John Chaffee on "Question of the Year"
What knowledge or skills will students need most to be effective citizens of our world in the future?
In ancient Greece, most advanced students studied philosophy in order to achieve “wisdom.” (The term philosophy in Greek means “lover of wisdom.”) In today’s world, it is essential that effective citizens become the modern-day equivalent: informed, critical thinkers. A critical thinker is someone who has developed a knowledgeable understanding of our complex world, a thoughtful perspective on important ideas and timely issues, the capacity for penetrating insight and intelligent judgment, and sophisticated thinking and language abilities. The word critical comes from the Greek word for “critic” (kritikos), which means “to question, to make sense of, to be able to analyze.” A critical thinker is someone who takes a reflective attitude towards themselves and their world, meeting Socrates’ startling challenge, “The unexamined life is not worth living” and acceding to his request that we “take care of our souls” rather than pursuing wealth, power, and reputation.
What are the specific abilities that critical thinkers have developed and display in every area of their lives? Here are some of these key abilities:
- view issues and situations from many different perspectives
- solve challenging problems and make informed decisions
- analyze complex issues and arrive at reasoned conclusions
- establish appropriate goals and design effective plans of action
- analyze complex bodies of information and reach well-supported conclusions
- communicate effectively through critical reading, discussion, thoughtful writing
- critically evaluate the logic, relevance and validity of information
- ask penetrating questions at every cognitive level of complexity
- engage in Socratic analysis through the systematic exchange of ideas with others
But sophisticated critical thinking abilities are not enough. In order to insure that there is a world for us to be citizens of, effective citizens need to develop an enlightened moral compass, a deeply rooted set of values that can effectively confront the great threats to our lives – war, persecution, pollution, starvation, disease – spawned by human greed, hostility, arrogance, narcissism, and nationalism. Citizens need to become “citizens of the world” in the broadest and most authentic sense. This is how we discover the meaning of our lives as individuals and determine our direction as a human race. Viktor Frankl, author of the influential book Man’s Search for Meaning which he began writing when interned in a Nazi death camp, explains it this way:
“We had to learn ourselves, and furthermore we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life but instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life, daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly set for each individual.”
To become sophisticated critical thinkers, to develop an enlightened moral compass, to accept responsibility for finding the right answers to the challenges that life presents to us, to engage in right action and principled conduct – these are the qualities that citizens of the world need to develop in order to discover the meaning of their own lives and to contribute to creating the kind of world in which we all want to live.
John Chaffee is Professor of Philosophy & Critical Thinking & Language Learning at Laguardia College, and Director of the New York
Center for Critical Thinking and Language Learning. He is the author of several books on critical and creative thinking including the text Thinking Critically (8th Edition) and The Philosopher's Way.