Critical
Critical Reading v. Critical Thinking
We can distinguish between critical reading and critical thinking in the following way:
· Critical reading is a technique for discovering information and ideas within a text.
· Critical thinking is a technique for evaluating information and ideas, for deciding what to accept and believe.
Critical reading refers to a careful, active, reflective, analytic reading. Critical thinking involves reflecting on the validity of what you have read in light of our prior knowledge and understanding of the world.
For example, consider the following (somewhat humorous) sentence from a student essay:
Parents are buying expensive cars for their kids to destroy them.
As the terms are used here, critical reading is concerned with figuring out whether, within the context of the text as a whole, ” them ” refers to the parents, the kids, or the cars, and whether the text supports that practice. Critical thinking would come into play when deciding whether the chosen meaning was indeed true, and whether or not you, as the reader, should support that practice.
By these definitions, critical reading would appear to come before critical thinking: Only once we have fully understood a text (critical reading) can we truly evaluate its assertions (critical thinking).
The Two Together in Harmony
In actual practice, critical reading and critical thinking work together.
Critical thinking allows us to monitor our understanding as we read. If we sense that assertions are ridiculous or irresponsible (critical thinking), we examine the text more closely to test our understanding (critical reading).
Conversely, critical thinking depends on critical reading. You can think critically about a text (critical thinking), after all, only if you have understood it (critical reading). We may choose to accept or reject a presentation, but we must know why. We have a responsibility to ourselves, as well as to others, to isolate the real issues of agreement or disagreement. Only then can we understand and respect other people’s views. To recognize and understand those views, we must read critically.
The Usefulness of the Distinction
If critical thinking and critical reading are so closely linked, why is this still a useful distinction?
The usefulness of the distinction lies in its reminder that we must read each text on its own merits, not imposing our prior knowledge or views on it. While we must evaluate ideas as we read, we must not distort the meaning within a text. We must not allow ourselves to force a text to say what we would otherwise like it to say — or we will never learn anything new!
Reading Critically: How Well Does The Text Do What It Does
We can think of a writer as having taken on a job. No matter what the topic, certain tasks must be done:
· a specific topic must be addressed
· terms must be clearly defined
· evidence must be presented
· common knowledge must be accounted for
· exceptions must be explained
· causes must be shown to precede effects and to be capable of the effect
· conclusions must be shown to follow logically from earlier arguments and evidence
As critical readers and writers, we want to assure ourselves that these tasks have been completed in a complete, comprehensive, and consistent manner. Only once we have determined that a text is consistent and coherent can we then begin to evaluate whether or not to accept the assertions and conclusions.
Thinking Critically: Evaluating The Evidence
As readers, we want to accept as fact only that which is actually true. To evaluate a conclusion, we must evaluate the evidence upon which that conclusion is based. We do not want just any information; we want reliable information. To assess the validity of remarks within a text, we must go outside a text and bring to bear outside knowledge and standards.
In the modern world there is a great deal of nonsense about. Pseudo-science abounds in myriad different forms, and there is an endless supply of con-games and schemes to entrap the unwary. Still, not everyone falls for the various schemes to defraud us of money or convince us of untruth. What specific skills can you arm yourself with to become more skeptical? How can you become more critical and harder to fool?
In general, you need a specific skill set to distinguish fact from unsubstantiated claim, whether the claims come in written or verbal form on any media, or even in person from a sales pitch or a cultic recruiter.
First of all, you need to give yourself time to cover the material in question. Critical reading is a slow and careful process, and you must take the time to analyze the material in detail to determine its status. Therefore, don’t allow yourself to be rushed. If the pitch is in person, ask for materials to read later. If you are tired, make it another day. Nothing is so urgent that it cannot wait another day, so don’t allow yourself to be pressured. Cooling off periods are allowed after a heated sales pitch and subsequent careless purchasing decision in many countries, but make your own cooling off period before you sign anything or commit to anything or hand out any money. Give yourself time to think; if there is a tag-team sales pitch going on, walk away and say you will give it some thought and get back to them on it, and take your leave of the situation to consider it in a less pressured environment. Refuse to listen to arguments about how you need to commit immediately and completely, and that any hesitation is a bad sign or that going with your first impulse is the way to go. If the sales pitch is in a written format, make sure you are well rested before you tackle it, and that nothing else is on your mind at the moment.
The next technique you may apply to promote understanding and to detect the verity of a subject is to think about the topic carefully, not to just sit and absorb it. For example, if you are reading something new, put it down for a minute and ponder what is written. Ask yourself questions about the topic; what was the author’s intent in writing it? Can it be independently verified? What is the author’s background? Who disagrees with the author, and what are their arguments? These questions may lead you to examine other sources of information, and it generally a good idea to see both sides of an issue before making a decision about it. If a vacuum-cleaner salesperson is in your house and giving you a good pitch about their product and you feel you want to buy the machine, you might want to check out an issue of Consumer Reports about the machine first before making up your mind rather than impulse buying after hearing only one side. If you are reading a book, you could preview it first and then stop to think about it and ask yourself questions or make predictions about the contents. What do you know about this subject? What is your gut feeling about it? What do you think about it? Making notes about the subject may help you to reflect upon it and get you thinking more about it rather than merely taking it in, unquestioned.
Keep an eye on yourself and your progress with the subject. Ask yourself if you understand what you are reading, and, if you don’t, tackle it from another angle. Does what you are reading fit with your predictions and expectations? Does it seem generally reasonable? If what you are reading does not fit in with what you already know, tread carefully, as this may be an area of deception or error. Does what you are covering make sense? If not, can you discover why that is? Is it too technical, does it appear illogical or irrational? Find out why you cannot make sense of a subject, if possible. The problem may well lie with the subject itself; understanding nonsense is oxymoronic. The fault may lie with the writer or with the subject matter itself, but if you have determined that the problem lies in your own inability to comprehend, then find other material on this same topic by another writer at a more elementary level. The responsibility for communication lies as much with the writer or speaker as with the intended audience; you are responsible for your half of the equation.
After you have finished reading the material, give yourself time to ponder its implications. This is the time to read over your notes if you made any and fit the new information into your present store of knowledge – if the information is deemed to be of acceptable quality and verity. Now would be a good time to check other sources; never trust simply one person about any subject. Do the other sources by different authors agree with the first one? If so, are they independent sources, or are they linked in some manner with the first source of information? For example, if the president of Dow Chemical says that a certain pesticide is safe and effective, and the other sources you find agree, make certain they are not employees of Dow or working under a Dow Chemical grant! Independent verification is vital to ensure that you are dealing with legitimate documentation. It is also important at this time to reflect on the purpose and motivations of the source of the new and possibly questionable information. Don’t take things at face value; dig into the topic and into the writer or speaker to find out why they are saying what they are saying. It is a given that ad copy, for example, is unreliable as the authors are hired to sell a product and are tainted thereby – be careful anywhere there is a monetary interest. This extends to your own money; be particularly careful if your money is on the line, as people are untrustworthy when money is involved. It is reasonable to reject out of hand anything someone tells you if they are to profit by the telling; salespeople are an example of this, but it extends into religions, for example, where salvation is a function of recruitment abilities or where your time and effort are desired as much as your money. Deception is often used in these circumstances as there is a direct profit, monetary or spiritual, to be made from you. Ask yourself what the person is going to get out of you if you believe them. Fraud takes place the moment money leaves your hands in all confidence games, so pay particular attention to that moment in time. A good policy if you have any doubts at all is to refuse to hand over your money – no matter what.
Realize that not everything you read will be true, no matter how fine the prose or scholarly the source. Where deliberate deception is not an issue, there is still room for errors to seep into the material due to unchecked facts, inadequate or outdated science, deception on the part of others who informed the writer or speaker, commercialization of the academic community, and many other reasons. It is important to pick through what you read; material is seldom of such provenance and quality that all of it is useful to you. What do you agree with? What do you disagree with? In general and normal reading, there should be a great deal you disagree with, if you are of a skeptical bent. Much of the material you will come across is not true or only half truth. Ask yourself if what you are reading is trustworthy and if you agree or disagree with the author as they make each and every claim.
One skill you must develop is the ability to distinguish facts from claims. Facts are statements that can be readily checked, as in an encyclopedia or other reference work. If you read that Betsy Ross designed the American Flag, for example, it should not be hard to either verify or refute this statement in many reference works. You can certainly question facts; they are statements that are amenable to challenging their accuracy. Question facts when the writer may have something to gain from their use. If Scientology, for example, states that they have 8,000,000 members and uses this fact to gain credibility and recognition, it may well be a claim that needs looking into and independent verification from another source, such as a census or checked against other numbers from the organization such as numbers of churches and members at each.
An opinion or a claim is a statement open to interpretation and judgment. Claims are not necessarily open to the kind of checking that facts are. For example, a speaker might say that a liberal government is bad for the economy. This is an unsupported claim, not a fact. It lacks verification through the means of, for example, looking at the economies of various nations over time and comparing economic output with governmental liberality, which in itself needs to be defined. Opinions may be well supported or poorly supported, and you may agree or disagree with them to varying degrees. One method of finding out more about opinions and seeing if you may like to agree or disagree with them is to ask the person expressing the idea why they hold such an opinion, or, if reading material with such claims in it, ask yourself why the writer holds this opinion. In the example above, the speaker might say they hold this opinion because their daddy told them so, and you might then wish to discard the opinion as worthless and completely unsupported.
Opinions are often based on unstated assumptions about values or definitions, and it may be fruitful to dig out what the author’s assumptions are that form the framework for their thinking on a subject. In the example above, one of the assumptions may be something along the lines of “daddy is always right” or based on the idea that liberalism is inherently bad in and of itself, and that no ethical person would be a liberal. This would be a value assumption, that is, a belief about the way things should be or what morality is, or a definitional assumption defining liberality to be a certain thing or a certain way that it may or may not be in reality. Read closely to see if you can spot the author’s assumptions underlying their arguments. If an author states that detergent A is better at cleaning than detergent B because A is better at removing stains, the author is using a definitional assumption that cleaning implies stain removal. But what if another author were to point out that detergent B is better at whitening, and therefore a better detergent? They are using a different definition for cleaning; they are more concerned with whitening than stain removal. Read to find these assumptions underneath the writing and then determine whether you agree with them or not before making up your mind about the subject.
In conclusion, there is probably a large list of other techniques and skills of critical reading in the area of logical fallacies of many types – scientific reasoning, claims and proofs, and so forth – but a good grounding in the skills mentioned above would make people better consumers of both spiritual and commercial goods. Learn how to read closely and carefully, to pose questions, make predictions, to think about what you are being exposed to, to take notes, always compare what you have read or heard with other sources, monitor your progress with a topic, evaluate the source for motivation and credibility of assumptions, and distinguish fact from mere opinion.
It will take more time to read and listen in this manner, but the result will be a savings in time wasted going down the wrong paths in life and a savings of money in avoiding making poor decisions – and who among us has not made a hasty purchase or a rash decision that was later regretted based upon a less than truly critical evaluation of the evidence at hand?
WHAT IS CRITICAL THINKING?
Consider several definitions:
Critical thinkers: distinguish between fact and opinion; ask questions; make detailed observations; uncover assumptions and define their terms; and make assertions based on sound logic and solid evidence.
Critical thinking is best understood as the ability of thinkers to take charge of their own thinking. This requires that they develop sound criteria and standards for analyzing and assessing their own thinking and routinely use those criteria and standards to improve its quality.
ATTRIBUTES OF A CRITICAL THINKER:
- asks pertinent questions
- assesses statements and arguments
- is able to admit a lack of understanding or information
- has a sense of curiosity
- is interested in finding new solutions
- is able to clearly define a set of criteria for analyzing ideas
- is willing to examine beliefs, assumptions, and opinions and weigh them against facts
- listens carefully to others and is able to give feedback
- sees that critical thinking is a lifelong process of self-assessment
- suspends judgment until all facts have been gathered and considered
- looks for evidence to support assumption and beliefs
- is able to adjust opinions when new facts are found
- looks for proof
- examines problems closely
- is able to reject information that is incorrect or irrelevant
APPLYING CRITICAL THINKING TO READING
CRITICAL READING STRATEGIES
(from
These seven critical reading strategies can be learned readily and then applied not only to reading selections in a Literature class, but also to your other college reading. Mastering these strategies will help you handle difficult material with confidence.
· Annotating: Fundamental to each of these strategies is annotating directly on the page: underlining key words, phrases, or sentences; writing comments or questions in the margins; bracketing important sections of the text; constructing ideas with lines or arrows; numbering related points in sequence; and making note of anything that strikes you as interesting, important, or questionable.
o Most readers annotate in layers, adding further annotations on second and third readings.
o Annotations can be light or heavy, depending on the reader’s purpose and the difficulty of the material.
· Previewing: Learning about a text before really reading it. Previewing enables readers to get a sense of what the text is about and how it is organized before reading it closely. This simple strategy includes seeing what you can learn from the headnotes or other introductory material, skimming to get an overview of the content and organization, and identifying the rhetorical situation.
· Contextualizing: Placing a text in its historical, biographical, and cultural contexts. When you read a text, you read it through the lens of your own experience.
o Your understanding of the words on the page and their significance is informed by what you have come to know and value from living in a particular time and place. But the texts you read were all written in the past, sometimes in a radically different time and place.
o To read critically, you need to contextualize, to recognize the differences between your contemporary values and attitudes and those represented in the text.
· Questioning to understand and remember: Asking questions about the content. As students, you are accustomed to teachers asking you questions about your reading.
o Questions are designed to help you understand a reading and respond to it more fully, and often this technique works.
o When you need to understand and use new information though it is most beneficial if you write the questions, as you read the text for the first time.
o With this strategy, you can write questions any time, but in difficult academic readings, you will understand the material better and remember it longer if you write a question for every paragraph or brief section.
o Each question should focus on a main idea, not on illustrations or details, and each should be expressed in your own words, not just copied from parts of the paragraph.
· Reflecting on challenges to your beliefs and values: Examining your personal responses. The reading that you do for this class might challenge your attitudes, your unconsciously held beliefs, or your positions on current issues.
o As you read a text for the first time, mark an X in the margin at each point where you fell a personal challenge to your attitudes, beliefs, or status.
o Make a brief note in the margin about what you feel or about what in the text created the challenge.
o Now look again at the places you marked in the text where you felt personally challenged.
o What patterns do you see?
· Outlining and summarizing: Identifying the main ideas and restating them in your own words.
o Outlining and summarizing are especially helpful strategies for understanding the content and structure of a reading selection.
o Whereas outlining reveals the basic structure of the text, summarizing synopsizes a selection’s main argument in brief.
o Outlining may be part of the annotating process, or it may be done separately (as it is in this class).
o The key to both outlining and summarizing is being able to distinguish between the main ideas and the supporting ideas and examples.
o The main ideas form the backbone, the strand that hold the various parts and pieces of the text together.
o Outlining the main ideas helps you to discover this structure.
o When you make an outline, don’t use the text’s exact words.
· Summarizing begins with outlining, but instead of merely listing the main ideas, a summary recomposes them to form a new text. Whereas outlining depends on a close analysis of each paragraph, summarizing also requires creative synthesis. Putting ideas together again — in your own words and in a condensed form — shows how reading critically can lead to deeper understanding of any text.
· Evaluating an argument means testing the logic of a text as well as its credibility and emotional impact. All writers make assertions that want you to accept as true.
o As a critical reader, you should not accept anything on face value but to recognize every assertion as an argument that must be carefully evaluated.
o An argument has two essential parts: a claim and support.
o The claim asserts a conclusion — an idea, an opinion, a judgment, or a point of view – that the writer wants you to accept.
o The support includes reasons (shared beliefs, assumptions, and values) and evidence (facts, examples, statistics, and authorities) that give readers the basis for accepting the conclusion.
o When you assess an argument, you are concerned with the process of reasoning as well as its truthfulness (these are not the same thing).
o At the most basic level, in order for an argument to be acceptable, the support must be appropriate to the claim and the statements must be consistent with one another.
· Comparing and contrasting related readings: Exploring likenesses and differences between texts to understand them better.
Many of the authors on the subject of thinking critically approach the topic in different ways. Fitting a text into an ongoing dialectic helps increase understanding of why an author approached a particular issue or question in the way he or she did.
APPLYING CRITICAL THINKING TO AMERICAN HISTORY
FACT, OPINION AND INFERENCE
Being able to distinguish between a statement of fact, an opinion or an inference is an important skill to critical thinking. It involves knowing what can be proven directly, what is a legitimate implication derived from the facts, and what is fair to conclude from the historical record.
Historians typically interweave statements of fact, inferences they derive from the facts, and statements of their own opinion into a seamless historical narrative. Critical thinkers must be able to distinguish among these three types of communication.
· FACT: reports information that can be directly observed or can be verified or checked for accuracy.
· OPINION: expresses an evaluation based on a personal judgment or belief which may or may not be verifiable.
· INFERENCE: a logical conclusion or a legitimate implication based on factual information.
Generally, facts are constants in historical study. But a compendium of facts is inevitably incomplete and deathly dull to read. Historians construct history by closing the gaps in their knowledge about the past, enlarge our under- standing, and enliven their narrative by drawing logical inferences from their assembled facts. Often, they then use their expertise to arrive at a considered judgment about the wisdom or significance of past decisions and events.
Distinguishing statements of fact, opinion, and inference may at first seem difficult to do. That is because they are often closely interwoven. Develop your own critical thinking abilities by placing an “F” before each factual statement, an “O” before each opinion, and an “I” before each inference in the practice exercise below.
This type of critical thinking exercise is used often in quizzes and tests.
____1. The real rulers of the “black Republican” governments of the South were white “scalawags” and “carbetbaggers.”
____2. Scalawags were by far the more numerous of the two.
____3. Blacks lacked experience in politics and were mostly poor and uneducated.
____4. That blacks should fail to dominate southern governments is certainly understandable.
____5. Graft and callous disregard of the public interest characterized government in all regions and at every level during the decade after Appomattox.
____6. However, the corruption must be seen in perspective.
____7. The New York City Tweed Ring probably made off with more money that all the southern thieves, black and white, combined.
____8. The evidence does not justify southern corruption.
____9. The evidence suggests that the unique features of Reconstruction politics do not explain it either.
___10. In fact, Radical southern governments accomplished much.
What is Critical Thinking?
No one always acts purely objectively and rationally. We connive for selfish interests. We gossip, boast, exaggerate, and equivocate. It is “only human” to wish to validate our prior knowledge, to vindicate our prior decisions, or to sustain our earlier beliefs. In the process of satisfying our ego, however, we can often deny ourselves intellectual growth and opportunity. We may not always want to apply critical thinking skills, but we should have those skills available to be employed wheeeded.
Critical thinking includes a complex combination of skills. Among the main characteristics are the following:
Rationality
We are thinking critically when we
· rely on reason rather than emotion,
· require evidence, ignore no known evidence, and follow evidence where it leads, and
· are concerned more with finding the best explanation than being right analyzing apparent confusion and asking questions.
Self-awareness
We are thinking critically when we
· weigh the influences of motives and bias, and
· recognize our own assumptions, prejudices, biases, or point of view.
Honesty
We are thinking critically when we recognize emotional impulses, selfish motives, nefarious purposes, or other modes of self-deception.
Open-mindedness
We are thinking critically when we
· evaluate all reasonable inferences
· consider a variety of possible viewpoints or perspectives,
· remain open to alternative interpretations
· accept a new explanation, model, or paradigm because it explains the evidence better, is simpler, or has fewer inconsistencies or covers more data
· accept new priorities in response to a reevaluation of the evidence or reassessment of our real interests, and
· do not reject unpopular views out of hand.
Discipline
We are thinking critically when we
· are precise, meticulous, comprehensive, and exhaustive
· resist manipulation and irrational appeals, and
· avoid snap judgments.
Judgment
We are thinking critically when we
· recognize the relevance and/or merit of alternative assumptions and perspectives
· recognize the extent and weight of evidence
In sum,
· Critical thinkers are by nature skeptical. They approach texts with the same skepticism and suspicion as they approach spoken remarks.
· Critical thinkers are active, not passive. They ask questions and analyze. They consciously apply tactics and strategies to uncover meaning or assure their understanding.
· Critical thinkers do not take an egotistical view of the world. They are open to new ideas and perspectives. They are willing to challenge their beliefs and investigate competing evidence.
Critical thinking enables us to recognize a wide range of subjective analyses of otherwise objective data, and to evaluate how well each analysis might meet our needs. Facts may be facts, but how we interpret them may vary.
By contrast, passive, non-critical thinkers take a simplistic view of the world.
· They see things in black and white, as either-or, rather than recognizing a variety of possible understanding.
· They see questions as yes or no with no subtleties.
· They fail to see linkages and complexities.
· They fail to recognize related elements.
Non-critical thinkers take an egotistical view of the world
· They take their facts as the only relevant ones.
· They take their own perspective as the only sensible one.
· They take their goal as the only valid one.
Critical Thinking Web
This educational web site provides over 100 free online tutorials on critical thinking, logic, scientific reasoning, creativity, and other aspects of thinking skills. Our online tutorials have been used by universities, community colleges, and high schools across the world.
The online tutorials are organized into over 10 modules listed on the left. You can also check out the following:
· Introduction – What is critical thinking?
· Sitemap – A complete list of the online tutorials
· Free download: Critical thinking mini-guide – a short booklet (PDF) (via google docs)
· Free download: Class exercises – Critical thinking exercises for teaching (PDF) (via google docs)
· Quiz – Test the consistency of your moral beliefs
· Puzzle – The hardest logic puzzle in the world!
· 101 philosophical questions to think about – one a day posting on twitter!
This site is maintained by Dr. Joe Lau at the Philosophy Department, The University of Hong Kong.
Thinking and recall series
Critical thinking I
Strategies for critical thinking in learning and project management
Critical thinking studies a topic or problem with open-mindedness.
This exercise outlines the first stage of applying a critical thinking approach to developing and understanding a topic. You will:
o Develop a statement of the topic
o List what you understand, what you’ve been told and what opinions you hold about it
o Identify resources available for research
o Define timelines and due dates and how they affect the development of your study
o Print the list as your reference
Here is more on the first stage:
Define your destination, what you want to learn
Clarify or verify with your teacher or an “expert” on your subject
Topics can be simple phrases:
“The role of gender in video game playing”
“Causes of the war before 1939”
“Mahogany trees in
“Plumbing regulations in the suburbs”
“Regions of the human brain”
o Develop your frame of reference, your starting point,
by listing what you already know about the subject
o What opinions and prejudices do you already have about this?
What have you been told, or read about, this topic?
o What resources
are available to you for research
When gathering information, keep an open mind
Look for chance resources that pop up!
Play the “reporter” and follow leads
If you don’t seem to find what you need, ask librarians or your teacher.
o How does your timeline and due dates affect your research?
Keep in mind that you need to follow a schedule.
Work back from the due date and define stages of development, not just with this first phase, but in completing the whole project.
Critical thinking I Critical thinking II Critical reading
Summary of critical thinking:
o Determine the facts of a new situation or subject without prejudice
o Place these facts and information in a pattern so that you can understand them
o Accept or reject the source values and conclusions based upon your experience, judgment, and beliefs
Critical thinking II
Second stage exercise in critical thinking:
Critical thinking studies a topic or problem with open-mindedness.
This exercise outlines the second stage of applying a critical thinking approach to developing and understanding a topic.
With the second stage:
o Refine/revise the topic
either narrowing or broadening it according to outcomes of research
o Rank or indicate the importance
of three sources of research
o Clarify any opinion, prejudice, or bias their authors have
While an opinion is a belief or attitude toward someone or some thing, a prejudice is preconceived opinion without basis of fact while bias is an opinion based on fact or research.
o Identify key words and concepts that seem to repeat
Is there vocabulary you need to define?
Are there concepts you need to understand better?
o In reviewing your research, are there
