From: Mermaid . (britannica@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Feb 02 2002 - 10:46:55 MST
[Kirk quoted]
What is Critical Thinking?
William Graham Sumner (1906)
[Critical thinking is]...the examination and test of propositions of any
kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they
correspond to reality or not. The critical faculty is a product of education
and training. It is a mental habit and power. It is a prime condition of
human welfare that men and women should be trained in it. It is our only
guarantee against delusion, deception, superstition, and misapprehension of
ourselves and our earthly circumstances. Education is good just so far as it
produces well-developed critical faculty....A teacher of any subject who
insists on accuracy and a rational control of all processes and methods, and
who holds everything open to unlimited verification and revision is
cultivating that method as a habit in the pupils. Men educated in it cannot
be stampeded...They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or
probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait
for evidence and weigh evidence...They can resist appeals to their dearest
prejudices. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which
it can be truly said that it makes good citizens
(pp632, 633 Folkways, 1906)
[Mermaid]Yes?
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