“TC VOL. Vill
ie NO. 12
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Published by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development
‘With support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and Sid W. Richardson Foundation

   

 

     
   
 

 

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ACHING CRITICAL THINKING AND VALUING AS BASIC SKILLS

Study after study has shown that students at community colleges define themselves as goal-oriented, work- |
| oriented students trying to develop skills which will enable them to succeed in a world dominated by |
technology. Community colleges have rightly sought to appeal to such students, by emphasizing both technical
and scientific training and the preparation in basic skills—such as writing—that are needed as Prerequisites for
such training. However, I am concerned that many of us in community colleges sometime forget that the
teaching of writing involves much more than covering the essentials of grammar and paragraph development.

| As a teacher of freshman composition at a community college on the Mexican border, a college whose —
| students are predominantly Hispanic, I have been concerned about the political implications of the teaching of

| writing—especially since, like Carl Rogers, I realize increasingly that I am "only interested in learnings which —
| significantly influence behavior." Paradoxically, however, I have observed that the students in my "Research —
| and Critical Writing" course have consistently failed to reap what I feel are the real benefits of education in —
| general and of writing a research paper in particular: skill in critical thinking—the ability to abstract themselves.
from a given set of biases in order to analyze and evaluate their environment—and growth in the ability to apply
their values in the decision-making process, a growth which may follow from the development of critical |
thinking skills. My belief that my own methodology was contributing to this failure led me to restructure the —

course and to emphasize the "basic skills" of critical thinking and valuing.

: 1 began with the assumption that the teaching of writing is a political act. Surely all of us as educators believe |
© | that there is some connection between writing and life—but what exactly is that connection? How does the
teaching of writing define our assumptions about and our relationships to the human community? How do
freshman composition courses—the ones required for most of our students—reflect our involvement (or lack of
involvement) in a world of social change? __

_ In “Politics and the English Language," George Orwell insisted that learning to write is inherently political— |
that there is a direct connection between how we write and how we think, and so ultimately, how we act in the
world. Since this essay is so often used in composition courses, we must assume that many teachers of writing
agree with that perspective. Surely the authors of most freshman rhetoric texts reveal, implicitly and explicitly, |
their belief in that connection: discussion of, for example, connotation, euphemism, and argumentation all deal
with the ability of language to affect the real world of experience. Apparently, then, many composition
instructors are convinced that there is some relationship between being an effective writer and being an effective
citizen in a democracy, and with being an effective humane being. And surely the key to this relationship
between writing and action is our teaching of critical thinking and the ability to apply values to real-world
contexts.

But our current teaching of composition all too often contains subtle political messages which belie the |
supposedly liberating, democratizing quality of literacy. Richard Ohmann, for example, contends that freshman |
composition courses—far from developing true critical thinking and valuing skills—simply reinforce a chauvinist, |
exploitative world-view. A popular freshman rhetoric states near the beginning of the book that "To learn to
write . . . is to learn to think in a certain way," in a way that will help one "succeed" in a "technological
society"—in a way, that is, that does not provoke students to challenge their society, but rather socializes them
to conform to it. And this paradox—the assumption that writing should help students develop "critical
| thinking" skills yet also prepare them for unquestioning acquiescence to the values of "technological society"—

_ is precisely the evil which Ohmann finds in current versions of the freshman English course.

Clearly, then, learning to write is not necessarily liberating; in fact, writing courses all too often form part of
___| an educational system that stifles, that domesticates. Yet the Brazilian-born educator Paulo Freire has shown |

Cc how the teaching of writing can indeed be liberating. Freire has defined what he calls the "culture of silence" of
: poor people in the Third World. In response to this passivity, Freire has devoted his professional career to _

creating a "pedagogy of the oppressed," a methodology of teaching literacy whereby the impoverished masses

 

 

 

Ki) Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712

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