'People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right - especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.' Thomas Sowell
Here's a checklist of questions that students can follow when attempting a critical thinking question:
1. Understanding the Question:
Have I fully understood the question and its requirements?
Can I identify the key concepts and terms in the question?
2. Gathering Information:
What relevant information or data is provided in the scenario or prompt?
Do I need to research additional information to understand the context?
3. Identifying Assumptions and Biases:
Are there any underlying assumptions in the question or scenario?
Can I recognize potential biases in the information or sources provided?
4. Analyzing Arguments:
What are the main arguments presented in the scenario?
Are there any logical fallacies or weaknesses in the arguments?
5. Considering Multiple Perspectives:
Have I considered various viewpoints on the issue or topic?
What are the potential pros and cons of each perspective?
6. Evaluating Evidence:
Is the evidence presented reliable, relevant, and sufficient?
Can I verify the credibility of the sources mentioned?
7. Identifying Factors and Causes:
What factors or causes contribute to the situation described?
Are there underlying factors that might not be explicitly mentioned?
8. Recognizing Consequences:
What are the potential short-term and long-term consequences of different decisions or actions?
Can I anticipate unintended outcomes or effects?
9. Creative Problem-Solving:
Can I generate innovative solutions to address the challenges presented?
Have I considered alternative approaches beyond the obvious ones?
10. Ethical Considerations:
Are there ethical dilemmas or considerations involved in the situation?
How might different decisions impact various stakeholders?
11. Logical Reasoning:
Is my line of reasoning logical and coherent throughout my response?
Have I used valid deductive or inductive reasoning when applicable?
12. Applying Relevant Concepts:
Have I applied relevant concepts, theories, or principles to support my analysis?
Can I provide examples from real-world situations that relate to the scenario?
13. Constructing a Well-Structured Response:
Is my response organized in a clear and structured manner?
Do my paragraphs flow logically and connect to each other?
14. Considering Context and Timeframe:
How does the historical, cultural, or social context impact the situation?
Are there considerations related to short-term vs. long-term effects?
15. Reflection and Revision:
Have I taken the time to reflect on my response before finalizing it?
Can I identify areas where my response could be improved or clarified?
Encourage students to use this checklist as a guide to systematically approach critical thinking questions. Remind them that critical thinking is an ongoing skill that improves with practice and thoughtful engagement with the material.
'Despite its veneer of neutrality [Radio
4's] Today programme gives us a very specific take on the world.'
Photograph: Graeme Robertson
ourBeeb is a new website hosted by openDemocracy's OurKingdom section, which will debate the future of the UK's most important cultural institution
Like many people, I tune into the Today programme
most weekday mornings before I go to work. It's a form of masochism,
really, as I don't enjoy it much and I know full well I will end up
swearing at the radio. But it covers the main stories of the day and
makes me feel vaguely plugged into what's going on in the world. So why
the expletives?
Despite its veneer of neutrality (a
problematic concept anyway, of course) the Today programme gives us a
very specific take on the world. It's a world in which the views of the
establishment are unquestionable facts, and a needlessly aggressive
interview style masquerades as incisive journalistic scrutiny.
In
the programme's daily review of the newspapers the entrenched
prejudices of the mainstream media regularly go unchallenged. The
presenters read out quotes from a selection of the daily rags on a range
of the day's stories. But who decides which papers, which quotes, which
stories? Last Tuesday they covered the revelation by the Department for
Work and Pensions that thousands of people on sickness benefit "had been discovered to be fit for work".
This is a complicated news story – who decided they were fit for work?
According to what measures? But not for Today. We get the illusion of
bias-free reporting – they're only reading out what the papers say,
after all. But what the presenters gave us were two very similar angles
on the story, from the Daily Mail and the Sun, both of which
unquestioningly used these statistics to bolster the editorial line that
these scroungers should get back to work. Why quote from two papers
with the exact same viewpoint?
Often, in an effort to
provide two sides of a debate there is that familiar, pointlessly
adversarial interview style that the Today programme specialises in.
Last June, the writer Graham Linehan wrote this searing critique
of the "squabbling that passes for debate" on Today. Linehan was
writing after his experience on the programme, in which he had been
invited on to discuss his stage adaptation of The Ladykillers, only to
discover he was expected to provide one side in an "argument" about the
value of adapting films for theatre. Of course, as Linehan admits,
confrontational interviews sometimes make sense – we need them sometimes
to get to the truth. But more often it is not the best way to get to
the heart of a story. Such interviews have the air of a university
debating society, where notions are challenged and argued merely for the
fun of it. (They remind me a little too much of Chris Morris interviewing the organiser of the London Jam Festival on The Day Today.)
Paradoxically,
when the Today presenters are confronted with the genuinely powerful,
the interviews can be surprisingly lightweight, a case in point being John Humphrys' recent interview with David Cameron. Humphrys spent a tiresome five or so minutes haranguing him about Abu Qatada
(and admittedly gave him a bit of a hard time about tax dodgers in
government), but failed to challenge any of the Tory tropes that Cameron
trotted out repeatedly throughout the interview, about being on the
side of "hardworking people who do the right thing", making the country
more "pro get up and go" and even "making sure our children aren't
burdened with debt". Is it not Humphrys' job to pick apart such cliches
and enquire what they actually mean? The interview descended into an
infuriating kind of mateyness, in which the two men laughingly discussed
Cameron's relaxed demeanour and his "date nights" with his wife. As if
this wasn't nauseating enough, when the interview finished, the BBC's
political editor, Nick Robinson, (known for his long-standing Tory
associations) joined Humphrys for a nice cosy chat about the PM and the
interview that had just finished. There was no mention, in either
conversation, of NHS reform, of unemployment, or of the double-dip
recession. It was all just one big jolly jape.
It is this
lofty, old boys' club approach to the news – as if nothing really
matters beyond the Today studios – that I find so irksome. There was a
discussion on the programme a few weeks ago about the effect of the
housing benefit cap on low-paid Londoners, between Grainia Long
from the Chartered Institute of Housing and Mark Easton, the BBC's home
editor. Both Long and Easton quoted statistics demonstrating rising
rents and the massive financial pressure the cap places on people in the
capital. But the discussion quickly became focused on the effect the
cap would have on the flow of cheap labour into London. Easton
speculated whether the government had really thought through the impact
of this policy and wondered aloud just who was going to do these
low-paid jobs in London if people couldn't afford to pay the rent.
It's
a valid point of course, but Easton's observation did have a touch of
the Today loftiness about it. Running through it seemed to be the
assumption that listeners really only care about this issue because it
means that there will be no poor people left to sweep the streets or
serve coffees or empty the bins in their offices. The low-paid workers
are not the participants in this discussion – they are merely objects,
being talked about in so far as they are useful. Today does not belong
to these people.
As Dave Boyle points out
in his article for ourBeeb, the BBC is astonishingly unaccountable to
its licence-payers and boy does it show. For me, nothing expresses the
need to reclaim the BBC better than those smug exchanges between rich,
powerful men on Today. We deserve better than this.
