CRITICAL THINKING: How To

Be Your Own ‘BS’ Detector.Group Colloquium Project

English 100-71

Mr. Ganter

GROUP READINGS“Chapter 1: An Appeal to Students,” 3-16, M. Savio, “An End to History,” 17-19

“Chapter 6: From Cocksure Ignorance to Thoughtful Uncertainty,” p. 125-147

“Chapter 7: Overgeneralization, Stereotyping, and Prejudice,” p. 153-162

“Chapter 3: Definitions and Criteria of Critical Thinking,” 54-68

What To Expect?

Chapter 3: Definitions and

Criteria of Critical Thinking

Critical Points:

1980 American educators began to identify critical thinking as a subject that needed to be brought into high schools and colleges

Definitions: - Being recursive involves the process of rereading as many times as necessary to decode the authors full, complex meaning.- Cumulativeness refers to the continuous building and holding of knowledge, ideas, and reasoning throughout a particular work -A Rogerian Argument is a form of discussion based on finding common ground, it helps us get outside of our own egos and empathize with others’ viewpoints

Critical Points: cont. Ethnocentrism is the belief in the superiority of ones

own ethnic group - Egocentrism: the tendency to perceive, understand and interpret the world in terms of the self.

Criteria: - Analytic and synthetic skills include the ability to reason back and forth and connect ] the concrete and abstract; personal and impersonal; literal and figurative; explicit and implicit; actual and hypothetical. - Analytic and synthetic skills also include the abilities to understand multiple levels of meaning, points of view, to recognize irony, paradox, and ambiguity between what is said and meant.

Critical Points: cont.

- Higher order thinking is the ability to retain and apply

material previously studied and to sustain an extended

line of argument in reading, writing, and speaking, and

also incorporating recursive and cumulative thinking.

(Meaning: the ability to refer back to previously covered

material and to build on it)

- Higher Order Thinking further contributes to making

connections between diverse experiences, ideas, and

subjects studied through analysis and synthesis

Chapter 7: Overgeneralization,

Stereotyping and Prejudice.

Overgeneralizations and

Stereotypes:

-Overgeneralizations are the most common type of logical

fallacies.

-Critical thinkers must draw the line at the degree to which one

can generalize.

-Never say “all” ,”always” and “never” and if you must, say

“most”- and you better back it up with some evidence.

Prejudiced- An ad hominen fallacy is when you disagree with an

argument in a paper instead of judging it on its own merits or

prejudging it. Prejudice happens in many forms through

comedy and blatantly assuming a whole race is the same at a

certain skill for example, driving.

Overgeneralizations and Stereotypes:

Cont.

There are two other classes of prejudice: Class

prejudiced and Reverse prejudice

Class prejudice- seeing certain ethnics groups as

being poor and purposefully deterring them from

getting ahead and allowing the rich to get ahead

instead .An example would be when the

government hands out grants to seemingly poor

corporations, in “need “ of money. The wealthy

through business entertaining ( a euphemism for

bribery) has a way of obtaining funds.

Overgeneralizations and

Stereotypes:

Cont.

Reverse prejudice-This is often the case of

preferential treatment of a class of people who

have been discriminated against in the past. This is

used as a reason for people to discriminate against

a group. Either you discriminate or you. This would

be the fallacy “equal and opposite extremes.”

Chapter 6: From Cocksure Ignorance to

Thoughtful Uncertainty

BIASED AND UNBIASED

VIEWPOINTS:

- Every reader has a viewpoint/opinion

- We should aim to always identify and understand others

viewpoints

- Bias- is usually just a viewpoint and we are ALL biased

because of the life we live. The word ‘bias’ usually

comes with a negative connotation.

- Skepticism- it is necessary to be skeptic when writing an

essay so that we can separate rationally legitimate from

false. Skepticism is not only to belittle others beliefs

and values.

BIASED AND UNBIASED

VIEWPOINTS: cont.

“To be a good student we must accept our own ignorance

or become susceptible to being biased.”

“We don’t know what we don’t know.”

- We as students must aim to be objective when essay

writing and critical thinking, and to be that way we

must be aware of our personal biases.

- It is always hard to identify our own biases but easy to

pick out others. We must use the ‘ESBYODS’ Rule.

“Everybody sh*ts but your own don’t stink.”

BIASED AND UNBIASED

VIEWPOINTS: cont.

People are biased because of partisan ideology, gender, race, culture, social class, age etc.

When writing an essay: be a skeptic, present ideas that oppose your own, then refute them politely. If you present ideas that oppose your own you will be more credible.

**ESSENTIAL sometimes opposing sides will not have equal evidence, don’t let your quest for being fair let you give more credit or weight to a side than is due.

Do not feel obligated to providing private anecdotes when acknowledging your biases.

TOTEMS AND TABOOS:

We go through life defending some things because they

‘just are’ or ‘have always been that way’ e.g.) beliefs,

customs, habits and routines.

We blindly worship these things as Totems and Taboos

We blindly conform to these things as a method of

preservation. We don’t want to lose how things have

been.

But sometimes Totems and Taboos blind us of Right vs.

Wrong. E.g.) Slavery, slavery was always done but is

slavery right?

ETHNOCENTRISM:

“Ours is best!” “We’re #1” Attitude.

Refers to life viewed by one ethnic group, sometimes

this view is prejudice, mistaken or misinformed.

We learn to think beyond our culture and upbringing as

we mature and start to think independently.

Nationalistic ethnocentrism is common in most

countries.

Ethnocentrism often leads to denial and defense

mechanisms.

Chapter 1: An Appeal to Students

Chapter 1: And M. Savio, “An

End to History.”

An Appeal to Students- Critical

Points:-politics are interested in you whether or not you are

interested in them

-we must get over our lazy uncritical attitude, this will happen without us if we don’t participate

-this means participating in politics

-this means in examining our presuppositions

-this means examining our role models

-this means ensuring we are able to detect lies and promote truth

“An End to History”- Critical

Points:

-bureaucratic abuses in university and else where

-contesting the view of bureaucrats that history has

ended

-fighting despite the bleak outlook to ensure that

history continues as it should

WORKS CITED:1. Lazere, Donald, ed. Reading and Writing for Civic

Literacy. Boulder: Paradigm, 2009. Print.

STARRING:

Kendra Graham

Micah Harding

Tracey Klein

Victoria DeHart