Frustration of critical thinking
So, this is something I think about a lot. We can let students know that they need to strengthen their body of background knowledge, but we also know that no amount of background knowledge is ever going to be enough.
I'm also not sure developing this kind of step-by-step process to critical thinking is useful, because critical thinking is by nature supposed to resist a step-by-step approach. The steps have to be examined, questioned, and so on.
What I do in my own classes is to, essentially, find a way to overcomplicate everything that I can. If I can frustrate simplicity--and show the students that a simple solution is often an artifact of social constuctions and shortcuts--then I can showcase the usefulness of critical thinking.
For example, the idea that 2+2=4 seems pretty simple and straightforward. But it assumes a whole ton of stuff about the way we see the world.
Then again, how far do you go with something like that before it becomes ridiculous? Or is it already?
Dan,
Good question to be raised in relation to your instructional planning. Somewhere along the way "common sense" needs to be introduced and discussed. When this discussion is held then I think it will become clearer in terms how far to go discussions like you mentioned in relation to 2+2=4.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
