Dear Colleagues in Critical Thinking:
I very much appreciate all of your comments and replies to my March 21st letter, titled, 'Given Gun Violence: What Will the Future Bring for Schools, Colleges, and Universities?' Some of you did not agree with my statements, and this is understandable, given the complexities in the issue. Most who disagreed were respectful of, and unoffended by, the differences in our views; in other words, you saw that we disagreed, but recognized that dialectical and dialogical reasoning are essential to healthy societies.
For those who felt upset by my letter, I recognize that I did not give the subject the full detail it deserved. Though my conclusions would have remained the same, I could and should have developed the argument more fully. I did not articulate it further because I appreciate that, in this era, people seem to have very little time; still, there are occasions when more explanation is warranted.
This said, we must all remember that if we are to develop fairminded critical societies, it will be essential to become far more comfortable (not less) with disagreement in discussion and argumentation. I welcome reasoned disagreement, as would any rational person, because I want to continue developing as a thinker; further, healthy fairminded debate on complex topics is required to develop ethical critical societies. Again, dialectical and dialogical reasoning are essential not only to education at all levels, but throughout human societies.
It is only when we encourage these uncomfortable discussions, and invite them ourselves, that we can ever hope to truly achieve and protect freedom of thought and speech. And it is important to appreciate that it is largely through freedom of speech that we achieve freedom of thought. For if we are not free to explain and think out our ideas, however controversial or odd they may seem; if we are not able to express our thoughts openly and forthrightly without fear of reprisal; if we are not able to hear others who are likewise free to do the same; then, our ability to develop our own ideas is curtailed or impeded.
Consider Richard Paul's article, 'Dialogical and Dialectical Thinking,' written in 1990 and found in the second edition of Developing Minds (published by ASCD). In this piece, Paul describes some of the broad deficiencies in schooling that affect students' abilities to reason and develop their ideas (and, ultimately, to achieve freedom of thought):
Students today have very little experience in school of reasoning within opposing points of view. Indeed students today have little experience with reasoning at all. Most students do not know what inferences are, what it is to make assumptions, what it is to reason from an assumption to one or more conclusions. In the didactic classroom of today, the teacher is engaged in inculcating information . . . students then come away with the impression that knowledge can be obtained without struggle, without having to hear from more than one point of view, without having to identify or assess evidence, without having to question assumptions, without having to trace implications, without having to analyze concepts, without having to consider objections.
The result: students with no real sense of what the process of acquiring knowledge involves, students with nothing more than a jumble of information and beliefs, students with little sense of what it is to reason one's way to knowledge. . . . .
Young children do not recognize that they have a point of view. Rather, they tend to make absolute judgments about themselves and others . . .
As a result, young children uncritically internalize images and concepts of what they and others are like, of what, for example, Americans are like, of what atheists, Christians, communists, parents, children, business-people, farmers, liberals, conservatives, left-wingers, right-wingers, salespeople, foreigners . . . are like. They then ego-identify with their conceptions, which they assume to be accurate, spontaneously using them as guides in their day-to-day decision making.
Children need assignments in multilogical issues to break out of their uncritical absolutism. They need to discover opposing points of view in nonthreatening situations. They need to put their ideas into words, advance conclusions, and justify them. They need to discover their own assumptions as well as the assumptions of others. They need to discover their own inconsistencies as well as the inconsistencies of others. They do this best when they learn how to role-play the thinking of others, advance conclusions other than their own, and construct reasons to support them. Children need to do this for the multilogical issues - issues involving conflicting points of view, interpretations, and conclusions - that they inevitably face in their everyday lives. But they also need to do so for the disciplined monological questions that they must of necessity approach from within the context of their own undisciplined minds.
Though almost 30 years have passed since these words were written, we continue to see these same problems in schooling today. Indeed, things are quite possibly getting worse for our students in terms of learning critical thinking and basic reasoning abilities, due in large part to the race to "perform" on standardized tests that have become a craze in American schooling.
It is through freedom of thought and speech, as well as through confidence in reason, intellectual empathy, and the other intellectual virtues that we can achieve the highest levels of reasoning and dialogue as humans. And I hope each one of us in this critical thinking community will rise to that ideal in our conversations with one another. Remember: though the more primitive elements of our own minds are inclined to say otherwise, disagreement is not a threat to personal safety. It is an opportunity to grow. And we all have much growing to do - recognizing this is one of the hallmarks of the critical thinker.
Thank you again for your comments. Keep those cards and letters coming.
Sincerely
Dr. Linda Elder
Educational Psychologist
President and Senior Fellow
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