writing to analyze

During the last couple of days I got involved in a few discussions with a couple of my students. Writing to learn about an issue is so hard to do, they complained. It takes time and one has to think about so much. One of the students uttered with a sigh that he wishes sometimes not to make things so complicated in his writing. To him critical thinking is a curse, he says, because he constantly reevaluates his writing, doubting his original thinking skills and worrying about meeting the standards he set out for himself. These thoughts appear in a different light when I read in the Harvard Crimson how teachers should focus more on developing critical thinking skills in their students. What this newspaper and others who express similar demands seem to forget is that it takes time to correlate, associate, compare, and contrast issues; that is takes time to see patterns developing and paradigms shifting in a repository of texts. And honestly, tests to enter graduate school do not ask for these problem solving skills. They test dichotomies and their perpetuation in American society. If you can determine the opposite of one then you pass the test.

politics on a t-shirt