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Critical Thinking, Reverential Thinking, and Lashing Out

Zubatov, Alexandr
http://quillette.com/2022/12/25/critical-thinking-reverential-thinking-and-lashing-out/

Date Written:  25/12/2022
Year Published:  2022  
Resource Type:  Article

Before we challenge conventions, we must understand and master them.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

How much actual critical thinking -- as opposed to the encouragement of a progressive monoculture -- these avowedly 'critical' perspectives promote is an open question, one that has been raised by many who have observed that such 'critical thinkers' are often themselves remarkably sensitive to criticism, brooking no dissent and often resorting to ad hominem attacks and outlandish accusations instead of arguments.
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critical thinking is, in fact, a necessary component of a well-rounded education and an indispensable prerequisite for democratic citizenship. The problem, however, is in putting the cart in front of the horse: one cannot be critical in any intelligent fashion before one has a basic command of and appreciation for the thing at which such criticism is directed. This contention is supported by abundant research showing that a generic 'critical thinking' skill, independent of domain-specific knowledge, does not exist.

That this is so should be obvious upon reflection. Consider a domain such as the game of chess. Without critical thinking that challenges the status quo, innovative moves that defy convention and drive the evolution of the game would simply never happen. But teaching critical thinking about chess without first teaching the rules, the typical strategies, the basic openings, rules of thumb would be absurd. Chess players can only innovate effectively when they know and understand the game.

We can also arrive at the same basic insight from a more theoretical vantage point. In the 1950s, the Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, drawing on the work of the famed Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget, delineated three principal stages of individual moral development: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. In outline: We are born ignorant of the adult world and its conventions and begin to obey such conventions only because adults around us force or manipulate us into doing so; we come to learn, appreciate, and support the reasons behind such conventions; and finally, we may begin to question and challenge these conventional norms.

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