THEME

Critical Thinking in Teacher Education:

Towards a Demythologization
Critical

technique

in both

general

and

teacher education has received overwhelming support from academicians

for at least the last two decades. While
it is true that the technique is useful
when properly applied, the enthusiastic

(and largely uncritical) endorsement it

has received has elevated it, argues Walters, to the status of "myth." It increasingly is perceived as an almost sacrosanct, "natural," universally applicable,
unproblematic methodology. Walters offers a minority dissent to the received
view, and explains why the reductionistic methodology and epistemic assumptions

underlying critical thinking strategies are problematic, particularly in regards to teacher education.

ritical thinking is alluring

these days, and colleges and
~

are
~

universities

across

the country

becoming ardent suitors.

Courses in critical thinking, critical
reasoning, or informal logic
they
have
go by several different rubrics
been offered or required with greater
frequency in curricular packages for
-

decades. At least one state,

requires that students
in its university system take nine
semester units of critical thinking or
the last

two

California,

now

equivalent (Moore, 1983). Although no other state, to my knowledge, has gone this far, critical thinking is clearly being mainstreamed
its

the nation at the institutional

level. A quick perusal of college and
university catalogues underscores this
across

fact.
Institutional enthusiasm for critical
thinking is also reflected in the professional literature. Articles about the
nature and role of critical thinking
techniques continue to flood the educational and philosophical journals (e.g.,

Annis and Annis, 1979; Arons, 1985,

1986; Barell, 1983; Beyer, 1985; De
Bono, 1984; Ennis, 1981, 1984;
Facione, 1986; Frank, 1969; Garver,
1986; McPeck, 1985; Moll and Allen,
1982; Norris, 1985a, 1985b; Olson,
1984; Paul, 1982, 1984, 1985a; Ross
and Semb, 1981; Rudin, 1984; Smith,
1983; Sternberg, 1983, 1985a, 1985b;
Thompson and Frager, 1984; Wolf,
King, and Huck, 1968). Paul (1985b)
estimates that between 1977 and 1984,
l, 894 analyses of the method were published. In addition, national faculty

workshops and seminars dealing with

strategies to mainstream critical thinking techniques across the curriculum
are
becoming increasingly popular.
Higher education, in short, is riding
Walters is Assistant

Professor, Department

of Philosophy, Gettysburg College.

on a wave

of infatuation with critical

thinking.
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14

Kerry

S. Walters

But why has academe fallen in love

with critical thinking? There is, I
think, an obvious reason. Quite simply, the technique claims to train studdents in the logical analysis, evaluation, and construction of arguments.

Professional educators are frustrated at

the number of students who read a text
and cannot isolate its arguments, much
less

up with critical arguments

Critical thinking technique promises to overcome that difficulty by providing students with a set
of easily manageable rules by which
come

of their

own.

they can gain knowledge, a &dquo;kind of

power&dquo; (Barry, 1984, 6), detect the
&dquo;lies&dquo; of other people (McDonald,
1983, 6), &dquo;master&dquo; ideas (Nosich,
&dquo;the
1982, 2), and exercise control
-

key word&dquo; - in arguments (Ruggiero,

1984, 2). (Empowerment locutions
such

as

these

are

favorites in critical

thinking textbooks, and for good

reason, as I will argue later.)
None of us, I suspect, will quibble
with the desire to train students in
critical analysis. We want our students
to think logically, and we want future
teachers to hand down that legacy. Unfortunately, however, the current adoption of critical thinking in college and
university curricula has gone too far.
While it is true that the technique is
useful when properly applied, the enthusiastic (and often uncritical) endorsement it has received has elevated
it in the minds of many academics to
the status of what Roland Barthes
(1957) would call a &dquo;myth.&dquo; Critical
thinking is now perceived as an almost

natural, universally appliunproblematic methodology.

perception tends to overlook the

sacrosanct,

cable,
This

very real limitations of the method, a

blindspot which in turn leads to unfor-

pedagogical consequences. If
these consequences are to be avoided,
thus ensuring that academes marriage
tunate

with critical thinking is indeed a happy

one, it is essential that educators, philosophers of education, and logicians
take a hard look at the techniques scope.
This demands an analysis of its proper

continuity for

method, and application.

In what follows, I offer the preliminaries of such an analysis, which
will be particularly related to teacher
education. I briefly outline the dominant critical thinking technique. I then
explain why the reductionistic
methodology and epistemic assumptions underlying its strategies are problematic. Finally, I suggest why critical
thinking has been so uncritically endorsed in the last few years. I do not
argue for its elimination as a learning
technique, but rather for its demythologization. Critical thinking can
play an important role in the educational process, but only if its proper
nature and scope are appreciated.

investigation

nature,

Critical

Thinking Technique

What is critical thinking? Although

the jury is still out on the question of
whether it is a learned skill or an inherent ability, all textbooks agree on both
its general definition and proper

method.
Critical

thinking is a problem-solving technique that supposedly enables

the student to identify, clarify,
evaluate, and solve perplexities that
arise in reading and conversation. Its
method is overtly analytic. The critical
thinker breaks down purported arguments into their simplest constitutive
parts, propositions, which in turn are
themselves reduced to premises and
conclusions. Then he or she checks to
see whether the connection between
these constituents is logically justifiable. In searching for logical justification, the student is encouraged to
apply certain rules of inference that reveal the logical relations (or lack
thereof) between premises and conclusions. An entire array of informal fallacies is usually provided to aid the
student in further separating argumentative sheep from goats. An informal
fallacy is committed when the premises
that purport to lead to a specific conclusion are either ambiguous or irrelevant.
If the student spots any of these socalled fallacies in a passage, or decides
there is a gap in the arguments logical

any other reason, he or

she may conclude that the argument
as a whole is unsound. Once such an
evaluation is made, the student is justified in dismissing the passage under
as a

pseudo-argument -

best confused, at worst irrational,

but certainly not worthy of serious consideration. Thus, sequence of rules involved in critical thinkings textual
analysis might be summarized like
at

in character, and
allow for no flexibility outside the
limits they impose. One either follows
them or ignores them; one does not
change them. And perversely, to ignore
them is to damage ones mental control,
which, presumably, no rational person
will knowingly do.

all-encompassing

Critical Thinking
and Reductionism

this:
~
~
~

Identify the purported conclusion/s,

Identify the purported premises,
Identify the purported assumptions,
or understood premises,
Identify and exclude any extraneous
material,

Identify

any

appeal

to

informal fal-

lacies,

Rephrase the arguments content for

the purpose of clarification.
The proud claim that all critical
thinking textbooks make on the basis
of this analytic method is that it enables its practitioners to acquire control
over their thinking, thereby gaining
an argumentative edge in adversarial
settings. The implication, of course,
is that skill in problem solving is an
indicator of intellectual power, while
failure in problem solving indicates
lack or diminution of such power. An
additional but more subtle implication
is that only those problems which are
amenable to critical thinking strategies

are

genuine.

Thus, the critical thinking techas McPeck ( 1985) argues, is very

much like a rule-oriented game. If one
learns the rules and meticulously
applies them to all problem contexts,
one wins the game by exercising control over ones own arguments or the
arguments of others. Within the classroom situation, such gamesmanship
obviously is rewarded. If, however, the
student breaks any of the game rules,
either inadvertently or deliberately, the
game is lost, and the player is
penalized. There is, of course, nothing
intrinsically disturbing about the ruleoriented character of critical thinking.
Any critical tool, to one extent or
another, has certain rules that must be
honored if the analysis is to be successful. The significant point to keep in
mind about critical thinking, however,
is that the rules of its game are unwavering. As I shall argue later, they are

nique,

The lock step fidelity to its rules

demanded by the critical thinking
game reflects its essentially reductionistic nature. In calling it &dquo;reductionistic,&dquo; I mean that it is characterized by the following two attributes:
First, it assumes a methodology that
is universally applicable. All knowledge claims, regardless of their specific
content, are properly evaluated according to a common set of logical standards that includes precision, clarity,
logical transparency, and consistency
Second, this method of evaluating
knowledge claims is universally applicable because all bona fide knowledge
is necessarily logical in nature, and
hence necessarily displays characteristics such as precision, clarity, logical
transparency, and consistency The lat-

assumption, which is an epistemological one, justifies the former

methodological one.
The models methodological reducter

tionism is apparent. As mentioned

are trained to pull
arguments to pieces and examine the
relations between and among them,
checking to see whether they conform
to laws of logical inference. If the
knowledge claim under examination
cannot be reduced to a sequence of logically connected constituent parts,there
is prima facie evidence to reject it as
either invalid or nonsensical. This
methodological dissection of putative
problems is not unique to critical
thinking strategy, of course. It is employed by any analytic approach. The
key point, however, is that the method
is supposed to be applicable in any
context. It is a perfectly adequate
barometer for distinguishing between
&dquo;real&dquo; and &dquo;pseudo&dquo; problems.
The epistemological reductionism of
critical thinking, which is the base of
its methodological approach, is less obvious, largely because it is never explicit-

earlier, students

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15

out in textbooks. But reductionistic methods always point to a set

ly spelled

of reductionistic epistemic principles,

and the perceptive student is usually
able

infer the connection in critical

thinkings case as the semester progresses, and he or she becomes increasto

ingly comfortable with its technique.

The primary epistemological presupposition of critical thinking strategy
is that knowledge is adequately described as a set of propositions expressive of facts. These propositional expressions of facts are distinct from one
another, notwithstanding the logical
relations that may be posited between
them. Systematic bodies of knowledge
such as theories, conceptual models,
arguments are seen as collections of
atomistic factual propositions. The
connection between them is mechanical rather than organic, cumulative
rather than synthetic. Thus, wholes (arguments, theories, and so on) are never
more than the sum of logical connections between their parts (factual propositions). It follows, of course, that the
best approach to take in examining the
whole is to dissect it into its parts,
scrutinize them for internal coherency,
and then analyze the logical relations
between them. If such scrutiny reveals
or

no lack
of factual
propositions that make up the whole,
then the knowledge claim in question
is deemed an acceptable one. And since
all bona fide knowledge claims can be
reduced to the same set of logical standards, each of them is adequately
analyzed in the same way.

no

ambiguity,

no

&dquo;haziness,&dquo;

of logical clarity in the

set

Epistemological reductionism, then,

claims

common

foundation for all

genuine knowledge claims. That basis

is logical precision, clarity, and consistency Any putative knowledge claim
or problem that ultimately is not reducible to these standards is rejected as
&dquo;confused.&dquo; As I shall demonstrate later,

however, many philosophers

now

argue

epistemic assumptions sacrifice cognitive complexity and richness

that such

the altar of manageability and easy

classification. These assumptions posit
an overly simplistic model of knowledge and hence an overly simplistic
at

methodology. They provide easily

manipulatable strategies for problem
solving, but at the price of dismissing
as nonsensical many genuine problems

and knowledge claims that do not conform to their rather rigid legitimation
criteria. These criticisms raise serious
doubts about the insistence of reductionism that no body of knowledge is
legitimate unless all its parts are logically transparent. Yet reductionism
serves as the epistemological foundation for the methodology of critical

thinking.
This is

to say that such a

does not aid students in
the evaluation and construction of logical arguments. It is a useful primer
in critical analysis when taught in its
proper perspective. Unfortunately,
however, it is too often presented as if
it were a self-sufficient rather than an
introductory critical strategy. This
move, which results from the absolutism of the tacit epistemological
reductionism of critical thinking often
leads to three disconcerting consequences in the classroom.
First, critical thinking textbooks so
stress the universal applicability of the
reductionistic technique that students
often buy the assumption that it is the
only legitimate method by which to
examine or formulate expressions of belief. The implication, of course, is that
critical thinking is a model of &dquo;correct&dquo;
thinking - that is, thought is proper if
and only if it conforms to reductionistic
assumptions. This absolutistic attitude
leads in turn to two very uncritical consequences. First, students tend to become
intolerant of any bodies of expression
that do not conform to the critical
thinking canon. Instead of recognizing
that such expressions might fall outside
the range of analytic reductionism, they
dismiss them as nonsensical. The labels
&dquo;illogical&dquo; or even &dquo;nonlogical&dquo; become
immediate and unquestionable condemnations. Second, insofar as textbooks usually portray critical thinking
technique as a set of procedural rules
which, if followed, promise success,
many students adopt a lock step, mechanical fidelity to them that encourages intellectual passivity. The goal becomes the avoidance of failure. It is
achieved by unimaginatively playing
the critical thinking game and following the critical thinking rules. The
higher the level of automatic rule application, the greater the chances of success
in breaking apart arguments, winning
debates, and receiving a high grade.
not

methodology

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16

Second, insofar

critical

thinking
problem solving as the
techniques ultimate goal, and inasmuch as students begin to identify &dquo;correct&dquo; thinking with critical thinking
techniques, their naive presumption
that only those bodies of expression
textbooks

as

stress

which are instrumental in character are

worthwhile is reinforced. Anyone who
has taught a speculative, abstract discipline is painfully aware of the fact
that students are highly suspicious of
its value. They tend to want answers,
not reformulations of questions. If the
answers are slow in coming, they dismiss the discipline as cobweb-spinning, bereft of &dquo;real world&dquo; value. The
problem-solving focus of critical thinking strengthens the conviction that
intellectual exploration which has no
immediately observable practical implications is a waste of time. It was
especially disconcerting when I finally
realized the very technique I was using
to encourage speculation in my philosophy classes was legitimizing my students already-strong devaluation of
&dquo;inutile&dquo; thought. But upon reflection,
it was not surprising. The epistemic
exclusivity that underlies critical thinking demands that nonlogical approaches and questions be dismissed.
This leads to the third consequence.
The rule-oriented passivity and emphasis upon instrumentality that uncritical models of critical thinking
technique can breed tend to discourage
students from intellectual creativity. So
much attention is placed upon learning
how to break down argumentative puzzles that the importance of coming up
with new questions, new problems,
new perspectives, is ignored. In short,

synthesis

is

Whitehead

downplayed

or

ignored.

said that
in particular and learn-

(1979)

once

philosophizing
ing in general are exercises in imaginative speculation. Presumably, the goal
of standard critical

thinking textbooks

the critical abilities that

serve as the basis for such learning.
Unfortunately, however, the emphasis
upon these preliminary steps is so
strong that they gradually become the
ends rather than the means. I have been
troubled time and again when some of
my most spontaneously creative and
exciting students were transformed
after a semester of critical thinking into
unimaginative, &dquo;properly critical&dquo;
is

to nurture

robots. I conveyed - and they learned

the lesson all too well.
Could it be that these disconcerting
consequences are more reflective of my
mode of presentation or ability as a
teacher than of the technique itself? I
have reflected seriously on that possibility, but have rejected it as an insufficient explanation for three reasons.
First, as I have shown elsewhere (Walters, 1986), a close examination of the
textbooks themselves indicates that
they do indeed present the technique
in such a way as to encourage
methodological absolutism and rule
adherence. Any instructor even partially loyal to the text he or she uses
will convey these messages. Second, I
have discussed these problems with
many colleagues, in both philosophy
and other disciplines, who have had
similar experiences when they focused
upon critical thinking technique in
class. Finally, all the instructors at the
faculty workshops on critical thinking
I have attended have likewise stressed
the universality of the reductionist
technique. For example, I have asked
several of them to describe the merits
of critical thinking, and each one of
the responses has centered around the
canned explanation that critical thinking enables students to break down arguments, solve problems, and thereby become &dquo;good&dquo; thinkers and teachers.
When I have followed up by asking why
it is so important to present problem
solving as exclusively reductionistic, I
have typically been met with incredulous or uncomprehending stares.
-

Critical

Thinking and Ideology

These problems (and others) suggest
that critical thinking technique is
properly quite limited in scope. Its reductionistic method and epistemic assumptions apply only to those disciplines that are analytically propositional
and problem-oriented, and then in
only a limited way. To overemphasize
the merits and range of critical thinking is to run the risk of neglecting, if
not outright killing, creative imagination, intellectualrisk taking, and ad-

noninstrumental speculation. This is a lesson we can ill afford

to pass on to tomorrows teachers.
Why, then, the love affair with critical thinking? Why its current allure?

venturous,

is it being touted as the savior

of the Western curriculum?
I suspect that the critical thinking
model is overemphasized in colleges
and universities today because of
ideological reasons. Critical thinking
is, at least in part, an ideology By
&dquo;ideology&dquo; I mean any body of knowl-

Why

edge or methodology which, while

claiming objectivity and universality,
is in fact a reflection of the conceptual
and normative framework definitive of
a particular socioeconomic context.
Ideological structures are neither neutral nor objective. They are instead,
intellectual legitimations of what are
really contextual interests and models.
are, in

short, all-encompassing
claiming ubiquitous and
comprehesive applicability. The disparity between what they are and what
they claim to be, as Mannheim ( 1956)
and other sociologists of knowledge
have pointed out, inevitably leads to
conceptual inconsistencies and func-

They

structures,

tional tensions.
Critical thinking has acquired the
canonical status it currently enjoys because its epistemological character reflects certain received cultural assumptions about the nature and value of
knowledge in general. The modern era
has tended to designate as bona fide
knowledge only those beliefs and correlative methods that are instrumental
in character. It stresses practical efficiency, technological invention, and
concrete problem solving. This paradigm, which has its roots in Francis
Bacons seventeenth-century apotheosis
of &dquo;instrumental&dquo; as opposed to &dquo;speculative&dquo; reason (Walters, 1988a), has
given rise to influential contemporary
schools of thought, such as pragmatism
and positivism, which intellectually
serve to legitimate the norm of instrumentality while concomitantly deemphasizing inutile methods and investigatory approaches. They do so by
assuming an epistemic reductionism
similar to that of critical thinking.
Bona fide knowledge is seen as that set
of propositional claims which is reducible to transparently logical validity.
Any belief expression that contains
imaginative jumps, intuitive guesses,
or nonlogical steps is dismissed from
the set of genuine problems. This epistemic presupposition about the nature
of knowledge insures that only logi-

solvable problems - those with

instrumental promise - will be taken
seriously. Its comprehensive nature
excludes all others from consideration.
The emphasis of critical thinking on
problem solving clearly reflects this
conventional model. This only makes
sense, inasmuch as the two share the
same epistemic reductionism. Critical
thinking fosters the impression that
meaning is inseparable from instrumentality. From its perspective, only
that method which is capable of constructing and resolving problems is valuable. Any method that does not lend
itself to the augmentation of utility is
highly suspect. Accordingly, the reductionist method of critical thinking has
as its goal not only the promulgation
of instrumentality but also its acceptance as the standard by which to separate meaningful from meaningless discourse. It is not coincidence, as pointed
out earlier, that one of the most common promises made by critical thinking textbooks is that absorption of the
technique will enhance a students
power - a claim reflective, by the way,
of Bacons insistence that &dquo;knowledge
is power,&dquo; with &dquo;knowledge&dquo; here read
as &dquo;instrumentality&dquo; In short, the uncritical presentation of critical thinking techniques wholeheartedly accepts
and promulgates the conventional assumption that epistemic paradigms
and methodologies are legitimate if
and only if they are capable of solving
problems and enhancing instrumentality that is, if they are reductionistic.
This, of course, tends to disenfranchise
cognitive approaches that are not
explicitly problem-oriented, but that
focus instead upon imaginative construction, intuitive brainstorming, and
metaphorical understanding - all
modes of creativity that many epistemologists and educators (e. g.,
Bruner, 1962, 1986; Egan and

cally

Nadaner,

1988;

Fishman,

1985;

Kagan, 1967; Koestler, 1964; Logan,

1984; Hoddings and Shore, 1984;
Polanyi, 1985; Walters, 1986, 1987,
1988b) have defended as essential to
the development of the student.
Given the pervasive influence of this
ideological epistemic reductionism, it
is little wonder that students often look
at

as nothing more than a bus

empowerment. I suspect the
they so often discount the liberal

college

ticket
reason

to

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17

is that they see little utility in

them. They go to college to receive
career training and resent having to
take courses that have no immediate
impact upon such training. Institutions of higher learning are adept at
reading the signs of the market; their
enrollment and endowment depend, to
a large extent, upon how well they can
offer what the consumer wants to buy
(Bauman, 1987, Rhodes, 1987). One
way of meeting the demand is to emphasize an intellectual technique that
arts

promises a high payoff from a pragmatic perspective. And that is precisely

what critical thinking claims to do.
Are colleges and universities deliberately playing to the market in emphasizing critical thinking? Perhaps,
at least to a certain extent; but one
cannot claim they push critical thinking as a universal technique solely for
financially self-serving reasons. Administrators and professors, like students, live in a social milieu that
canonizes concrete instrumentality and
vocationalism and downplays abstract,

inutile speculation. Consequently,

their absorption of the ideological matrix manifests itself in the curricula they
design and push. Institutions of higher
learning naturally tend to train students in methodologies and content
that reflect the social, normative, and
economic assumptions of the culture
in which those institutions are located
and through which they are defined.
Instrumentalitiy defines the late twentieth-century American ethos. Consequently, critical thinking - that
method which appears to maximize instrumentality - is uncritically accepted as self-evidently canonical by
higher education and educators.
If I am correct, then, the current
emphasis upon critical thinking is due
as much to certain ideological considerations as to the sincere desire to school
students in critical analysis. Given the
obvious problems that arise from its
curricular emphasis, as well as the con-

ceptual

difficulties

surrounding epis-

temic reductionism, that seems the

most logical and charitable explanation.

Implications for
Teacher Education
The uncritical dissemination of critical thinking technique in general edu-

cation is worrisome enough. If I am

correct in arguing that the received
model is ideological, higher education
is inadvertently training an entire generation in methodological intolerance,
unimaginative instrumentalism, and
rule-oriented conceptual passivity. The
current student generation may wind
up better able than earlier ones to
analyze a given text, but only at a tremendous opportunity cost. The canonization of conventional critical thinking
strategies has even more frightening
implications for teacher education. It
is a truism that future teachers generally teach the way they were taught.
In this regard (to paraphrase Freud) the
student is indeed parent to the teacher.
To train future educators in the conventional critical thinking model is to
ensure that the unfortunate effects discussed here will be duplicated in future
generations of students. And the implication of such an inheritance is clear:
as rule-oriented methodological canonicity proliferates in the classroom and
at every level, creativity, imagination,
and noninstrumental speculation are
first covertly ignored, then overtly devalued and dismissed.
There is an alternative, however, to
this rather dismal prognosis. The currently received critical thinking model
can
be salvaged if educators and
philosophers of education make a concerted critical effort to demythologize
it. The method is adequate within its
proper sphere: the logical analysis of
propositional arguments. It is only
when its limitations are ignored and
universally it is touted as an applicable
method that it acquires ideological
status and gives rise to distortions. An
analysis of the nature and scope of critical thinking will demythologize it and
clarify its proper role. The pedagogical
consequences arising from that conceptual clarification will include at least
a presentation of alternative models of
knowing to epistemological reductionism. On a more specific level, this
will involve complementing techniques of critical thinking with exercises in intuitive learning (Noddings
and Shore, 1984), creative reconstruction of traditional problems - what
and
Koestler (1964) calls &dquo;infolding&dquo;
to
tacit, synthetic approaches
apprehension (Polanyi, 1985). The suggestion, in short, is that the conventional
-

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18

thinking model needs to be

expanded to incorporate training in
imaginative, noninstrumentalist speculation that does not accept logical reductionism as its necessary epistemic
paradigm. From a curricular perspective, such expansion has not been the
norm. According to a recent study
(McDonough and McDonough, 1988),
only 76 out of 1,188 American educational institutions provide opporcritical

tunities

for formal

coursework

in

creativity enhancement, notwithstanding the fact that most of those same

colleges and universities offer as part
of their standard curricular packages
either explicit or mainstreamed training in critical thinking techniques.
Unless and until the currently received
critical thinking model is complemented with nonreductionistic approaches,
institutions of higher learning will continue to train future teachers in a problematic and overestimated method,
thereby doing a disservice to both them
and their future students.

Conclusion

genuinely enriching love affairs

predicated upon each partners possessing an accurate understanding of
All

are

the other. Otherwise, initial infatuations quickly become uninspiring and

even oppressive traps. Higher education in general and teacher education
in particular are in danger of falling
into such an impoverished relationship
with the currently received model of
critical thinking. Until academe recognizes the ideological nature of reductionistic critical thinking and works to
demythologize it, there is little chance
of a happy, fruitful union between the
two. Education and critical thinking
can be compatible partners, but only
if academe disabuses itself of its blind
enthusiasm and takes a hard, critical
look at the model it now so ardently
and recklessly woos.

References

―――――――

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activity

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