Steve,

I would encourage you to read anything written by Richard Paul of Sonoma State University in CA.  His organization is the International Association for Critical Thinking and they most definitely have developed many methods for teaching Critical Thinking skills per se.  It appears from your post that you are not aware of this body of literature but I assure you that it can be very helpful in this difficult task.

Michael

 

From: professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Steve Kaufmann
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2009 8:04 AM
To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List
Subject: [PD 4087] Re: Swinging the Sword of Literacy in Iraq

 

It appears that almost every poster here is in favour of the position that language and literacy teachers should teach their students to think critically, and to challenge society. 

I believe that teaching "critical thinking" is impossible, and that any attempt to do so is merely an effort to impose one's own values on others. I also think that it is arrogant to assume that one's own thinking process is more "critical" or objective than that of the learner, when in fact most of our positions are arrived at based on our own experience and feelings that accumulated over time. I believe that literacy teaching should focus on helping people read better so that they can form their own opinions by being able to read from many different sources. The way to get there is to allow learners to read what interests them and interpret it however they want.

I accept that mine is a minority position here. However, every campaign for literacy that I have seen, especially fund raising activities focus on reading, not on critical thinking and social change. If the majority of literacy practitioners are into social change and teaching critical thinking, then I think it would only be honest to say so up front in the fund raising and advocacy campaigns. To not do so is dishonest in my opinion.



Steve Kaufmann
604-922-8551
  <http://www.lingq.com/?referral=steve>  <http://www.lingq.com/?referral=steve> 

 

--- @ WiseStamp Signature <http://www.wisestamp.com/email-install> . Get it now <http://www.wisestamp.com/email-install> 

 

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 5:50 AM, Janet Isserlis <Janet_Isserlis at brown.edu> wrote:

Re: comments about Art's post, education in Iraq and the whole notion of political literacy.

Just looked up the word politics, but the definition kept using the word "political"
so then I looked that up:

po·liti·cal (pə lit′i kəl)

adjective

of or concerned with government, the state, or politics
having a definite governmental organization
engaged in or taking sides in politics political parties
of or characteristic of political parties or politicians political pressure

http://www.yourdictionary.com/political


so now, to reply, simply, to those who believe we shouldn't impose a particular set of political beliefs:
NO ONE here has said we should.  Art has spoken eloquently to addressing the skills, knowledge and strategies needed to understand how government works and to enable adults to make choices  (and/or support them in making choices) that best suit their own interests and beliefs.  NO ONE is advocating for any one system, or set of beliefs.  No one is using the adult learning center as a soap box.  Good educators are listening to learners, living in shared communities, discussing what goes on and using language and learning skills, critical thinking, healthy debate, use of media and other resources, to enable everyone to get on as well as they can in the communities in which they live.

Janet Isserlis 


----------------------------------------------------
National Institute for Literacy
Adult Literacy Professional Development mailing list
professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov

To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/professionaldevelopment
Email delivered to steve at lingq.com

Professional Development section of the Adult Literacy Education Wiki
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Adult_Literacy_Professional_Development




-- 
Steve Kaufmann
www.lingq.com
604-922-8514

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/professionaldevelopment/attachments/20091029/a840e7ae/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 823 bytes
Desc: ~WRD000.jpg
Url : http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/professionaldevelopment/attachments/20091029/a840e7ae/attachment.jpe