Instructor Manuals For Write Stuff, The Thinking Through Essays, 2E Marcie Sims
3
Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
, What’s So Critical about Critical Thinking?
When told that we need to include critical thinking into our writing classes, most of us
groan, “Isn’t this emphasis on critical thinking just a fad? Just wait a year and it will go away.”
“Isn’t thinking natural; why do I have to teach it?” “How can I teach thinking; how do I decide
which skills to teach?” “I already have to cover too much material now; how can I cover any
more?”
It’s just a fad. Just wait a year and it will go away.
Although critical thinking does seem to be a popular educational topic now, it certainly is
not a fad. In fact, critical thinking began when prehistoric humans first wondered, “Why?” and
“How?” The ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle and Socrates certainly emphasized critical
thinking, as did Aquinas, Bacon, Galileo, Jefferson, Thoreau, Dewey, Piaget, and others. Critical
thinking is not a fad, and it is not “going away” because it continues to be relevant. Our modern
world changes so quickly that the ability to research, write, and think critically is vital. Sterngold
states, “Acquiring strong research and writing skills may be more important to students’ future
careers than acquiring subject-matter expertise that may become outdated soon after the students
graduate or that may become irrelevant when students switch jobs and careers” (19). Unlike in
the past when companies and workers had life-long ties, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the
U.S. Department of Labor found that the average person born in the later years of the baby boom
held 10.8 jobs from age 18 to age 42 (1).
According to Schafersman, educators have a two-fold job: we must transmit content to
students and give them a way to understand and evaluate the content (1). We do a pretty good
job of the former, but not of the latter. As writing instructors, it is our job to teach our students
about the nuts and bolts of writing as well as how to think of themselves as writers. The content
of many of the technical and professional programs that our students intend to pursue changes
quickly. Content is important, but in a world in which technology has exploded, learning how to
learn and un-learn and re-learn, how to analyze, evaluate, ask pertinent questions, find new
solutions, examine assumptions, listen carefully to others, and adjust opinions when new facts
are found all are skills that have become increasingly essential. Employers often tell us that they
need graduates who can solve problems and who know how to learn.
What Is Critical Thinking?
A simple Internet search provides dozens of definitions of critical thinking. Paul and
Elder define it as “the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it” (4),
and Schafersman defines it as “the ability to think for one’s self and reliably and responsibly
make those decisions that affect one’s life” (3).
The newly-formed Chess Club on our college campus is a model of critical thinking. As
students play each other, they keep a running log of each other’s moves. At the end of the game,
they back up to different points in the match, and each player makes a different move at that
point in the match. They work out the effect that particular change would have had and discuss
4
Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
,why they made the original move. They learn the consequences of and the reasoning behind their
choices. In learning how to be better chess players, they take the game apart, move by move.
They think ahead: “If I move my castle here, what will my opponent probably do? How will I
react to my opponent’s move?” Imagine what better chess players they become after this kind of
activity. Imagine what kind of writers our students would become if such behavior were
expected in our classrooms.
In his article, “Why Students and Teachers Don’t Reason Well,” at CriticalThinking.org,
Richard Paul seems to be describing these chess students:
The well-educated person is able to reason quite directly and deliberately, to begin
somewhere, know where one is beginning, and then reason with awareness from that
point to other points, all with a given question in mind, with specific evidence in mind,
with specific reasons to advance, with specific conclusions to support, with
consciousness of one’s point of view and contrasting points of view.
Underprepared students come to college like other students—often with little background
in critical thinking. The college instructor must help students develop the analytical, logical, and
questioning skills to give them a method of solving problems both in higher education and in
life. A writing course is the perfect lab situation for critical thinking because in every writing
assignment students learn how to gather evidence, choose the best details to use, organize their
arguments, look at opposing views, revise for rhetorical strategies, and evaluate the process they
used. The very nature of the writing process is a lesson in critical thinking.
Being aware of our biases and assumptions is vital. Carroll (2007) agrees that a key
element in critical thinking “is the recognition that one’s worldview can be a major hindrance to
being fair-minded. . . . [I]f we want to teach our students to think critically we must teach them
to try to understand how one’s worldview is likely to be embedded with prejudices, biases, and
false notions.” For Elder, if students think subconsciously, then they “use standards that emerge
from primitive human drives, standards that subconsciously control their thinking and leave their
thinking deeply flawed” (“Why Critical Thinking Is Essential to the Community College
Mission” 6). Elder lists these common biases:
1. Believe an idea if it agrees with what you already believe (an egocentric standard).
2. Believe an idea if it agrees with what your friends or associates believe (a sociocentric
standard).
3. Believe an idea if you want to believe it (an exercise in willful self-deception).
By living according to these rules, “students don’t control their thinking; their thinking controls
them. (6).
This textbook, The Write Stuff: Thinking Through Essays, emphasizes critical thinking
during the writing process and calls attention to assumptions and biases so that students can deal
with them on a conscious level.
Isn’t thinking natural—Why do I have to teach it?
5
Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
, Since humans are naturally thinking creatures, why does critical thinking have to be
taught? How is critical thinking different from normal everyday thinking? The difference is in
the “quality” of our thought, as Paul and Elder describe it:
Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking left to itself, is
biased, distorted, partial, uniformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our lives
and that of what we produce, make or build depends precisely on the quality of our
thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in
thought, however, must be systematically cultivated. (1)
Simply thinking is not enough—Huitt states that “it must be done well and should guide
the establishment of our beliefs and impact our behavior or action.”
Van Gelder argues that humans are not natural critical thinkers:
Indeed, like ballet, critical thinking is a highly contrived activity. Running is natural;
nightclub dancing is less so; but ballet is something people can only do well with many
years of painful, expensive, dedicated training. Evolution did not intend us to walk on the
ends of our toes, and whatever Aristotle might have said, we were not designed to be all
that critical either. Evolution does not waste effort making things better than they need to
be and homo sapiens evolved to be just logical enough to survive. . .” (2)
Instead, van Gelder states, humans like things to make sense in simple patterns. “We tend to be
comfortable with the first account that seems right, and we rarely pursue the matter further” (2).
Critical thinking, unlike ordinary thinking, must be taught. We teachers probably
understand how to think in a critical way, or we would not have been successful in academia.
Therefore, we may skip steps in the critical thinking process. However, students need to practice
critical thinking as a step-by-step process, much like a geometric proof, demonstrating how each
step helps form the conclusion. The Critical Thinking Community website lists the intellectual
standards we must apply to the thinking process: clarity, accuracy, relevance, logicalness,
breadth, precision, significance, completeness, fairness, and depth (“Critical Thinking: Where to
Begin”). Those standards are certainly the same elements we writing teachers hope to instill in
our students.
Facione describes two kinds of thinking: System 1 thinking and System 2 thinking.
System 1 thinking allows us to arrive quickly and confidently at a judgment. System 2 thinking,
the reflective, critical thinking system, is used when we have more time to deliberate, plan,
review, and revise. System 2 thinking must be practiced and is far more valuable to us as
students, workers, and citizens. Facione’s labels of thinking can be compared to the writing
process that Peter Elbow describes. First-order thinking involves using free-writing to help
students discover what they think about a topic and second-order thinking is reflective, logical
and evaluative thinking that students use to formulate their free writing into a cohesive essay.
The ability to think critically is essential for college success, but Chaffee states that
students, especially basic and developmental students, are not taught these skills, and because of
that, many of them don’t succeed in college. Why teach critical thinking? Because basic and
developmental students deserve it. Too often universities relegate basic and developmental
writing students to a basement room full of computers led by a teaching assistant to improve
their “basic skills.” Grubb et al (1999) and Koski and Levin (1998) verify what most of us who
teach underprepared students already know: an overemphasis on basic skills is not what our
6
Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
3
Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
, What’s So Critical about Critical Thinking?
When told that we need to include critical thinking into our writing classes, most of us
groan, “Isn’t this emphasis on critical thinking just a fad? Just wait a year and it will go away.”
“Isn’t thinking natural; why do I have to teach it?” “How can I teach thinking; how do I decide
which skills to teach?” “I already have to cover too much material now; how can I cover any
more?”
It’s just a fad. Just wait a year and it will go away.
Although critical thinking does seem to be a popular educational topic now, it certainly is
not a fad. In fact, critical thinking began when prehistoric humans first wondered, “Why?” and
“How?” The ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle and Socrates certainly emphasized critical
thinking, as did Aquinas, Bacon, Galileo, Jefferson, Thoreau, Dewey, Piaget, and others. Critical
thinking is not a fad, and it is not “going away” because it continues to be relevant. Our modern
world changes so quickly that the ability to research, write, and think critically is vital. Sterngold
states, “Acquiring strong research and writing skills may be more important to students’ future
careers than acquiring subject-matter expertise that may become outdated soon after the students
graduate or that may become irrelevant when students switch jobs and careers” (19). Unlike in
the past when companies and workers had life-long ties, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the
U.S. Department of Labor found that the average person born in the later years of the baby boom
held 10.8 jobs from age 18 to age 42 (1).
According to Schafersman, educators have a two-fold job: we must transmit content to
students and give them a way to understand and evaluate the content (1). We do a pretty good
job of the former, but not of the latter. As writing instructors, it is our job to teach our students
about the nuts and bolts of writing as well as how to think of themselves as writers. The content
of many of the technical and professional programs that our students intend to pursue changes
quickly. Content is important, but in a world in which technology has exploded, learning how to
learn and un-learn and re-learn, how to analyze, evaluate, ask pertinent questions, find new
solutions, examine assumptions, listen carefully to others, and adjust opinions when new facts
are found all are skills that have become increasingly essential. Employers often tell us that they
need graduates who can solve problems and who know how to learn.
What Is Critical Thinking?
A simple Internet search provides dozens of definitions of critical thinking. Paul and
Elder define it as “the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it” (4),
and Schafersman defines it as “the ability to think for one’s self and reliably and responsibly
make those decisions that affect one’s life” (3).
The newly-formed Chess Club on our college campus is a model of critical thinking. As
students play each other, they keep a running log of each other’s moves. At the end of the game,
they back up to different points in the match, and each player makes a different move at that
point in the match. They work out the effect that particular change would have had and discuss
4
Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
,why they made the original move. They learn the consequences of and the reasoning behind their
choices. In learning how to be better chess players, they take the game apart, move by move.
They think ahead: “If I move my castle here, what will my opponent probably do? How will I
react to my opponent’s move?” Imagine what better chess players they become after this kind of
activity. Imagine what kind of writers our students would become if such behavior were
expected in our classrooms.
In his article, “Why Students and Teachers Don’t Reason Well,” at CriticalThinking.org,
Richard Paul seems to be describing these chess students:
The well-educated person is able to reason quite directly and deliberately, to begin
somewhere, know where one is beginning, and then reason with awareness from that
point to other points, all with a given question in mind, with specific evidence in mind,
with specific reasons to advance, with specific conclusions to support, with
consciousness of one’s point of view and contrasting points of view.
Underprepared students come to college like other students—often with little background
in critical thinking. The college instructor must help students develop the analytical, logical, and
questioning skills to give them a method of solving problems both in higher education and in
life. A writing course is the perfect lab situation for critical thinking because in every writing
assignment students learn how to gather evidence, choose the best details to use, organize their
arguments, look at opposing views, revise for rhetorical strategies, and evaluate the process they
used. The very nature of the writing process is a lesson in critical thinking.
Being aware of our biases and assumptions is vital. Carroll (2007) agrees that a key
element in critical thinking “is the recognition that one’s worldview can be a major hindrance to
being fair-minded. . . . [I]f we want to teach our students to think critically we must teach them
to try to understand how one’s worldview is likely to be embedded with prejudices, biases, and
false notions.” For Elder, if students think subconsciously, then they “use standards that emerge
from primitive human drives, standards that subconsciously control their thinking and leave their
thinking deeply flawed” (“Why Critical Thinking Is Essential to the Community College
Mission” 6). Elder lists these common biases:
1. Believe an idea if it agrees with what you already believe (an egocentric standard).
2. Believe an idea if it agrees with what your friends or associates believe (a sociocentric
standard).
3. Believe an idea if you want to believe it (an exercise in willful self-deception).
By living according to these rules, “students don’t control their thinking; their thinking controls
them. (6).
This textbook, The Write Stuff: Thinking Through Essays, emphasizes critical thinking
during the writing process and calls attention to assumptions and biases so that students can deal
with them on a conscious level.
Isn’t thinking natural—Why do I have to teach it?
5
Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
, Since humans are naturally thinking creatures, why does critical thinking have to be
taught? How is critical thinking different from normal everyday thinking? The difference is in
the “quality” of our thought, as Paul and Elder describe it:
Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking left to itself, is
biased, distorted, partial, uniformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our lives
and that of what we produce, make or build depends precisely on the quality of our
thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in
thought, however, must be systematically cultivated. (1)
Simply thinking is not enough—Huitt states that “it must be done well and should guide
the establishment of our beliefs and impact our behavior or action.”
Van Gelder argues that humans are not natural critical thinkers:
Indeed, like ballet, critical thinking is a highly contrived activity. Running is natural;
nightclub dancing is less so; but ballet is something people can only do well with many
years of painful, expensive, dedicated training. Evolution did not intend us to walk on the
ends of our toes, and whatever Aristotle might have said, we were not designed to be all
that critical either. Evolution does not waste effort making things better than they need to
be and homo sapiens evolved to be just logical enough to survive. . .” (2)
Instead, van Gelder states, humans like things to make sense in simple patterns. “We tend to be
comfortable with the first account that seems right, and we rarely pursue the matter further” (2).
Critical thinking, unlike ordinary thinking, must be taught. We teachers probably
understand how to think in a critical way, or we would not have been successful in academia.
Therefore, we may skip steps in the critical thinking process. However, students need to practice
critical thinking as a step-by-step process, much like a geometric proof, demonstrating how each
step helps form the conclusion. The Critical Thinking Community website lists the intellectual
standards we must apply to the thinking process: clarity, accuracy, relevance, logicalness,
breadth, precision, significance, completeness, fairness, and depth (“Critical Thinking: Where to
Begin”). Those standards are certainly the same elements we writing teachers hope to instill in
our students.
Facione describes two kinds of thinking: System 1 thinking and System 2 thinking.
System 1 thinking allows us to arrive quickly and confidently at a judgment. System 2 thinking,
the reflective, critical thinking system, is used when we have more time to deliberate, plan,
review, and revise. System 2 thinking must be practiced and is far more valuable to us as
students, workers, and citizens. Facione’s labels of thinking can be compared to the writing
process that Peter Elbow describes. First-order thinking involves using free-writing to help
students discover what they think about a topic and second-order thinking is reflective, logical
and evaluative thinking that students use to formulate their free writing into a cohesive essay.
The ability to think critically is essential for college success, but Chaffee states that
students, especially basic and developmental students, are not taught these skills, and because of
that, many of them don’t succeed in college. Why teach critical thinking? Because basic and
developmental students deserve it. Too often universities relegate basic and developmental
writing students to a basement room full of computers led by a teaching assistant to improve
their “basic skills.” Grubb et al (1999) and Koski and Levin (1998) verify what most of us who
teach underprepared students already know: an overemphasis on basic skills is not what our
6
Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
