Can Critical Thinking Be Taught?

Let's see if we can put a bit more substance on the thus far rather anemic considerations of critical thinking. Can critical thinking be taught? Well, yes and no. Critical thinking is affected by a goodly number of factors---mostly unconscious---that everyone has to one degree or another, only one of which is the intangible intellectual ability. Consider the following:

•          Built-in brain filtering mechanisms (Confirmation bias)
•          Acquired filtering mechanisms (Republicans/Democrats are bad people; atheists/theists are crazy).
•           Personality factors (Tendency to see the glass half full or half empty; tendency to prefer detail to big picture or the reverse).
•           Emotional drivers (the NEED to be right, to win, to be perfect.)

These aspects determine whether we can think objectively/critically or not. Nearly everyone I know, or have known, imagines that what they think about themselves (I am being objective, I am capable of critical thinking) is how they are. Could not be farther from the truth since they have failed to examine the above elements and deal with them. I am familiar with this as I lived it for many decades. Take the person who violates a principle of intellectual honesty and fails to acknowledge and question his/her own assumptions and biases. Did that happen because he is thinking rationally and openly? Hardly. It happens because he has an emotional agenda to be right, to win, to be admired, or whatever, and that agenda will prevail come what may. All of us rely on assumptions when applying our world view to make sense of the data about the world. And all of us bring various biases to the table. Unfortunately, most deny they have such biases.

Consider Flatland, the book in which a group of people exists in a world having only two dimensions. They are literally unable to see a third dimension. Their language has no place for third dimension aspects, and thus they cannot imagine it, much less think or talk about it. It seems that language and thinking quality are related in a system's sense, with each influencing the other. Imagine a group like the Flatlanders whose language has only two colors: black and white. What nuanced critical thought can you expect of such folks when you ask them evaluate a Van Gogh palette? None. Thus, we can argue that part of critical thinking beyond the vital 4 aspects mentioned above is a largish (will go undefined) vocabulary about the issue in question. This can certainly be taught.

Most people I know have plenty of opinions backed up by nothing more than an emotional certainty they are right or at best by cute anecdotes. Their vocabulary (this can be read as facts as well) is minimal because they choose it to be so, not because they are inherently limited intellectually. Scientists have opinion and bias problems as well: when the walls surrounding the Sphinx were determined by Dr Robert Schoch, a renowned geologist, to have been eroded by water and not wind and sand, the Egyptologists went positively insane, including attacking Schoch with ad hominem “arguments.” Schoch’s information upset terribly their chronology of the pharaohs. Thus, even though they were not geologists, Schoch’s work was rejected, not for any rational reasons, but for pure emotional ones: we don’t like this, so it will have to go away. Years later, and without any apology to Schoch, they are gradually coming around.

Ask a person from the right to rigorously critique Glenn Beck or a person from the left to do the same with regard to Chris Matthews, and they will both look at you like you’re nuts. Their emotional vocabulary does not even permit this information to get in, much less be examined. Essentially, they are like the Flatlanders: what they cannot conceive of cannot be seen. They could no more constructively and energetically critique their boy than they could dis-embowel themselves.

I think that critical thinking can be taught, but that teaching has to happen at two different, albeit connected, levels. The first level deals with relatively simple elements such as how to examine a painting with an eye to distinguishing its positive and negative points based on certain standards of art criticism. Such standards themselves are subject to alteration (recall the rejection that the first Impressionists experienced) as new styles evolve. The same is true in asking a person to constructively critique the quality of an essay, according to generally accepted standards. To some degree, depending on the person's innate intellectual ability (sorry for leaving this undefined), we can teach this critical thinking.

The second level is not at all addressed in universities or elsewhere, although it is the issue upon which critical thinking stands or falls. This gets at the enormously powerful role of our unconscious and its often huge emotional needs---recall the Schoch example. The four critical, primarily unconscious aspects mentioned above will get no appreciation or recognition from the fearful for, as a great mentor once said, referring to me, “Certainty is the last refuge of the fearful.” And we are all afraid, even when we are not consciously aware of it. And, having been there I know what it feels like and what it looks like in others. When fear goes, when ego attachments to being right are gone, then and only then do we have a chance to think critically and objectively. Can this be taught? Absolutely. But only the most courageous have a prayer.