One of the main things that today’s education system seeks to instill is “critical thinking.” But as progress in critical thinking is difficult to measure, how can we know if students are learning this valuable skill?
The answer, I discovered, is simple: look at their writing skills.
Such an idea was suggested in the early 20th century by George Townsend Warner of the University of Cambridge. According to Warner’s essay-writing guide, the sole purpose of an essay is to get a student “to think, and to write down his thoughts in good English.”
Given the deplorable state of writing skills in America’s schools, it would seem that students have not learned to be “critical thinkers” as well as we might have hoped. Warner’s little essay-writing guide, however, provides several tips on how to foster both good thinking and clear writing skills in today’s students. Here are three of the tips:
1. You Need a Good Teacher
Not surprisingly, the process to good writing and thinking begins with a good teacher. Many teachers, Warner writes, assign writing concepts too difficult for their students to ponder. A good teacher will assign an understandable topic on which their students may actually have experience or thoughts that they can incorporate into their writing.
2. You Need to Brainstorm
Brainstorming is such a well-known tool of good writing that it’s often overlooked. Warner’s three ways to teach this vital tool include reading books on the subject, writing down any original ideas that the subject triggers in the student, and also asking questions like the 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, why) to spawn further thinking in the student.
3. You Need to Stick to the Basics
Although experienced writers can break the rules and engage in various stylistic flights, Warner encourages young writers to stick to the basics when writing their essays. These basics include using a variety of sentence types, sticking to simple vocabulary, and avoiding a preaching or argumentative tone.
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CoramDeo
February 19, 2024, 1:25 amAs to tip 1
Excerpt on Critical Thinking in Higher Education from Critical Thinking (dot) org (2018):
A large critical study has shown that although the overwhelming majority of higher education faculty claimed critical thinking to be a primary objective of their instruction (89%), only a small minority could give a clear explanation of what critical thinking is (19%). Furthermore, according to their answers, only 9% of the respondents were clearly teaching for critical thinking on a typical day in class.
Though the overwhelming majority (78%) claimed that their students lacked appropriate intellectual standards (to use in assessing their thinking), and 73% considered that students learning to assess their own work was of primary importance, only a very small minority (8%) could enumerate any intellectual criteria or standards they required of students or could give an intelligible explanation of those criteria and standards.
While 50% of those interviewed said that they explicitly distinguish critical thinking skills from traits, only 8% were able to provide a clear conception of the critical thinking skills they thought were most important for their students to develop. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority (75%) provided either minimal or vague allusion (33%) or no illusion at all (42%) to intellectual traits of mind.
Although the majority (67%) said that their concept of critical thinking is largely explicit in their thinking, only 19% could elaborate on their concept of thinking.
Although the vast majority (89%) stated that critical thinking was of primary importance to their instruction, 77% of the respondents had little, limited or no conception of how to reconcile content coverage with the fostering of critical thinking.
Although the overwhelming majority (81%) felt that their department’s graduates develop a good or high level of critical thinking ability while in their program, only 20% said that their departments had a shared approach to critical thinking, and only 9% were able to clearly articulate how they would assess the extent to which a faculty member was or was not fostering critical thinking. The remaining respondents had a limited conception or no conception at all of how to do this.
The time to begin to teach basic formal logic is in middle school.
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