How to kill critical thinking
An excellent article in the Washington Post by a Portland, Oregon, college professor disturbingly explains how critical thinking is often subverted today in American higher education.
In the piece, Lucía Martínez Valdivia, an assistant professor of English and Humanities at Reed College, points out that hysterical, self-reinforcing thinking and physical intimidation tend to drown out reason in the process of squelching unpopular views.
Valdivia’s experience in this realm involves her teaching of a typical required Humanities 101-type course at Reed College. Humanities is an important academic discipline that studies core aspects of human society and culture, including philosophy, literature, history and art, among a host of mankind’s many favored pursuits. The problem at hand is that the history of Western civilization, of which America is descendant, is largely a white, European history, stemming seminally from Classical Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle who emerged in last few centuries before the birth of Christ.
So, Valdivia and other humanities instructors have been routinely assaulted by protests of students accusing them of teaching white supremacy, anti-black racism and Euro-centric bias, among other sins purportedly inherent in the humanities. Valdivia argues that the protests are meant not to facilitate dialogue but to shut it down. The net result is that the teaching of essential humanities—arguably the cornerstone of our civilization—is unduly constricted by fearful college administrators and professors. Thus, nuanced critical thinking about this dispute is obliterated by offensive chaos, and nobody ends up the wiser.
Valdivia and other professors worried about the anti-intellectual effect of the silencing protests this year decided to hold a pre-course panel discussion to explain why teaching the humanities is essential to a well-rounded education. Yet, just as the panelists were set to begin, protesters seized their microphone and shut down the lecture. “The right to speak freely is not the same as the right to rob others of their voices,” Valdivia lamented afterward.
Education should be about teaching students how to think—clearly, logically, empirically—not what to think. As seen often, particularly when religion is involved, aggressively obstinate naysayers make such structured thinking impossible, which in turn makes learning impossible. And truth inaccessible.
