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A recent essay in On the Horizon (Keller, 1996) suggested that higher education needed to move beyond critical thinking to creative thinking. My question is: Can you have creative thinking without critical thinking? I don't think so. The examples of critical thinking cited in this essay more closely resembled disgruntlement, discontentment, and fault-finding, demonstrating a very narrow understanding of critical thinking. Just because the flag of critical thinking is hoisted does not mean critical thinking is taking place or being taught. Critical thinking is a problem-solving skill, not just a problem-finding tactic.
Critical thinking is well-reasoned thought. It is taking control of your thoughts in an effort to bring intellectual skills and abilities to bear on some problem or question (Paul, 1993). Doesn't creative thinking do the same thing, or at least presuppose this process?
How to take control of one's thoughts so that they are well-reasoned is
seldom taught or modeled. The educational paradigm under which we all
operate falsely assumes that students will acquire critical thinking
skills on their own or as a consequence of some age-old educational
practice like a research paper. Unfortunately, we as teachers have been
trained, and are training our students to be "academic bulimics"--what
Michael Marien referred to as "infoglut" (1996). We load an ever
increasing amount of information on the students, and they in turn
regurgitate it back on tests, with little or no assimilation, synthesis,
or retention. To the student it becomes academic trivia from whatever
discipline they happen to be studying. All too often we are driven to
cover the information or textbook, but we are not helping students learn
how to think in our disciplines (Postman, 1995).
It's no wonder that the marketplace is frustrated with our graduates and gives greater credence to experience than to transcript (Morrison, 1996). Our students are graduating far too often without the most important skills needed in the workplace -- critical thinking and problem-solving. I'm not suggesting that our institutions become merely training schools for some profession, fnes and the demands of the complexities of our society and the workplace dictate that we must first think critically about our own fields of study and the educational process whereby we communicate that information to our students. Once we have demonstrated some critical thinking of our own, can we then help our students to learn to think critically.
Implications
Within our courses and disciplines we must through the process of
critical thinking determine what are the essential concepts and
structures upon which the discipline/course rests. We must help the
student understand and think with these essentials. Then, they will be
able to assimilate additional information on their own and will have a
conceptual framework in which to place their efforts in thinking about their thinking while they are thinking in
order to make their thinking better (metacognition) has tremendous
transference potential. Once they develop "ownership" of their thinking,
they will use critical thinking as a method of reasoning in other
disciplines and areas of their lives. This is a much needed change in the
classroom, beneficial to the student, and profitable for the marketplace.
References
Keller, G. "Let's Move Beyond Critical Thinking," On the Horizon,
Jan./Feb. 1996, 4(1), 13-14.
Marien, M. "Time to Rethink Knowledge Production and Higher Education," On the Horizon, May/June 1996, 4(3), 1-6.
Morrison, J. "Anticipating the Future," On the Horizon, May/June 1996, 4(3), 2-3.
Paul, R. Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World, Santa Rosa, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking, 1993.
Postman, N. The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School, New York: Knopf, 1995.
