Acad. Quest.

(2013) 26:317–328
DOI 10.1007/s12129-013-9375-2
A RT I C L E

Critically Thinking about Critical Thinking

Robert Weissberg

Published online: 30 July 2013

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

“Critical thinking” has mesmerized academics across the political spectrum;

even high school students are now being called upon to “think critically.”
Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s widely praised Academically Adrift favorably
cites the term some eighty-seven times while excoriating contemporary higher
education.1 In “The Evidence of Things Unnoticed: An Interpretive Preface to
the National Association of Scholars’ Report What Does Bowdoin Teach? How
a Contemporary Liberal Arts College Shapes Students,” Peter Wood criticizes
Bowdoin for replacing critical thinking with a grab bag of trendy notions such as
“social justice” and “sustainability.”2 It is no exaggeration to say that “critical
thinking” has quickly evolved into a scholarly industry.3 As of April 11, 2013,
Amazon.com lists some 48,559 titles on critical thinking. To be sure, scholars
can battle over whether the Left or Right “owns” critical thinking,4 but everyone

1
Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2011).
2
Peter Wood, “The Evidence of Things Unnoticed: An Interpretive Preface to the National Association of
Scholars’ Report What Does Bowdoin Teach? How a Contemporary Liberal Arts College Shapes
Students” (New York: National Association of Scholars, 2013), http://www.nas.org/images/documents/
What_Does_Bowdoin_Teach.pdf.
3
See, for example, Albert Keith Whitaker, “Critical Thinking in the Ivory Tower,” Academic Questions
16, no. 1 (Winter 2002–03): 50–58. Also see, “Critical Thinking,” Wikipedia, accessed April 11, 2013,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking.
4
For a sampling of these battles, see Peter Wood, “The Curriculum of Forgetting,” Chronicle of Higher Education,
Innovations (blog), November 21, 2011, http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-curriculum-of-forgetting/
30914; “AILACT Responds to Peter Wood,” Rail (blog), May 3, 2012, http://railct.com/2012/05/03/ailact-
responds-to-peter-wood/; and Peter Wood, “Leaf-Taking,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Innovations (blog),
December 4, 2011, http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/leaf-taking/31017.

Robert Weissberg is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–
Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820; rweissbe@illinois.edu. He is the author of many books, most recently
The Limits of Civic Activism: Cautionary Tales on the Use of Politics (2004), Pernicious Tolerance: How
Teaching to “Accept Differences” Undermines Civil Society (2008), and Bad Students, Not Bad Schools
(2010), all published by Transaction.
318 Weissberg

agrees that like apple pie and motherhood, critical thinking is an unquestionable
“good” and universities—even high schools—need to do more to foster this
skill.
Unfortunately, calls for students to “think critically” almost always
sidestep the prodigious problem of transforming a high-sounding idea into
something that can be usefully interjected into lessons, let alone calibrated to
show progress (or failure). Yes, we all agree that critical thinking is an
honored element of Western thought, even traceable to Socrates, but it hardly
follows that most people, including a majority of college students, can master
this skill. Indeed, acquiring it may be impossible or largely cost-ineffective.
Worse, given all the documented deficiencies of today’s college students, the
critical thinking crusade may entail unrecognized opportunity costs to the
neglect of more valuable lessons.
Skepticism acknowledged, let me offer a brief tour of the obstacles
awaiting those who want to do more than admonish fellow professors to
teach “critical thinking.”

Defining and Measuring

Definitions of critical thinking abound, but all share certain traits, notably
an ability to use reason to move beyond the acquisition of facts to uncover
deep meaning. For illustrative purposes, here’s a detailed (but quite typical)
definition offered by a website devoted to explicating the term:
It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought
implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue;
assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to
conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative
viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking—in being
responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes—is
incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among
them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking,
anthropological thinking, economic thinking, moral thinking, and
philosophical thinking.
Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of
information and belief generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit,
based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior.
It is thus to be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and retention of
Critically Thinking about Critical Thinking 319

information alone, because it involves a particular way in which

information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of
skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of
those skills (“as an exercise”) without acceptance of their results.5
Quite a mouthful of verbiage, but to put some meat on these abstract
bones, let me recall my own effort to impart these skills when I taught
graduate seminars on American electoral politics. One weekly topic was the
perennial effort to limit money in elections. I began by highlighting past
failed campaign finance reforms, stressing the obstacles of enforcing laws
that made it a crime for those who wrote the laws (Congress) to receive
certain donations. Then I discussed First Amendment guarantees of free
speech where monetary contributions were defined as “speech.” I pointed out
how money was only one of multiple campaign-related resources (including,
for example, celebrity status, possessing an eminent name, or access to
ample volunteer labor), so limiting cash donations hardly leveled the playing
field. Lectures further explained how the complexity of campaign finance
laws might prove troublesome (including criminal penalties) for cash-poor
candidates unable to hire skilled staff to ensure compliance. Then on to how
restricting contributions meant that candidates must now target many more
(small) donors than in the past and this, in turn, makes fund-raising far more
time-consuming while requiring professional assistance. The impetus for
endless pandering was also mentioned, along with how contribution limits
helped incumbents and therefore perpetuated the status quo. I continued with
how exemptions for spending one’s own fortune would encourage rich
people to seek office, since they would be immune to laws restricting
donations. This hardly ended it and I went on for at least two hours
connecting dozens of nonobvious but politically important “dots.”
This snippet illustrates my personal effort to teach by example. And I
followed the same “connect-the-nonobvious-dots” approach in an additional
thirteen lectures, all the while encouraging students to attempt what I was
demonstrating.

5
Michael Scriven and Richard Paul, “Critical Thinking as Defined by the National Council for
Excellence in Critical Thinking,” statement presented at the Eighth Annual International Conference
on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA, August
1988, available under the title, “Defining Critical Thinking,” at The Critical Thinking Community,
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766.
320 Weissberg

My experience was not a happy one. Boredom and confusion seemed

common. I invited students to figure out the implications of a particular law
or policy, but with little success. Students were also encouraged to discuss
possible trade-offs between, say, free speech and limiting donations, while I
put critical thinking questions on the take-home essay examinations. Despite
my efforts, when all was said and done, I conceded defeat—only a handful
apparently benefited. Yes, most probably enjoyed the exercise and learned
something new, but when prodded to perform similar analyses on topics not
yet covered in class, the results, including exams, were dismal.
Now, I confess that my pedagogical techniques may have been deficient,
but my sad experience raises the issue of assessing success in thousands of
very different schools and varied majors. And what about instructors who
themselves lack this skill or just disdain it?
How, then, are educators to teach critical thinking? Can we boil down
these long, often kitchen sink-style definitions into tests that can be
administered to students of different abilities and interests? That definitions
are generally similar but differ in key details only exacerbates this
measurement quandary.
Not surprisingly, admonitions to teach critical thinking far exceed
well-crafted, demonstrably valid tests calibrating it. Perhaps it is assumed that
critical thinking is so obvious that it hardly requires scientific measurement. But
there is some good news. Arum and Roksa describe such an instrument that they
and others use—the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA)—and for better or
worse, this one instrument must suffice for our analysis.6 According to its
proponents, the CLA is designed to tap general skills, not specific knowledge.
That is, unlike other SAT-like tests the CLA does not consist of multiple
clear-cut questions that can be scored objectively that are independent of
one another. Instead, what is assessed is a student’s ability to integrate
complex material holistically to reach a reasoned conclusion.
Specifically, students are given three complicated case studies, fictitious
but realistic. Factual background material is included in the test. Students are
given ninety minutes to write these essays. The data reported by Arum and
Roksa derive from a sample of 2,322 students from similar backgrounds at
four-year institutions on twenty-four campuses. The test is given to freshmen
and repeated when those same students become sophomores. Considerable

6
Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift, chap. 1 and 2, and the Methodological Appendix explicated the
measurement strategy in detail.
Critically Thinking about Critical Thinking 321

effort is made to sort out possible confounding factors like race/ethnicity,

SAT scores, familiarity with English, and high school curriculum. The
student sample was drawn from highly selective, selective, and less selective
schools.
In one required essay students are asked to advise a firm named DynaTech
about purchasing a new airplane, although one of them had recently crashed.
The various pros and cons are offered and students must sort out the
conflicting evidence and arguments. Another case study asks students to
compose a memo regarding reducing crime, and again, various pieces of
conflicting information are provided.
All three student essays are evaluated according to a detailed scoring
manual: how facts are applied, quality and clarity of arguments, reliability of
supplied evidence, ability to synthesize complex information, and soundness
of the recommendations. All and all, Arum and Roksa stress, these tasks are
“real-world” related and differ from conventional course examinations, for
which students learn specific material to be regurgitated during testing. Arum
and Roksa also provide statistical evidence that the CLA is reliable and valid.
To simplify matters, we’ll take their word that the CLA satisfies the technical
requirement of a “good measure,” though compared to other standardized
tests the CLA is still in its infancy.

Does the University Really Need Instruction in Critical Thinking?

What might motivate a professor to add critical thinking to a syllabus,

especially since professors are already pressured to embrace lots of other
“good ideas” such as multiculturalism and diversity in course offerings?
Going one step further, while covering, say, the contribution of women to the
American Revolution is relatively straightforward, how are the habits of
critical thinking to be taught? Translating any typically complicated
definition into something tangible is no simple matter. Should enlightened
administrators hire self-designated experts on critical thinking to coach
befuddled professors? Might schools implore college textbook publishers to
include critical thinking exercises in introductory texts? What about
resistance from teachers who already feel overburdened by administrative
dictates regarding the insertion of multiculturalism, sustainability, social
justice, and similar ideologically infused material that may have little to do
with substantive course content?
322 Weissberg

Underlying these practical issues are more serious academic freedom

issues. College professors are not K–12 teachers whose lesson plans are
determined by administrators or state legislators with scarcely any room for
deviation. A huge gap exists between acknowledging the importance of
critical thinking versus requiring it across the board regardless of discipline
or the professor’s teaching agenda. Speaking personally and as a critical
thinking fan, I would resist any administrator dictating my lectures, just as I
would refuse to follow gratuitous orders to insert the alleged benefits of
diversity into coursework. And I suspect many academics share my view
regarding professional independence.
Compounding the situation is the fuzzy, often vacuous nature of critical
thinking. A professor might insist, “Yes I teach it,” while an outside
observer unfamiliar with the subject matter might disagree. And how much
class time should professors devote to critical thinking? Twenty minutes on
day one and that’s that? Might critical thinking, like multiculturalism,
infuse everything? Moreover, with so many varying definitions of “critical
thinking” out there, who will impose one out of dozens as the gold
standard? And how do we deal with the ideologically driven teacher who
twists teaching critical thinking into a weapon to attack pet hates? After all,
critical thinking requires being “critical.” Clearly, this is a bureaucratic
mess that may require endless acrimonious meetings before anything of
practical use emerges.
All of this brings us to one easily avoided, overriding question: Why? It is
not cynical to argue that fans of teaching critical thinking see it as something
akin to how the cultural Left views diversity—a virtue so imperative to a
“healthy” society that it is a compelling state interest to impose it on hapless
students regardless of their perspectives? Now for the bad news: justifica-
tions are moral in character—an “ought” lacking scientific basis. To
appreciate this nonempirical justification, here’s what Arum and Roksa offer:
In a rapidly changing economy and society, there is widespread
agreement that these individual capacities are the foundation for
effective democratic citizenship and economic productivity. “With all
the controversy over the college curriculum,” Derek Bok has
commented, “it is impressive to find faculty members agreeing almost
unanimously that teaching students to think critically is the principal aim
of undergraduate education.” Institutional mission statements also echo
this widespread commitment to developing students’ critical thinking.
Critically Thinking about Critical Thinking 323

They typically include a pledge, for example, that schools will work to
challenge students to “think critically and intuitively,” and to ensure that
graduates will become adept at “critical, analytical, and logical
thinking.” These mission statements align with the idea that educational
institutions serve to enhance students’ human capital—knowledge,
skills, and capacities that will be rewarded in the labor market.7
This hardly ends their catalog of benefits, but this snippet should suffice.
Alas, the entire justification rests on appeal to authority, namely other
academics who, like Arum and Roksa, lack empirical evidence—or to be a
bit kinder, evidence that is not cited or remains to be discovered. When did
imparting a knack for critical thinking become “the principal aim of
undergraduate education”? I entered college in 1959 and only recently
encountered this imperative. Did Derek Bok survey a random sample of
professors about spending class time on teaching critical thinking? One
can only be reminded of all the diversity champions who insist that its
self-evident virtues make scientific documentation superfluous.
A little thought suggests that American democracy and our economy
hardly rests on critical thinking. First, and speaking as one who has written
about democracy for decades, I fail to see any connection between an ability
to think critically and the survival of American democratic institutions.
Reasonably honest elections, majority rule and minority rights, the rule of
law, due process, and all the rest that defines our democratic political order
hardly requires millions of citizens who think critically. Scholars have long
supplied compendiums of democratic citizenship, but I have never seen
“critical thinking” on the list. If it deserves inclusion, the justification for it
must be provided, not merely asserted.
Nor, for that matter, can I see a purely logical link between critical
thinking and democracy. If anything, the voting literature abounds with data
demonstrating that the majority of voters do not choose candidates by
thinking critically. Visceral voting choices or reliance on partisan affiliation
are far more common. If a widespread ability to think critically is vital to
democratic governance, we are doomed and democracy’s two-century
survival in the U.S. must be judged a mystery.
Ditto for any self-evident link between critical thinking and prosperity.
Yes, a plausible case can be made that some high-level jobs might

7
Ibid., 2.
324 Weissberg

occasionally require critical thinking, but I can think of no reason why most
positions require this ability. I’d guess that less than a quarter of jobs demand
critical thinking, and even then this trait may be far subordinated to reliability,
tenacity, a penchant for cooperative behavior, and solid communication skills,
among many other attributes with a clear vocational benefit. Again, this is truth
by assertion and not a very convincing one at that.
It is equally plausible that our economy requires only a small number of
critical thinkers who are surrounded by armies lacking this skill but more
adept at other tasks. Apple and Microsoft hardly need five thousand or more
critical thinkers to flourish—and remember that Bill Gates dropped out of
Harvard, so where did he acquire his knack for critical thinking? A better
case can be made that American universities would help the economy more
by inculcating a knack for painful drudgery and persistence, the famous ratio
of 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. Even Steve Jobs confessed
to being a grind.
Moreover, if, as is claimed, critical thinking is central to the American
economy, where are the critical thinking tests to screen thousands of job
applicants? Well, to be fair, firms are not exactly ignoring this ability. Rather,
organizations that demand critical thinking have better, far cheaper, and more
accessible proxies to assess this skill. Goldman Sachs and the like hardly need a
ninety-minute exam about whether to buy crash-prone airplanes. Instead they
interview graduates from elite schools knowing full well that these applicants
possess the intellectual skills necessary to pass tough courses.
In fact, if critical thinking is as valuable economically as is claimed, the
best test of this proposition would be a five-year follow-up on those who
have mastered that skill versus those who did not, while holding constant the
prestige of the degree, major, and similar factors relevant to career success.
Technically, this is predictive validity and essential to trying to convince
undergraduates to sharpen their thinking skills. Alas, we know nothing about
this outcome, but yet again, it is happily assumed.
All this adds up to a weak case for the CLA, since its value, whether for
promoting democracy or helping students land a job, is highly speculative.
This iffy usefulness is especially relevant as universities seek to trim budgets.
Imagine a school defending its plan to test two thousand students a year on
the CLA and paying to train dozens of newly hired employees to evaluate
and score the essays? I suspect that the only motivation might be if some
journalism school ranking service (e.g., U.S. News & World Report) suddenly
included CLA scores in their ratings. But even then, with so many other
Critically Thinking about Critical Thinking 325

off-the-shelf indicators available, why would a school spend a small fortune

for yet another, particularly since it is pointless unless hundreds of other
schools likewise provide CLA data to facilitate comparisons?

Can Critical Thinking Be Taught?

Let’s for the moment assume that teaching critical thinking becomes the
latest educational trend. Would American education benefit?
Obviously, answers must be speculative, but I’d guess that the benefits would
be minimal, while a Pandora’s box of political consequences would be opened.
Let’s start with the information necessary to think critically. Recall that the CLA
test provided copious information to help students devise policy recommendations.
Yes, everything provided was realistic, but what is not realistic is having ample and
freely supplied information at one’s fingertips. More realistic would be to give
students a few days to collect their own data, a task that would undoubtedly
increase the range of test scores. Better students would find more information
while slackers would be satisfied with far less. This is, of course, exactly what
occurs with paper assignments.
Their lack of basic knowledge was apparent to me when I encouraged
students to think critically about U.S. elections. Judging by their puzzled
looks, it soon became apparent that many students lacked even the most
rudimentary political knowledge, things like how primary elections work.8
Many were even clueless about recent presidential elections. These facts
had to be inserted into class discussion, so what began as an exercise in
critical thinking quickly regressed into a time-consuming tutorial on
American politics.
Paucity of elementary factual information among students acknowledged,
what is a professor to do when attempting to teach critical thinking to the
poorly informed? Require students to take remedial classes in what should
have been learned in high school? Assign basic background readings at the
beginning of the semester? Unfortunately, these solutions optimistically
assume that students are motivated to catch up while simultaneously

8
The lack of factual information among college students is well-known to professors, though seldom
publicly acknowledged. Unfortunately, few academics have the stomach to delve into this embarrassing
issue. For an excellent analysis of this aversion to “boring” facts, see Michael J. Booker, “A Roof without
Walls: Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Misdirection of American Education,” Academic Questions
20, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 347–55. Booker makes the key point that when students do not know facts, they
survive the course by embracing the instructor’s opinions.
326 Weissberg

mastering the more advanced substantive material. The only solution that I
can imagine is to limit the teaching of critical thinking to more advanced
classes (akin to high school AP classes), but this elitist approach is hardly
what fans of critical thinking demand. Most enthusiasts see critical thinking
as a trait teachable to all students.
What this lack of knowledge suggests is that a capacity for critical
thinking may be closely related to cognitive ability in general. After all,
absorbing copious amounts of information quickly, organizing it, dealing
with abstractions, and then drawing out implications is the common element
in both IQ and critical thinking. Arum and Roksa’s own data suggest this link
between high intelligence and skill at thinking critically: nearly half of all
students did not add to their critical thinking capacity over the first two years
of college, students at elite schools out-performed those a few notches below,
and students from racial and ethnic groups that generally lag academically
also lagged in acquiring this skill.9
To be politically incorrect, if a capacity for critical thinking mirrors IQ
(and I think it does) then efforts to foster this skill will fail just as every past
intervention to increase IQ has come up short. Worse, from the perspective of
critical thinking fans, previous interventions to boost IQ had the advantage of
beginning very early (e.g., Head Start), while efforts to develop critical
thinking target college-age students, and even then, for at most a few hours
per week. Thus understood, teaching critical thinking is redundant for the
smart and pointless for the less talented, although, conceivably, a few
middling students might pick up a thing or two.
If the past is any guide to the future, the current infatuation with critical
thinking will follow a familiar though unwelcome trajectory. That is,
egalitarians who peruse critical thinking test scores will, guaranteed, discover
“troubling” gaps in this talent. Yet more task forces will be appointed,
expensive recommendations will emerge, critical thinking coaches will be hired
and thousands of hours and lots of money will be spent for zero progress. And
rest assured, campus egalitarians will pour over these CLA essays to expunge
hidden racial bias from the test and scoring method. I can already see ambitious
but underemployed bureaucrats waiting for their gaps-in-critical thinking ship to
arrive so as to organize a three-day conference.

9
Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift, 122.
Critically Thinking about Critical Thinking 327

Conclusions

What does this pursuit tell us about the modern academy? Two lessons are
clear. First, it yet again exposes the academy’s vulnerability to questionable
fads, a willingness to spend lavishly despite shaky evidence of value (a
parallel is the infatuation with diversity et al.). This is not to say that critical
thinking champions are fashion-minded opportunists—although I suspect a
few are of the catch-the-fad and advance-one’s-career variety.
Actually, getting in on the ground floor of a trend long before its demonstrated
failure is just about de rigueur in education. Today’s bureaucratically infused
campus culture invites it—why struggle with thorny research problems or spend
hours trying to teach writing when embracing fashionable nonsense is a far
superior career option? Imagine the consequences if the latest educational
panacea were a drug required to pass FDA-like scrutiny before being
implemented while advocates were liable for damages if the scheme turned
sour. The campus newspaper would overflow with ads like: “Did you pay
thousands of dollars on a course that stressed ‘critical thinking’ only to discover
that you learned nothing of intellectual or vocational value? Call Gonif and
Gonif and join our class action lawsuit and recover lost tuition plus punitive
damages. We have already won millions for students like you.”
The second point is an irony: Champions of critical thinking have
failed to apply their own medicine. Didn’t they stop to consider the net
value of this instruction given its easily foreseen tangible and intellectual
costs? How much time is to be wasted on this project that could have
been spent on substantive learning? What about yet more bureaucratic
expansion when administrative overhead increasingly devours the
university’s core mission? And what does a resource-eating critical
thinking test add when this talent can already be assessed from a verbal
SAT score that closely mirrors IQ? Might attempting to teach critical
thinking be pointless for mediocre students? How can one possibly
assert the link between critical ability and democracy when we have zero
data on this nexus? Worse, why do champions of critical thinking ignore
the absence of data on any alleged beneficial impact? Why the disdain
for science? And on and on. Obviously, we need critical thinking for
those who advocate critical thinking.
Let me end by reiterating my own commitment to critical thinking. I am
not opposed to it; rather I view it as appropriate to only the brightest, most
328 Weissberg

motivated students, less a skill that can be successfully taught to millions of

mediocre students (including high school students who struggle with basic
literacy). Moreover, even with topnotch students I’m not sure that critical
thinking is the highest priority. Speaking personally, I would subordinate it to
other skills, namely the ability to write and speak well and to apply the
scientific method, familiarity with history and literature, and a Calvinist work
ethic. Let’s not assume that just because a particular skill is valuable—and
critical thinking certainly is—it should be pushed at the expense of other
intellectual skills. This, I might add, is a conclusion that comes with a little
critical thinking.
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