Topics for Critical Thinking Exercises

Topics for Critical Thinking Exercises

One can be critical in almost anything one could imagine. Yet, in practice, we know that there are controversial topics such as belief systems and political orientations, which can be a challenge to handle. There are teachers who prefer safer issues like entertainment and environments.

Alan has given a rather unique example of what might happen when some (I hope – very few of them) students express their personal opinions. Alan also gave some ideas of how to deal with such circumstance.

Dr Jacobs has offered some valuable advice of what we should handle such scenarios.

As mentioned in my previous posting, I have only has some experience with ‘safe topics’, my opinion regarding this issue is indeed limited.

Nevertheless, permit me to refer back to an aim in education: critical thinking.

In my view, critical thinking is not about winning an argument. Critical thinking in language learning is about being appropriate: to the audience (aka the public, as opposed to self). The poem below said it best:

If your lips would keep from slips

Five things observe with care;

To whom you speak, of whom you speak,

And how, and when, and where.

--- Traditional----

Reflecting Ben Johnson’s famous bon mot: “Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee”, the weaker version of the renowned Whorfian hypothesis states:  ---one’s language can determine what and how one thinks.

Professor Robert Ennis, a prominent scholar in critical thinking, has suggested an important yardstick when we evaluate an action or intention.

“…if an action is rational, it is not immoral. There is a significant difference between “moral” and “not immoral.”

Please see the full text version at: http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-yearbook/92_docs/Ennis.HTM

Being rational being is, according to Professor Harvey Siegel, also means being able to, at least, ‘appropriately moved by reasons.’

In my view, ethical considerations are equally important as logical ones, for they would enable students to take on board other perspectives. Even being logical is not simple. There are different systems of logic such as Catholic logic and Buddhist logic and so on. So it’s wise, as Dr Jacobs has said, to consider other perspectives.

Janpha