Language of CT

Critical thinking (CT) involves learning concepts, developing skills, embracing ethics, and recognizing barriers. For more on this, see What is CT?

All of these elements can be discussed using a common vocabulary. This language of CT can be embedded in all school subjects.

Examples
A claim that something is true because it has not yet been proven false, whether encountered in language arts or computer science, can be labelled an argument from ignorance.

Evidence recalled from memory, whether discussed in English language development or chemistry, can be called remembered evidence.

Evaluating a claim using a concise, repeatable, and complete method, whether in social studies or geometry, can be referred to as using a sound method.

Transferrability
By using a common Language of CT, the concepts of CT can be transferred across subjects.

Ultimately, these ideas can be applied to claims encountered in everyday life, whether from purveyors of products and services, politicians, friends, or the media.

Applications
One of Maria’s vocabulary words in school was “fact” -- something that is true for everyone. So when her cousin tells her it’s a fact that boys are better at math than girls, she suspects it isn’t really so since some of the girls in her class usually do better on their math worksheets than some of the boys.

Jamal’s friend tells him she heard on the news that 399 people died last month in plane crashes in the US. Jamal is reminded of his language arts class where the teacher taught them about memory errors by asking them to recall details from a story they had read aloud the day before. Students disagreed on many of the answers and no one got all of them right. Jamal wonders if his friend misremembered what she heard and looks up the plane crash statistics himself, finding that there were 399 airline fatalities last year world-wide, not last month in the US.

Mark reads in the newspaper that people who live in the northern half of the US, like him, have double the risk of getting multiple sclerosis as do people in the southern half. In the unit on probability in algebra class, Mark’s teacher taught them the difference between relative risk -- the chances of something happening to one group compared to another -- and absolute risk -- the chances of it happening at all. Remembering this distinction, Mark does some research and finds that the actual chances of getting multiple sclerosis if you live in the northern half of US is still only about one in a thousand.

Susie is eligible to vote in an upcoming election that includes a measure on raising the minimum wage. In her history class, she learned how confirmation bias -- the tendency to only look for or remember evidence that supports your opinion -- led to misinformed decisions in the Bay of Pigs. Even though Susie already has an opinion on the minimum wage, she makes sure to search the internet for “reasons for” and “reasons against” raising the minimum wage, along with other versions of both phrases. In this way she makes sure she knows the arguments on both sides of the issue.