Bringing Critical Thinking to the Main Stage.

Every curriculum document mentions critical thinking, and there is universal agreement about the need to make thoughtful judgments in virtually every aspect of our lives – from who and what to believe to how and when to act. Despite long-standing and widespread recognition, the extent and manner of teaching for critical thinking in schools is disheartening. As I have argued elsewhere, the rhetoric greatly outstrips practice.1 As Walter Parker puts it, the teaching of thinking remains “more wish than practice. ”2 Although numerous factors contribute to this regrettable state of affairs, three reasons are especially influential in relegating critical thinking to a sideshow on the educational agenda: • Proliferation of thinking ‘skills. ’ There is a plethora of so-called thinking skills. For example, an ASCD publication identifies eight thinking processes (including problem solving, decision making and research) involving 21 core thinking skills (including defining goals, setting goals, inferring, and predicting). 3 As long as critical thinking remains but one type among many forms of thinking, there will never be adequate time devoted to it. • The ranking of thinking skills. The proliferation deficit is compounded by the designation of critical thinking as ‘higher order thinking,’ which presumably requires mastery of ‘lower order thinking’ before it can be introduced to students. In the Ontario curriculum, for example, the applied courses intended for non-academic students are distinguished from academic courses not by the content addressed, but by the level of thinking expected of students. As one report noted, the applied curriculum writers use “lower order verbs,” changing student expectations from “interpret” to “describe” or from “explore” to “record. ” Curriculum writers apparently presume that “[a]pplied students cannot think . [and] are, therefore, relegated to simple tasks like reading and repeating. ”4 Not only are many thinking skills vying for classroom attention but critical thinking appears to be at the end of the list, reserved for the best students. • Separation of ‘skills’ from content. The teaching of critical thinking is generally divorced from the teaching of subject matter. In many classrooms, especially in high schools, curriculum content is the priority. Thinking skills are addressed after the subject matter has been taught. Only at the end of a unit are students invited to reflect on the ideas they have encountered. Because of the heavy course load and the content focus of high stakes tests, many teachers find themselves with little time to involve students in thinking about this content. Even when critical thinking is addressed in classrooms, it is typically separated from subject matter and taught as a generic skill that students are expected (on their own) to apply to their schooling and everyday life. Our work with thousands of Canadian teachers through The Critical Thinking Consortium5 (TC2) has convinced us that critical teaching can assume a rightfully central place on the main stage of classroom activity. We start from the premise that it is a powerful method of teaching all other aspects of the curriculum – both content and skill. We help teachers see how inviting students to think critically about subject matter is effective at promoting both understanding of the content and mastery of the skills. Students who passively receive information are far less likely to understand what they have heard or read about than are students who have critically scrutinized, interpreted, applied or tested this information. Rather than compete with the teaching of subject matter and other thinking skills, critical thinking supports their development. The two distinguishing features of our conception are a curriculum embedded approach and an emphasis on teaching the intellectual tools required for critical thinking.6 ROLAND CASE