"Breaking new ground".(critical thinking and the study of great literature)(Critical Essay)

Wouldn't it be nice if we could declare a moratorium on the use of certain grand sounding but effectively pernicious phrases and ideas? Near the top of our list would come "critical thinking." In the context of discussions about education, the phrase is supposed to denote an important intellectual advance beyond the old-fashioned concern with "content." Perhaps you remember content? It is an important part of what, in the bad old days, one would go to school to obtain: a mastery of particular names, dates, facts, works, and ideas. Critical thinkers are beyond all that. They substitute sophistication for content, subordinating a concern with mastery of particulars to a superior intellectual attitude. Instead of laboring to understand the works of Dante or Milton, they step back and pontificate about the meaning of reading in general. They no longer worry about getting the details of Plato's or Descartes's or Kant's philosophy right--indeed, they find it risible that anyone could believe that being "right" about such things was ever more than a matter of fashion. Instead, they ponder the philosophy of philosophy. For devotees of "critical thinking," there is something indescribably naff about mastering any particular body of knowledge or affirming any traditional conclusions. That is what drudges do. The only interesting narrative is the metanarrative of thinking about the process of thinking, preferably from an adversarial vantage point. Thus it is that "critical thinking" is held to be so much more creative than the ordinary, unmodified sort of thinking, just as criticism unredeemed by an antinomian theory of criticism is regarded as a hopelessly pedestrian enterprise.

The origins of the vogue for "critical thinking" can be traced back at least to the progressive theories of education promulgated by John Dewey and his circle. "Routine action," Dewey wrote in one typical observation, "may increase skill to do a particular thing.... But it does not lead to new perceptions of bearings and connections; it limits rather than widens the meaning-horizon." What a splendid example of "critical thought" in action is the phrase "meaning-horizon"! Pregnant with the adumbration of significance, it avoids the inconvenience of issuing in any particular thought.

Like so many other bad ideas, however, "critical thinking" got a tremendous boost in the 1960s and 1970s, long after Dewey had departed from the scene. It was then that the progressive ideal was radicalized and went mainstream. The result has been the educational disaster of the last several decades, when the theory that "ignorance is bliss" finally made it to prime time. We now know what should have been obvious: substitutes for knowledge are not knowledge.

Despite its patina of depth (if we may so put it), "critical thinking" is a prescription for superficiality and sophomoric lucubration. It proffers the appearance of knowledge without the substance. Hence the necessity of scare quotes: "critical thinking" is neither genuinely critical nor genuinely thoughtful. It specializes in oppositional poses, not criticism, opaque verbal legerdemain, not thinking. Nevertheless, the ideology of "critical thinking" continues to be enormously popular. It is the hardiest of hardy perennials. Nor is this surprising. Talk about a labor-saving device! How many hours of difficult study have been circumvented by a timely close of "critical thinking"? The savings have been incalculable.

Unfortunately, the fatuousness has been incalculable, too. Anyone wanting a vivid illustration of what a devotion to "critical thinking" really means need look no further than "More Ado (Yawn) About Great Books," an article by Emily Eakin in the April 8 issue of The New York Times's section "Education Life." Miss Eakin's essay is partly an attack, partly a boast. The attack is against stodgy traditionalists who continue to believe that some books are more important than others and that a liberal arts education worthy of The name requires thoughtful acquaintance with the formative works of the Western tradition. Allan Bloom--the academic radical's favorite villain--comes in for some dismissive words as do groups like The American Council of Trustees and Alumni and the National Association of Scholars for their efforts to combat academic frivolity.

Miss Eakin's boast is more interesting. She explains that although she graduated as a literature major from a university "with world-renowned experts on Shakespeare, Milton, and The ancient Greeks," she never attended any of their classes for the simple reason that she didn't have to: "They weren't required."

 
   While my roommates, English majors both, slogged their way through The 
   Norton Anthology of English Literature--Beowulf to Virginia Woolf--I was 
   breaking new ground. I read Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, Mikhail 
   Bakhtin and Walter Benjamin. Not that I read only theory. These were 
   literature courses, after all. I read lots of novels, too--Thomas Pynchon's 
   Crying of Lot 49, Gunter Grass's Tin Drum, and Les Guerrilleres, a lyrical 
   fantasy about a society without men by the French radical lesbian Monique 
   Wittig. I met my degree requirements by taking "Feminist Literary 
   Criticisms" and "Women and the Avant-Garde," as well as two ...