Some Issues In The Critical Thinking Debate: Dead Horses And Red Herrings, Anyone?

Educational Theory

Volumn 48, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 411-425

  Haroutunian Gordon, Sophie ^a  

^a NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 52549098563     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1998.00411.x     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Essay Review of Reason and Values: New Essays in Philosophy of Education, ed. J.P. Portelli and Sharon Bailin (Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Detselig Enterprises, 1993)
2. Kerry S. Walters, Re-thinking Reason: New Perspectives in Critical Thinking (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). These books will be cited as RV and RR in the text for all subsequent references.
3. Robert H. Ennis, "A Concept of Critical Thinking," Harvard Educational Review 32, no. 1 (1962): 81-111.
4. Ennis cites "A Conception of Rational Thinking," in Philosophy of Education 1979, ed J.R. Coombs (Bloomington, 111.: The Philosophy of Education Society, 1980) and "Rational Thinking and Educational Practice," in J.F. Soltis, Philosophy and Education: Eightieth Yearbook for the Study of Education, Part 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 20.
5. Jennifer Wheary and Robert Ennis, "Gender Bias in Critical Thinking: Continuing the Dialogue," Educational Theory 45, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 221-22.
6. The 1995 Wheary/Ennis essay was not available to Walters when he made the criticisms cited here. One might argue that the "advances" made by Ennis could have been inferred from other texts that were available to Walters. But we leave this matter. My point is not so much to criticize Walters as to suggest that Ennis should not continue to be criticized for holding the objectivist, logicistie view of critical thinking presented in his 1962 essay.
7. Harvey Siegel, Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education (London: Routledge, 1988).
8. Harvey Siegel, "The Generalizability of Critical Thinking," Educational Philosophy and Theory 23, no. 1 (1991): 18-30.
9. "Not by Skill Alone: The Generality of Character to Critical Thinking," Informal Logic 15, no. 3 (Fall, 1993): 163-77.
10. Later versions of these essays appear in Harvey Siegel, Rationality Redeemedl (New York: Routledge, 1997), 26, from which this quote is taken.
11. See, for example, topics included in Monroe Beardsley, Thinking Straight: Principles of Reasoning for Readers and Writers (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentiss-Hall, 1966) and Michael Seriven, Reasoning (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976).
12. Harvey Siegel, "Teaching, Reasoning, and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov." in From Socrates to Software: The Teacher as Text and the Text as Teacher, ed. Philip W. Jackson and Sophie Haroutunian- Gordon (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 126.
13. Harvey Siegel, "What Price Inclusion?" Teachers College Record 97, no. 1 (Fall 1995): 14.
14. The debate on the issue is presented in a series of essays in Educational Theory 45, no. 3 (Summer 1995).
15. Siegel, "Not by Skill Alone."
16. Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon, Turning the Soul: Teaching Through Conversation in the High School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 4
17. Harvey Siegel, "Why be Rational? Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking" (Upper Montclair, N.J.: Institute for Critical Thinking Resource Publication, series 2, no. 1, 1989): 1.
18. Siegel, "Teaching, Reasoning, and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov," 128.
19. Let me add here that not only Siegel but others who might be classified as "first wave" critical thinking theorists seem to require attention to the cultivation of the imagination, intuition, and even empathy, although their discussions do not dwell on these topics.
20. See, for example, Michael Scriven, Reasoning, 35-37.
21. For Siegel's discussions, see, for example, Siegel, Educating Reason. 34-38; also, "The Generalizability of Critical Thinking."
22. See Robert H. Ennis, "Critical Thinking and Subject Specificity: Clarification and Needed Research," Educational Researcher 18, no. 3 (1989) for a view that seems to contrast with McPeck's.
23. Siegel, "The Generalizability of Critical Thinking," 22.
24. See for example, RJ. Sternberg, "Critical Thinking: Its Nature, Measurement, and Improvement," in Essays on the Intellect, ed. F.R. Link (Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1985)
25. R.J. Sternberg and B. Kastoor, "Synthesis of Research on the Effectiveness of Intellectual Skills Programs: Snake Oil Remedies or Miracle Cures?e" Educational Leadership 42, no. 2. (1986).
26. The point following is made in detail in an essay entitled, "How Does Thinking Proceed? A Study of Thinking Patterns in Interpretive Discussion," Educational Theory 48, no. 1 (1998), where I argue that conversation about the meaning of texts, if allowed to proceed naturally, follows a predictable course in that participants follow certain patterns that engage them in critical/creative thinking.
27. Similar positions are argued by Bailin (RV, pp. 37-49), who maintains that moral reasoning parallels aesthetic reasoning in ways that involve creative thinking, and Stuart Richmond [RV, pp. 105-114), who avers that concern for aesthetic principles should be fundamental to the study of art so that art will be created, not simply appreciated.