical spirit, as distinct from critical skill, can be found in John Passmore , “On Teaching To Be Critical,” in The Concept of Education , ed. R.S. Peters ( London : Routledge & Kegan Paul , 1967 ), pp. 192 – 211 See also Scheffler, The Language of Education (Springfield, II.: Charles C. Thomas, 1960), Chapter 5, esp. pp. 94–95; and my “Is It Irrational To Be Moral? A Response to Freeman,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 10 (1978):51–61, and “Rationality, Morality, and Rational Moral Education,” (forthcoming).
- These points are developed more fully in Israel Scheffler's “Moral Education and the Democratic Ideal,” reprinted in Scheffler, Reason and Teaching , pp. 136 – 45
- Scheffler , The Language of Education , p. 57 , italics in original.
- Scheffler , Conditions of Knowledge , p. 107 . Further discussion of the critical manner of teaching as initiating the student into the rational life can be found on pp. 11,90, and 106–7; idem., Reason and Teaching, pp. 1–3 and 76–80. Similar points, in a different context, concerning the manner of teaching are made by Leonard Joseph Waks, “Knowledge and Understanding As Educational Aims,” The Monist 52 (1968):109–10.
- Gilbert Ryle , The Concept of Mind ( New York : Barnes and Noble , 1949 ).
- For a useful discussion of the analogous role of regulative ideals in science, see Carl R. Kordig , The Justification of Scientific Change ( Boston : D. Reidel , 1971 ), esp. pp. 111 – 13
- Immanual Kant , Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals , trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959). The original Grundlegung Zur Metaphysik Der Sitten was published in 1785. An excellent contemporary discussion of Kant's conception of human dignity and the respect such dignity requires may be found in Hardy Jones, Kant's Principle of Personality (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971). See also Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 84–97, and references to Vlastos and Williams therein.
- Both “self-sufficiency” and “empowering” are terms suggested by Scheffler. See Scheffler , Reason and Teaching , Chapter 9 , esp. pp. 123 – 25
- Scheffler , Reason and Teaching , p. 143 .
- Ibid.
- Ibid. , pp. 143 – 44
- Here, as earlier, empirical research is both appropriate and necessary to establish the claim.
- Cf. R. S. Peters , “Education as Initiation,” in Philosophical Analysis and Education , ed. R.D. Archambault ( New York : Humanities Press , 1972 ), pp. 87 – 111
- Scheffler , Reason and Teaching , p. 79 , emphasis in original.
- Though what follows is somewhat different from the content of our discussions, I am grateful to Zarina Patel, a former student, for bringing home to me the force of this objection.
- Jonathon Kozol , “A New Look at the Literacy Campaign in Cuba,” Harvard Educational Review 48 ( August 1978 ): 341 – 77 Cited passage is from p. 364 . Cf. also Kozol's reference to Bowles and Gintis, Illich, Katz, and Spring on that page.
- It is perhaps worthy pointing out that this claim is compatible with another common claim, namely that moral education and political education cannot, practically speaking, be neatly separated.
- Cf. Peters , “ Education as Initiation. ”
- Kozol , “ A New Look at the Literacy Campaign in Cuba ,” p. 364 .
- Scheffler , “ Moral Education and the Democratic Ideal ,” esp. pp. 137 – 39 and 142–43.
- A further problem for critical thinking is the following: Is liberation, as conceived along the lines of critical thinking, the same as liberation as conceived by most political revolutionaries? After all, liberation as defended by Scheffler is of a piece with democratic society, while for many thinkers, liberation can proceed for persons and for nations even though those persons may live in nations which are openly undemocratic. While I have not argued the point here, I believe a case can conclusively be made that liberation along the lines of critical thinking is, ultimately, the only sort of liberation that can be rationally justified.
- See, for instance, Robert H. Ennis , “ Conceptualization of Children's Logical Competence: Piaget's Propositional Logic and an Alternative Proposal ,” in Alternatives to Piaget, ed. Linda S. Siegel and Charles J. Brainerd ( New York : Academic Press , 1978 ), pp. 201 – 60 Ennis' earlier “A Concept of Critical Thinking” is also relevant here.
- For a general overview of Philosophy for Children, see Metaphilosophy 7 (January 1976) which is devoted to Lipman's work.