{"id":9708,"date":"2016-10-20T07:01:11","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T14:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=9708"},"modified":"2016-10-20T07:01:11","modified_gmt":"2016-10-20T14:01:11","slug":"the-courage-to-think-critically-or-the-dangers-of-the-matrix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-courage-to-think-critically-or-the-dangers-of-the-matrix\/","title":{"rendered":"The Courage to think Critically or the dangers of the Matrix"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The short text by Richard Paul and Linda Elder,\u00a0The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools,\u00a0<\/em>might be quickly dismissed as ‘just’ an introductory tome – another one to go in our ‘toolkit’ and definitely keep for reference, but – like an encyclopedia – useful, but\u00a0not really all that important.<\/p>\n

I actually think this would do a great disservice to the book, or rather to the\u00a0<\/del>critical<\/del>\u00a0important\u00a0<\/em>ideas contained within this humble text.<\/p>\n

Of course, for anyone paying close attention to our lead mentor during our orientation in London might have already picked up on that (<\/del>Bonus points for me!). \u00a0Jason stated multiple times that one of the central goals of the program was for us to become not critics, but critical thinkers. \u00a0This book seeks to succinctly make the case for both how to do that and why doing that is so important.<\/p>\n

I won’t spend time looking at the ‘how’ here – I suspect that all of us will have different aspects that struck a chord with us or, possibly, opened our eyes to an area of uncritical thought or assumption of cultural norm. \u00a0I believe that the ‘why’ of thinking critically is significantly more interesting – and much more important.<\/p>\n

While we often think of critical as something negative, again as Jason has repeatedly pointed out, critical thinking does not mean becoming a critic. \u00a0Rather, critical thinking is about the active process of examining our thoughts and assumptions before we accept them.<\/p>\n

The third definition that Google gives for the word critical is what we are really talking about (note the ironic\/appropriate example used):\u00a0involving the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. \u00a0<\/em>“professors often find it difficult to encourage critical thinking in their students”<\/em><\/p>\n

This type of critical thinking, far from being a negative, is essential to mature, well-developed and reasoned thought. It is also the necessary antidote to two other (non-critical) types of thinking that can lead to wrong conclusions and have significant negative consequences: ‘Egocentric thinking’ and ‘Sociocentric thinking’.<\/p>\n

As I read about these two ways of thinking that rely not on objective fact, but personal or cultural predisposition and bias, it was impossible not to think about the current US presidential election and the countless times thinking along one or both of these lines has been displayed. \u00a0It was, as one of the candidates might put it, sad(!), but more than that it clearly highlights that this call to critical thinking is not simply an academic concern. \u00a0Critical thinking is a crucial skill for all of us not simply to succeed in our doctoral studies but to be responsible members of our communities and societies (unlike, say, being able to exactly follow Turabian’s rules, which has no discernable real world value – or maybe that might be an egocentric thought on my point……).<\/p>\n

Critical thinking allows us to examine our thoughts and discover the connections between them and our biases, first towards ourselves (i.e. ‘It’s true because I believe it’); and our biases towards our native cultural context (i.e. It’s true because I grew up believing it’).<\/p>\n

Critical thinking will, of course, make us better students, writers and researchers, but more than that it is necessary for us to live into the fullness of who we were created and called to be, to rise above selfish and self-serving thoughts and bounds to our cultural context to ‘seek what is true, right, noble, pure and admirable’ (Phil. 4:8).<\/p>\n

Elder says that ‘Sociocentric thinking is a hallmark of an uncritical society'(Elder, Kindle location 278)<\/em>. \u00a0I think there can be little argument that we are seeing the fruits of this uncritical labor in our politics and our broader social interactions. \u00a0Elder goes on to give this response: ‘It can be diminished only when replaced by cross-cultural, fairminded thinking \u2014 critical thinking in the strong sense.’ (Elder, Kindle location 278).<\/em><\/p>\n

I close with this thought from Elder: ‘Humans have the capacity to be rational and fair. But this capacity must be developed. It will be significantly developed only if critical societies emerge’ (Elder, Kindle location 286). \u00a0<\/em>That should be a clarion call to all of us to think critically not just in our academic work, but in every area of our lives.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The short text by Richard Paul and Linda Elder,\u00a0The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools,\u00a0might be quickly dismissed as ‘just’ an introductory tome – another one to go in our ‘toolkit’ and definitely keep for reference, but – like an encyclopedia – useful, but\u00a0not really all that important. I actually think this would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[290],"class_list":["post-9708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-elder","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}