Bookmark this page

Translate this page from English...

*Machine translated pages not guaranteed for accuracy.

Click Here for our professional translations.


Print Page Change Text Size: T T T

Conference Theme

34th International Conference Theme:

Cultivating Educated Citizens and Critical Societies Through Explicit Fairminded Critical Thinking

 

The Center and Foundation for Critical Thinking have together hosted critical thinking academies and conferences for almost 35 years. During that time, we have advanced the principles and best practices of fairminded critical thought in education and in society.


Our annual conference provides a unique opportunity for you to improve your understanding of critical thinking, as well as your ability to more substantively foster it in instruction and all aspects of work and life.


At this year's International Conference  on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform, we emphasize the importance of cultivating the critical public citizen, as we honor the thought and work of Ralph Nader through the Bertrand Russell Scholars Lecture and program. Accordingly, we offer sessions for educators and citizens, throughout the world, who are interested in improving their ability to reason through complex issues as public citizens and in all parts of life. Critical thinking is as essential to thinking like a skilled public citizen as it is to thinking like a skilled educator, administrator, psychologist, historian, scientist,doctor,parent, student…as it is to thinking well within any domain of human thought or through any important issue.


Public citizens are keenly aware of their role as voting, contributing, integrated members of a democratic society. They recognize that the health of a society is given in the ways in which people in the society act and interact on a typical day – in the family, in intimate relationships, in marriage, in study and scholarship, in business, in non-profit work, in government administration. Public citizens perceive contributing to a better community, and hence to a better world, to be the responsibility of all people in all societies.

But critical public citizens do not always agree on all issues. They do not always agree on how to deal with complex issues or problems. Indeed, because of the nature of complex issues, even reasonable persons often disagree on how best to conceptualize and approach them; they frequently disagree on the very questions to be addressed. To make matters worse, egocentric and sociocentric tendencies forever dwell just below the surface, poisoning human minds, even highly ‘educated’ minds pursing just ends. These tendencies are intrinsic to all people and give rise to such human pathologies as narrow-mindedness, group-think, intellectual arrogance, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, infighting and backstabbing.

Many of the deep-seated pathologies that humans acquire come from the process of being socialized or indoctrinated into the beliefs of society. Much of what we think or do we have been taught to think or do by the social groups that have shaped us. Those who want to free themselves from indoctrination, to become intellectually emancipated, must understand this problem – sociocentrism - as a significant barrier to their development and begin seeing its influence on their daily thinking. 

When students internalize, through the educational process, a substantive, explicit, fairminded, conception of critical thinking, they develop a network of skills, traits, and insights crucial in working through the complex problems faced by full-time public citizens; they are also familiar with their own unique egocentric and sociocentric pathologies, and are deeply concerned with rooting them out and replacing them with healthier habits. Such students listen intently to arguments with which they disagree (i.e. ‘Intellectual Empathy’) and are moved by reasoning superior to their own (i.e. ‘Confidence in Reason’). They distinguish, in any given sh, between what they know and what they do not know (i.e. ‘Intellectual Humility’).  They can stand alone in their beliefs, if reason and evidence compel them to do so (i.e. ‘Intellectual Autonomy’). They routinely:

•       raise vital questions within disciplines, formulating them clearly and precisely.

•       gather and assess information, using ideas to interpret that information insightfully.

•       come to well reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards.

•       reason within subjects and disciplines, exploring and assessing - as need be - their assumptions, organizing concepts, implications, and practical consequences. 

•       communicate effectively with others using the language of academic disciplines and of educated public discourse.

•       relate what they are learning in a given subject to other subjects, as well as to what is significant in human life. 

•       apply intellectual skills to problems in everyday life.

•       contribute to a more rational and just world. 


At the 34th International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform we focus on internalizing a substantive, fairminded (strong-sense) conception of critical thinking consisting in these and other related critical thinking skills, traits and insights. Such a conception can be fostered in teaching and learning at all levels, and is fundamental to cultivating the educated person, the ethical reasoned, the critical public citizen.


For more information on Mr. Nader, visit www.apdspeakers.com



Please do not pass this message by.

CRITICAL THINKING IS AT RISK.

Here are some of the big reasons why:

  1. Many people believe that critical thinking should be free and that scholars qualified to teach critical thinking should do so for free. Accordingly, they do not think they should have to pay for critical thinking textbooks, courses, or other resources when there is "so much free material online" - despite how erroneous that material may be.
  2. There are many misguided academicians, and some outright charlatans, pushing forth and capitalizing on a pseudo-, partial, or otherwise impoverished concept of critical thinking.
  3. Little to no funding is designated for critical thinking professional development in schools, colleges, or universities, despite the lip service widely given to critical thinking (as is frequently found in mission statements).
  4. Most people, including faculty, think they already know what critical thinking is, despite how few have studied it to any significant degree, and despite how few can articulate a coherent, accurate, and sufficiently deep explanation of it.
  5. People rarely exhibit the necessary level of discipline to study and use critical thinking for reaching higher levels of self-actualization. In part, this is due to wasting intellectual and emotional energy on fruitless electronic entertainment designed to be addictive and profitable rather than educational and uplifting.
  6. On the whole, fairminded critical thinking is neither understood, fostered, nor valued in educational institutions or societies.
  7. People are increasingly able to cluster themselves with others of like mind through alluring internet platforms that enable them to validate one another's thinking - even when their reasoning is nonsensical, lopsided, prejudiced, or even dangerous.
  8. Critical thinking does not yet hold an independent place in academia. Instead, "critical thinking" is continually being "defined" and redefined according to any academic area or instructor that, claiming (frequently unsupported) expertise, steps forward to teach it.

As you see, increasingly powerful trends against the teaching, learning, and practice of critical thinking entail extraordinary challenges to our mission. To continue our work, we must now rely upon your financial support. If critical thinking matters to you, please click here to contribute what you can today.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE OUR WORK.

Thank you for your support of ethical critical thinking.