TC² is 25 years old.
The origins of critical thinking can be traced to Socrates’ famous dictum: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” To this day I can recall first hearing that statement in a lecture during the very last class in my otherwise uninspiring undergraduate degree in commerce. The idea contained in that statement transformed my life.
I began to ponder the extent to which I—like so many around me—was sleepwalking through a cloud of beliefs and ways of thinking that belonged not to me but to those who had influenced me. Even when I had rejected some of their thinking, I had simply assumed opposing positions. In short, I was either an inheritor or a reactor—rarely was I the creator of my own beliefs.
My realization that I could shape my own opinions was profoundly liberating. Even when I came to conclusions similar to those that I had held originally, the process of determining my own beliefs made them my own. The difference was in how I arrived at them: by thinking rigorously, weighing evidence, and scrutinizing my heretofore unquestioned assumptions. I took control of my thinking and, consequently, of my beliefs. This realization is analogous to the release of a prisoner after decades in jail—except that it was not my body but my mind that was liberated.
We see the unliberated mind in the students who diligently transcribe statements printed in a textbook or spoken by a teacher. George Leonard is reported to have defined lecturing as the “best way to get information from teacher’s notebook to student’s notebook without touching the student’s mind.” I am reminded of an incident from the classroom: when presented with possible evidence for or against a conclusion we were considering, a certain student looked at his activity sheet hoping to find a designated space to insert a statement he has just read. Finding none, he turned to me and asked, “Where do I put this?” I pointed to his head and said, “In here.”
Fortunately, because of the efforts of TC² and all our partners, we have been privileged to see and hear what happens when minds are ignited. I recall a teacher in India who was amazed by the enthusiasm and singular focus of her pre-kindergarten students that afternoon. She had challenged them to think critically about four mediums: Which would be the best medium for tracing the outline of their bodies the next day? On leaving the classroom, one four-year-old child excitedly announced, “Do you know what we got to do today? We got to decide what we’re doing tomorrow!” That flash of empowerment paralleled the one I had had so many years before in my final undergraduate class.
The etymology of education indicates that one root of this term is the Latin “educere,”
meaning to lead out. In other words, our role as educators is to lead students out of the cloud of inherited beliefs and unexamined thoughts and actions--to liberate them so that they can form their own beliefs.
At this point, I know why the Consortium has thrived for 25 years. It is because the need to make up one’s own mind is fundamental to any meaningful life. And we’ve known that for 2500 years.
Sincerely,
Roland Case,
Senior Editor, The Critical Thinking Consortium
TC² was co-founded by four BC educators: LeRoi Daniels and Jerrold Coombs from the University of British Columbia and Sharon Bailin and Roland Case from Simon Fraser University.
