A recent AJC reprint of an opinion piece from afar was ostensibly about "critical thinking" in the context of "critical race theory." It is, unfortunately, an agenda piece with no symptoms of critical thinking whilst committing semantic war crimes which have become all too common.
The first sin against words and meaning is one of omission: failure to define "critical thinking" as used in this context made more poignant by the fact the author chastises his rhetorical opponents for not defining "critical race theory" in their context. Even novice critical thinkers have alarm bells ringing on that one.
So, let us put a plaster on that bullet wound. One source defines critical thinking as
it’s “thinking about thinking”—identifying, analyzing, and then fixing flaws in the way we think
Another offers this
Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking.
What these have in common is that critical thinking is inward, reflections on how the thinker is thinking in an effort to improve that thinking. What critical thinking is not is developing effective criticism of others' thinking.
So, what about the false flag? Is critical thinking needed in our schools? Certainly. But this requires the kind of thinking skills one finds in mathematics and grammar. Logic and meaning. Thing long abandoned by our schools for being too hard. For the faculty. Therefore for the students. So yes, we need critical thinking in schools, in the workplace and in academia. Hell, we even need critical thinking in journalism, even the op-eds.
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