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Critical Thinking Training for Law Enforcement Recruits, Officers, & Leaders




Custom Training to Meet the Needs of Your
Academy, Precinct, or Station

It is time to incorporate robust critical thinking into your law enforcement agency at this revolutionary time in our history, in which a more humane approach to law enforcement will be increasingly required. We are aware of the various discussions focused on de-escalating violent situations involving law enforcement interactions. However, revolutionizing how law enforcement agencies operate is not simple, since changing the way law enforcement officers think is not simple.  It is only by incorporating mandatory fairminded critical thinking courses/programs into law enforcement training across the board that we can bring about the long-term permanent change needed to deal with the crisis at hand, and to move into a more compassionate and charitable future.

Our fellows and facilitators can lead onsite workshops for your law enforcement agency, and we are happy to put together a proposal for online short courses on critical thinking for your police officers and leaders (based on your circumstances and setting).  Your law enforcement agency, using training in explicit fairminded critical thinking, can become a model for law enforcement agencies and police academies across the nation.



Equip Your Recruits and Officers with the Paul-Elder Framework for Critical Thinking

The Only Critical Thinking Approach Explicitly Used in the U.S. Military and Intelligence Communities

A Robust Conception of Critical Thinking Developed Over Decades

Accounts for Emotions, Desires, and Ethics

Universally Applicable


We applaud the law enforcement leadership we are seeing at this time, as some step forward to advance improvement in law enforcement agencies. However, unless and until fairminded explicit critical thinking is placed at the center of this discussion, we cannot expect long-term or significant change.

One of our fellows can discuss the possibilities for training your law enforcement officers and leaders, either on-site or online, depending on what seems best to address immediate needs and given current resources. We have worked with many law enforcement officers through our 40-year history, at our conferences and academies, from the US and abroad.

At this unprecedented time in history, let your agency take the lead in advancing fairminded, disciplined reasoning in the police force.


Recruits, Officers, and Leaders in Our Online Courses and On-Site Training Programs Will:

1. Learn to think within multiple viewpoints to fully understand those viewpoints; to change their thinking when someone else's reasoning is better, and when new information and the situation require it.

2. Improve their ability to reason fairmindedly through the many complex problems they face as police officers.

3. Be introduced to the importance of cultivating ethical virtues in their own minds - virtues such as empathy, integrity, honesty, forthrightness, intellectual autonomy, and confidence in reason.

4. Learn to take their thinking apart so they can routinely identify faulty assumptions and ideas in their thinking that lead to poor judgments.

5. Learn the criteria by which they should make judgments in all police encounters and situations. This includes objectivity, impartiality, and fairness.

6. Learn the barriers to critical thinking all police officers face, as do all humans – namely, egocentric and sociocentric thinking.

7. Learn to think through implications and consequences of their actions before acting.






To Discuss with One of Our Fellows or Scholars,
Email Lisa Sabend at Lisa@CriticalThinking.Org!




Please do not pass this message by.

CRITICAL THINKING IS AT RISK.

Here are some of the big reasons why:

  1. Many people believe that critical thinking should be free and that scholars qualified to teach critical thinking should do so for free. Accordingly, they do not think they should have to pay for critical thinking textbooks, courses, or other resources when there is "so much free material online" - despite how erroneous that material may be.
  2. There are many misguided academicians, and some outright charlatans, pushing forth and capitalizing on a pseudo-, partial, or otherwise impoverished concept of critical thinking.
  3. Little to no funding is designated for critical thinking professional development in schools, colleges, or universities, despite the lip service widely given to critical thinking (as is frequently found in mission statements).
  4. Most people, including faculty, think they already know what critical thinking is, despite how few have studied it to any significant degree, and despite how few can articulate a coherent, accurate, and sufficiently deep explanation of it.
  5. People rarely exhibit the necessary level of discipline to study and use critical thinking for reaching higher levels of self-actualization. In part, this is due to wasting intellectual and emotional energy on fruitless electronic entertainment designed to be addictive and profitable rather than educational and uplifting.
  6. On the whole, fairminded critical thinking is neither understood, fostered, nor valued in educational institutions or societies.
  7. People are increasingly able to cluster themselves with others of like mind through alluring internet platforms that enable them to validate one another's thinking - even when their reasoning is nonsensical, lopsided, prejudiced, or even dangerous.
  8. Critical thinking does not yet hold an independent place in academia. Instead, "critical thinking" is continually being "defined" and redefined according to any academic area or instructor that, claiming (frequently unsupported) expertise, steps forward to teach it.

As you see, increasingly powerful trends against the teaching, learning, and practice of critical thinking entail extraordinary challenges to our mission. To continue our work, we must now rely upon your financial support. If critical thinking matters to you, please click here to contribute what you can today.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE OUR WORK.

Thank you for your support of ethical critical thinking.