reply to Our Journey, Day 84 by Dan Allosso at https://danallosso.substack.com/p/our-journey-day-84

There's already a movement afoot calling for schools who are dramatically cutting their humanities departments to quit calling what they're offering a liberal education. This popped up on Monday and has a long list of cuts: https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2023/10/23/liberal-education-name-only-opinion I was surprised that Bemidji wasn't listed, but then again there may be several dozens which have made announcements, but which aren't widely known yet. The problem may be much larger and broader than anyone is acknowledging.

Cutting down dozens of faculties into either "schools" or even into some sort of catch all called "Humanities" may be even more marginalizing to the enterprise.

Apparently, the Morlocks seem to think that the Eloi will be easier to manage if there isn't any critical thinking?

Adler and Van Doren's minimal bar of a college education is that it produce competent syntopical readers.

Metropolitan State University of Denver. “Writing as a Thinking Tool,” June 17, 2021. https://www.msudenver.edu/writing-center/faculty-resources/writing-as-a-thinking-tool/.

social media is here to stay... personally, I try not to engage as often but I do find my self checking facebook in the morning before I leave the house for work. All I can say is that I can try to limit myself and realize why am I using social media for? is it for networking, for friends and family or other things.

sadly, this is the scary part of life because you have young minds who don't really know the difference.

Yes, this is a nice feature but I wonder how are they going to continue to be relevant with the younger generations. My sister is 14 years younger then me and she said that facebook is for old people.

This came to mind, last week a co-worker and I were talking about giving up some of our privacy. The question was posed, why do you think apple pods or alex's are very afforable... it's a small cost to allow the majority of people to use their services at a big cost to us.

I think the critics don't outweigh the other users concerns. Also, these concerns came after the fact and I'm sure most users are too deep in social media it feels impossible to leave facebook. I personally am involved in a few facebook groups that keep me bound to this social media outlet.

Social media is far more fierce then we thought several years ago. Social media has made it apart of my job in the marketing department. There was a time when login on facebook was a big NO-NO at work, now it's a requirement for me.

Another advising to use the analog method for learning even if one is going to switch to a digital zettelkasten.

He uses the word "good" here while others may have potentially used the word "magic", but writing in a space that values critical thinking, he would have been taken to task for having done so. In any case he's not able to put his finger on the inherent value of analog over digital.

Or. perhaps, it's just rampant civic ignorance. I think there's a significant portion of the population who just don't care to be informed about the demographics of their own countries.

‘who seldom reason at all, but do and think according to the example of others, whether parents, neighbours, ministers...for the saving of themselves the pains and trouble of thinking and examining for themselves’ (p. 169).

Perhaps of interest here, would not be a specific OER text, but an OER zettelkasten or card index that indexes a variety of potential public domain or open resources, articles, pieces, primary documents, or other short readings which could then be aggregated and tagged to allow for a teacher or student to create their own personalized OER text for a particular area of work.

If done well, a professor might then pick and choose from a wide variety of resources to build their own reader to highlight or supplement the material they're teaching. This could allow a wider variety of thinking and interlinking of ideas. With such a regiment, teachers are less likely to become bored with their material and might help to actively create new ideas and research lines as they teach.

Students could then be tasked with and guided to creating a level of cohesiveness to their readings as they progress rather than being served up a pre-prepared meal with a layer of preconceived notions and frameworks imposed upon the text by a single voice.

This could encourage students to develop their own voices as well as to look at materials more critically as they proceed rather than being spoon fed calcified ideas.

Consider how rhetorical analysis applies to alt-right political arguments. Alt-right arguments fail miserably under rhetorical analysis. Rhetorical analysis is a tool of academia. Therefore academia is inimical to the alt-right. Therefore, the alt-right will seek to weaken and impune academia. And this is in fact what they do.

In addition to "critical thinking, resourcefulness, creativity, attention to detail, and academic pride and humility", the ability to use a note card-based research system like Umberto Eco's is the key to overcoming information overload.

https://readwriterespond.com/2022/11/commonplace-book-a-verb-or-a-noun/

Sometimes the root question is "what to I want to do this for?" Having an underlying reason can be hugely motivating.

Are you collecting examples of things for students? (seeing examples can be incredibly powerful, especially for defining spaces) for yourself? Are you using them for exploring a particular space? To clarify your thinking/thought process? To think more critically? To write an article, blog, or book? To make videos or other content?

Your own website is a version of many of these things in itself. You read, you collect, you write, you interlink ideas and expand on them. You're doing it much more naturally than you think.

I find that having an idea of the broader space, what various practices look like, and use cases for them provides me a lot more flexibility for what may work or not work for my particular use case. I can then pick and choose for what suits me best, knowing that I don't have to spend as much time and effort experimenting to invent a system from scratch but can evolve something pre-existing to suit my current needs best.

It's like learning to cook. There are thousands of methods (not even counting cuisine specific portions) for cooking a variety of meals. Knowing what these are and their outcomes can be incredibly helpful for creatively coming up with new meals. By analogy students are often only learning to heat water to boil an egg, but with some additional techniques they can bake complicated French pâtissier. Often if you know a handful of cooking methods you can go much further and farther using combinations of techniques and ingredients.

What I'm looking for in the reading, note taking, and creation space is a baseline version of Peter Hertzmann's 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot combined with Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. Generally cooking is seen as an overly complex and difficult topic, something that is emphasized on most aspirational cooking shows. But cooking schools break the material down into small pieces which makes the processes much easier and more broadly applicable. Once you've got these building blocks mastered, you can be much more creative with what you can create.

How can we combine these small building blocks of reading and note taking practices for students in the 4th - 8th grades so that they can begin to leverage them in high school and certainly by college? Is there a way to frame them within teaching rhetoric and critical thinking to improve not only learning outcomes, but to improve lifelong learning and thinking?

Here's some justification for the prior statement on equity, but it comes after instead of before. (see: https://hypothes.is/a/SHEFJjM6Ee2Gru-y0d_1lg)

While there is some foundation to the claim given, it would need more support. The sage on the stage may be becoming outmoded with other potential models, but removing it altogether does remove some pieces which may help to support neurodiverse learners who work better via oral transmission rather than using literate modes (eg. dyslexia).

Who is to say that it's "just" sage on the stage lecturing and regurgitation? Why couldn't these same analytical practices be aimed at lectures, interviews, or other oral modes of presentation which will occur during thesis research? (Think anthropology and sociology research which may have much more significant oral aspects.)

Certainly some of these methods can create new levels of agency on the part of the learner/researcher. Has anyone designed experiments to measure this sort of agency growth?

Are some of the critical reading methods they're framing here similar to or some of the type found at Project Zero (https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines)?

Harford, T. (2021, May 6). What magic teaches us about misinformation. https://www.ft.com/content/5cea69f0-7d44-424e-a121-78a21564ca35

https://hybridpedagogy.org/ethical-online-learning/

An interesting perspective on ethical and supportive online learning. More questions and explorations than answers, but then framing is a majority of the battle.

I'm generally in agreement with much of the discussion here.

This was a fabulous piece for "thinking against". Thanks Sean Michael Morris, and Lora Taub.

I definitely got far more out of it by reading and annotating than I ever would in its original keynote presentation version.

Critical thinking can provoke people into "divisive" considerations. Such a tip line makes it pretty easy to disrupt any attempt to 'teach kids to think [critically]'

Just one or two such efforts aren't too worrisome, but this might portend a broad change in the mission of education, from humanistic flourishing to the production of a compliant populace.

Fulton-Lyne, L. (n.d.). Research Guides: Misinformation: Misinformation Course. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from https://libguides.norquest.ca/fakenews/course

Study: Digital literacy doesn’t stop the spread of misinformation. (n.d.). MIT Sloan. Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-digital-literacy-doesnt-stop-spread-misinformation

Schmid, P., & Lewandowsky, S. (n.d.). Tackling COVID disinformation with empathy and conversation. The Conversation. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from http://theconversation.com/tackling-covid-disinformation-with-empathy-and-conversation-173013

Karnofsky suggests that the cost/benefit ratio of how we typically think of reading may not be as simple as we intuitively expect i.e. we think that 'more time' = 'more understanding'.

If you're simply reading to inform yourself about a topic, it may be worth reading a couple of book reviews, and listening to an interview or two, rather than invest the significant amount of time necessary to really engage with the book.

A few hours of skimming and reviews/interviews may get you to 25% understanding and retention, which in many cases may be more than enough for your needs of being basically informed on the topic. Compared to the 50 - 100 hours necessary for a deep, analytical engagement with the text, that would only get you to 50% understanding and retention.

That being said, if your goal is to develop expertise, both Karnofsky and Adler ('How to read a book') suggest that you need a deep engagement with multiple texts.

O’Brien, T. C., Palmer, R., & Albarracin, D. (2021). Misplaced trust: When trust in science fosters belief in pseudoscience and the benefits of critical evaluation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 96, 104184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104184

Motz, B., Fyfe, E., & Guba, T. P. (2021). Learning to Call Bullsh*t via Induction: Categorization Training Improves Critical Thinking Performance. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/65qfj

GUEST POST: HOT or NOT – How to Develop Critical Thinking.

New study indicates conspiracy theory believers have less developed critical thinking abilities. (n.d.). Retrieved July 12, 2021, from https://www.psypost.org/2021/07/new-study-indicates-conspiracy-theory-believers-have-less-developed-critical-thinking-ability-61347

Office for Science and Society. “Don’t Fall for the ‘VAERS Scare’ Tactic.” Accessed June 21, 2021. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-critical-thinking-health/dont-fall-vaers-scare-tactic.

Convenient to have these four share an initial. (My perception is that a tendency to emphasize this type of parallelism has been strengthening over the years. At least, I don't recall this practice being common in French when I grew up.)

Bill Hicks would have approved of this.

This is why workplaces must encourage and maintain critical thinking.

“Myths about COVID-19 vaccination - HackMD.” Accessed February 19, 2021. https://hackmd.io/ovEzSQWcRp2bctQn8MYElQ#Myths-about-COVID-19-vaccination.

This is a specific strategy to include in an active reading session.

watch out for unobservable facts have observable consequence.

AP and National Writing Project teachers emphasize the importance of students' learning research skills, and discuss how they do so. They are most concerned with students learning to judge the quality of information found, but also in coaching students through the process, and dealing with online use restrictions at many schools. Aimed at Middle/ High School students. 8/10

These are great questions to ask oneself.

Starominski-Uehara, M. (2020). Governance in Crisis: Institutionalizing Reflective Report to Guide Decision Making Under Uncertainty [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/y3nsa

Useful resource to have; skills that make up critical thinking along with subskills

Velez, G., & Power, S. A. (2020). Teaching students how to think, not what to think: Pedagogy & political psychology [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/yedap

Maybe the shoemaker had forgotten his name from prison?

The national center for education statistics shows for fall 2016, approximately 76,238,500 students enrolled in the US. Can we say that the voice of 11000 is enough to generalize? Maybe there are some other issues in the field of education that can no reflect in this study.

Teaching problem solving This page is included because some of our theories indicate that problem solving should be taught specifically. This page is a bit unusual; I did not find many others like it. It is rather easy to read and also addresses the differences between novice and expert learners. rating 3/5

This one is a pretty bold statement to make, in general.

Mike Johansson, at Rochester Institute of Technology, makes the case that curiosity is the key to enabling both Creative and Critical Thinking for better problem solving, in general.

What are some of your ideas?

To what extent is the writer's analogy to the medical industry persuasive?

What are the assumptions in the writer's argument?

Is this the first time that such a transformation has taken place? Can you think of other historical cases where labour-intensive, low-value, or process-driven work has been automated?

Do you agree that AI is incapable of decision-making, and that a human will always have to make the final call? Why or why not? How might this vary in different fields, including the ones you are interested in pursuing?

What are the pros and cons of focusing on representation in the leadership?

Do you agree that the writer's proposals will be effective in achieving gender equality? Why or why not? What other ideas do you have for achieving gender equality?

Do you find the writer's evidence convincing? What are the the strengths—and limitations—of her evidence?

Do you think this is a fair claim? What examples of patriarchal attitudes can you think of in Singapore?

You may include photos, videos, or hyperlinks.

How do you think the context of democratic socialism and gender are linked?

What assumptions do each o these policies reveal? Do you agree with these policies? Why or why not?

What assumptions do each of these policies reveal?

Do you agree that the writer's proposals will be effective in achieving gender equality? Why or why not? What other ideas do you have for achieving gender equality?

Do you find the writer's evidence convincing? What are the the strengths—and limitations—of her evidence?

Do you think this is a fair claim? What examples of patriarchal attitudes can you think of in Singapore?

The first think I thought about while reading this is the Petress article, and how this is an example of individuals not using critical thinking. Often times people believe wrong information without even fully understanding it in the first place.

Although this article emphasized the difference between critical design and critical making, the later being more process oriented and involving information systems than only physical objects I wish the author could have illustrated that with an example. How to make a digital object critically? How to think of UI design patterns critically? All the tacit knowledge a UI and UXer is expected to have in order to get hired and that they use everyday. If the aim of critical making of information systems concern is to uncover the embedded values in software and the process of designing of software than it also needs to question the industry jargon and process which forms the lived experience of designers everyday.

Also they give an opportunity to create work, professsions, hobbies. Entire groups of people can organize their time and energies around the creation and maintenance of that object. Communities could willingly decrease the complexity of their needs by negotiation of values in objects in order to create lower thresholds to economic participation

Yes but how? What if one doesn't even have the vocabulary and lived experience to identify that value and it's influence?

one def of critical thinking

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

According to this definition of critical thinking, we can infer that critical thinking requires a deep thought process, and it forces one to intensely elaborate on whatever is being asked to think about/write about/discuss

On the persistence of unicorns

Every institution around the UE is trying to develop in a critical sense the main goals of the different subjects. In fact it doesn't makes too many differences between all this goals we have already read there: proficency and fluency, cross-cultural connections, managing information, etc. So the main point of this read is, in our opinion, to show the proper features to have as a complete citizen of the 21st century along literacy as a part of a common project.

Google's hiring formula. Stripped down by looking at the numbers. Some key points -- it doesn't favor GPA or schools one graduated from. It does favor problem-solving ability, but not in the old Fermi problem way. Questions are now real questions related to the roles that they will fill. Why? Because Fermi Problems can be coached.

The process the teachers engaged in is a great example of critical thinking.