The Fall of Critical Thinking
By Bruce W. Davidson
Behind the fall of critical thinking lies our culture’s rejection of objective truth and rational thought as essential guides to sensible conduct.
The Covid panic and repression did not happen in a vacuum. A pattern of persecuting people rather than engaging those with dissenting opinions had already been well-established in the educational world and the mainstream mass media, making the oppressive treatment Covid dissenters experienced somewhat predictable. Likewise, there was an obvious, widespread failure to apply critical thinking.
Once upon a time, the educational world had a golden opportunity to improve itself dramatically. The critical thinking movement captured the attention of many in the university world and K-12 education in the 1980s and early 1990s. Richard Paul, a prominent figure in the movement, hosted an annual Conference on Critical Thinking in Sonoma, California, in which I participated several times and learned a lot from people such as Paul and Robert Ennis.
Exposure to the movement’s perspective and methods transformed my approach to teaching students and comprehending ideas and information. Until then I had often been perplexed in dealing with many of my Japanese junior college students, who had a tendency simply to parrot ideas they encountered in the mass media and books, rather than thinking for themselves.
In particular, I was shocked to find some student research papers echoing the anti-Semitic views of a Japanese journalist, who believes that the destruction of Israel is the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The students had uncritically accepted his radical opinions as unquestionable truths.
“Critical thinking” is not so much an educational invention as it is a distillation of the intellectual tradition of rational, sceptical inquiry into concepts and claims. Famous for his probing questions about the assertions of those around him, the Greek philosopher Socrates was one prominent embodiment of that approach. Though I had never heard the term critical thinking (which I will abbreviate as “CT”) during my formal education, I immediately recognised what it was.
However, that opportunity to strengthen the role of CT in education has been lost. To a great degree, this promising development has been replaced by fashionable, irrational ideology and indoctrination into trendy causes.
In general, the current outlook embraces a strong rejection of the concept of objective truth. One of the first blows to CT came with the popularity of cultural relativism. Once common mainly among cultural anthropologists, many in academia began to espouse the idea that it is out of bounds to claim to possess any knowledge of objective reality.
For instance, in 1993, this view was declared to be current orthodoxy for all language teachers by the plenary speaker at the annual meeting of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT). The speech, titled “How Not to Be a Fluent Fool,” explicitly denigrated those holding to the concept of objective truth. Subsequently, in a JALT publication, I challenged cultural relativism as incoherent and self-contradictory, as others in the CT movement have observed.
Under the banner of postmodernism, similar thinking took hold of the international field of foreign language pedagogy, with the result that doing CT in the classroom was also questioned. As I understand it, postmodernism is basically cultural relativism with a collectivist bent.
New Left intellectuals have usually rejected both rationality and traditional objectivity as tools of oppression. As Roger Scruton has pointed out, that is a very convenient stance for them to take, since it absolves them of any need to justify their assertions rationally. Then no one can dispute any absurdity (e.g., “All white people are racists” in Critical Race Theory).
That was not true of a number of old-school Leftists, such as the writer Christopher Hitchens and the novelist George Orwell, a socialist who believed strongly in objective truth and the individual’s right to express opinions about it. They were willing to engage in civil debate with those who disagree.
In contrast, New Left intellectuals have largely dispensed with such niceties. When their views came to dominate the academic, educational, and media worlds, an ideological intolerance often labelled “political correctness,” “cancel culture,” or “woke” became prevalent. Concerned about this phenomenon, organisations such as the National Association of Scholars and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education came into being to advocate for freedom of expression to debate truth in educational circles.
Unfortunately, postmodern, irrational, New Left-style education has already produced many people whose typical reaction to contrary ideas is to attack and/or exclude their proponents. The concept of cool-headed debate about truth is alien to the new mindset. Naturally enough, many with that mentality also reacted similarly to scepticism about government-mandated, media-hyped Covid measures, so they had no problem with parroting slogans and bullying dissenters.
Along with that tendency, many contemporary people have learned to privilege subjective emotions over reason and truth. Theodore Dalrymple calls this phenomenon “toxic sentimentality” and shows how many these days are more impressed by tears than by truth.
For instance, suspects in murder cases have been condemned though they were innocent because they did not manage to shed tears in public, while real murderers have often escaped condemnation by making impressive displays of strong emotions while claiming innocence.
Nowadays many become impatient with rational, evidence-driven argumentation and are easily convinced by strong feelings, such as fear. In an unsentimental age, someone like the hyper-emotional Greta Thunberg would never be taken seriously.
Meanwhile, popular entertainment is currently awash with politicised content that insults the intelligence of anyone who bothers to think much about it. At one time, Hollywood made many artistic, thoughtful movies and a number of intellectually-engaging TV programs. Now many YouTube critic-bloggers, such as The Critical Drinker and The Despot of Antrim, lament how movies and video shows have devolved into shallow, poorly-made propaganda.
The contemporary world often looks to technology to solve our ills. However, technical innovations like AI will not solve this particular problem, since AI cannot do critical thinking.
The most alarming aspect of the contemporary scene may actually not be things like the horrific potential of nuclear and biological weapons. Instead, it could be the rejection of objective truth and rational thought as essential guides to sensible conduct. When even the sciences and medicine become unmoored from reason and reality, we are all in serious trouble.
___
One Comment
Leave A Comment
Recent Articles:
2 May 2024
6 MINS
Things can change, and one never knows what surprises God might have up His sleeve for us. Just when things might seem the darkest, the light of Christ might erupt with brilliance and power.
2 May 2024
5 MINS
Rather than answer the question as to how Australia became a place in which a clergyman cannot stand at his pulpit without fearing for his life, our political masters, champions of diversity, have decided to simply shut down all conversation on social media.
2 May 2024
2.4 MINS
Falconer, a Senior Constable who describes himself as “pro-choice,” said the decision to dismiss his vaccine mandate appeal is “disappointing,” and that it will serve as a “cautionary tale” of what happens to Australians who “pursue justice and bodily autonomy.”
2 May 2024
2.2 MINS
In a head-to-head contest, Trump would garner 49% of the vote and Biden only 43% — a six-point lead for Trump.
2 May 2024
2.4 MINS
Strengthening family structures and addressing the impact of broken homes can help fix crime in Australia.
2 May 2024
3.6 MINS
The God of heaven is the God of America. The Lord rules over the United States. This is the truth that we cling to as we pray for revival in America.
1 May 2024
2.9 MINS
The Christian bishop stabbed multiple times in Western Sydney is defending X, and forgiving his young Muslim attacker. Mar Mari Emmanuel used his first sermon since leaving hospital to double down on Christian forgiveness.
Critical thinking was called “Clear Thinking” when I was in secondary school in Victoria in the early 1960’s. We were encouraged to subject all sorts of statements to the disciplines of ‘clear thinking’ and ‘scientific inquiry’… both firmly grounded in the notion that objective truth can be ascertained by the use of observation, reason and logic.
At precisely the same time though the ‘sexual revolution’ did much to destroy scientific inquiry and clear thinking by promoting the crime of abortion as a human right. The MOST fundamental human right, the right to life itself, was deemed to be secondary to women’s reproductive rights while the biological fact that a new and unique human life begins at conception was dismissed. It became nothing more than a “clump of cells.”