Professors who talk the most about “critical thinking” are the ones who are the most eager to turn students into brainwashed drones. It’s gotten so, I cringe whenever I hear this expression. “We teach critical thinking” has come to mean “we know THE TRUTH and make sure all students parrot our dogma.”
Critical Thinking
Clarissa's Blog 
Alas it seems the agenda
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An Orwellian euphemism. “Academic freedom” also means forced compliance.
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I have had this reaction to this phrase well before it got filled with the current content. The idea that critical thinking is teachable at all seems suspect to me. “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.” resonates strongly with me.
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Can you actually teach thinking at all? One can teach facts or problem-solving approaches, but I honestly do not see how one can teach thinking (critical or otherwise).
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One cannot make people think but one can encourage and model thinking, critical and otherwise, however it requires a fair degree of practice thinking oneself and humility to pull off and manage the results of people doing it. It is hard to do if you are insecure and overly invested in a particularly narrow ideological end product.
My students are delightfully curious about everything that crosses their paths and I’m beginning to see the emergence of thought in a few and feeling hopeful for more.
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“critical thinking”
The thing with Woke-speech is that it’s usually opposite talk.
conversation about X : aggressively preaching at normies until they give up and agree
unpack : wrap something up in thickets of impenetrable (and usually meaningless) jargon
lived experience : subjective feelings
intersectionality : forming a monolithic alliance against perceived enemies
allies : doormats and flunkies
anti-fascist : left-wing violent fascist
I know some of this cant comes from real scholarly studies where it might have meant something once, but it has failed to scale outward into the real world.
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And the new sentimental favorite: “circle back.”
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Great post and great comments.
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https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-thinking/
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