你是理性思考者吗？

作者：Linda Elder

翻译：CommonData

《基督教科学箴言报》

2009年3月12日

译注：本文中的critical thinking一词均被译为“理性思考”，但同时也可被译为“批判性思维”。

如果不认真的进行思考，我们能解决经济困境、冲突、世界贫困以及其他困扰这个行星的紧迫问题吗？

当然不能。要想解决这些问题，我们必须在整个人类社会中普遍培育理性思考的精神。

在如今的学校中，批判的习好和技巧完全没有得到传授。我们缺乏对于这种能力的培养。

每个人都在思考，但我们并不总是善于思考。实际上，我们中的许多人思考往往流于草率、歪曲、片面、无知或偏见。然而，我们的生命质量以及所有做出的决定均依赖于思考的品质。但在此时，思考的作用实质上却被忽略了。

理性思考是自我引导，自我约束的一种思维方式，目标在于将理性注入我们的天性，将其提升到一个更高的水准。它以改善思维为目标，是一种分析和评估的艺术。当做出决定时，对信息不求甚解匆忙做出的判断便与对信息深思熟虑之后得到的逻辑结论相去甚远。

参考那些伟大的思想家们：H·L·门肯、托姆·潘恩、马克·吐温、亚伯拉汗·林肯、伯特兰·罗素，以及简·奥斯汀。上述人物之所以成为最为伟大的思考者， 并非因为他们简单的接受了信息的表面价值，而是在于他们无时无刻都在对信息进行独立深入的思考，质疑，和提炼。这并不容易。当提到自己的思维方法时，查尔 斯·达尔文曾说道：“由于我本人一直以来在清晰和简明的表达自己方面面临许多困难，这些困难给我的时间带来非常大的损失，但我也得到了相应的补偿，它会强 迫我对每个句子聚精会神的进行长时间思考，因此我可以在推理过程和自己或是别人的观察中明了谬误所在”。

他的勤奋得到了回报。达尔文的理性思考促 进了科学与社会的分野。教育的目标难道不是给予学生们工具，让他们以思考为社会或多或少做出贡献吗？但如今我们却没有这样做。毫无疑问，我们并没有教他们 怎样以一种清晰、严密、有目的的对他们所读或所写进行完整、深入的理解。我们也没有教会学生们将想法整理汇集在同一个主题之下。我们更没有教导他们真诚的 善待那些遭其反对的观点。

我们并没有教会他们最为基本的思考方法。

一些人认为，理想思考曾经被根植于学校教育之中。但人们有理由去问，在主流的学校教育中，这种思维方式是否真的以一种有意义的方式得到了培养（标准化测试运动只能让事情变得更糟）？与学生们一样，教师们也生活在一个缺乏智慧的文化之中，而一般来说，这种文化非但不会对理性思考予以公正的评价，更不会去鼓励它。

如果想要解决目前面临的巨大难题，我们就必须要让学生们从现在开始训练自主的思考。教师们必须把死记硬背和单纯的主动参与丢到一旁，转而教导学生面对复杂问题时，怎样通过推理思考让眼光超越简单的答案。

我们必须向学生们传授，要学习一门学问或是学科，唯一的方法就是学习思考它们内里的逻辑、概念和假设；关注它的目标、疑问以及信息。

诚然，一些学生懵懵懂懂的沿着这条道路学到一些理性思考的方法。但是，这些个别现象显然并不足喜，我们的整体思维还不够好。

也有一些好消息。许多全球性组织，例如“和平部队”（Peace Corps）、联合国儿童基金会，以及大赦国际都将理性思考提升到了一个相当重要的地位。部分由于上述组织的再认证，路易斯韦尔大学和东肯塔基大学都已约定努力将理性思考带入课程之中。但还有许多工作要做。耶鲁学者威廉·格雷厄姆·索姆奈早在1906年便已给出了最好的建议，当时他说：

“如果社会中的普通人具有理性思考的 习惯，它将会传播给更多的人，因为这种思考方式可以改善人生。接受过这种教育的人们不会被夸夸其谈的演说家们所迷惑......他们可以等待证据，分析证 据，而且有信心不会受到各方主张的干扰。他们可以抵抗来自内心最深处的偏见，以及各种各样的甜言蜜语。准确地说，教育的关键职能在于，只有它才能炮制出好 公民”。

他的告诫至今依然能够引起共鸣。虽然没有补救的捷径，但我们可以从头开始思索我们应当怎样思考。 我们可以质疑自己的目标、自己的假设、自己的想法，以及自己的结论。我们可以质疑自己是否关心并理解他人的观点，还是简单的驱逐它们。我们可以向更为广 阔、更为复杂的世界开放自己的大脑。我们现在正经历着一个盘旋向下的过程，要想逆转它，我们必须开始积极主动地在学校、家庭、社会机构、政府，以及人类生 活的所有角落里培养公正的理性思考。

（作者是致力于培育公正的批判性思维的非盈利性教育组织“批判性思维基金会”主席。她同时也是一位作家，曾联名出版过四部有关批判性思维的著作，以及二十本思考者指南）

Are you a critical thinker?

Quality thought is vital. So why don’t schools foster it?

Dillon Beach, Calif. - How can we hope to thoughtfully address the economic issues, conflicts, world poverty, and many other pressing concerns that trouble our planet, if we don't take the way we think seriously?

We can't. To effectively deal with these issues, we must cultivate the spirit of critical thinking throughout human societies.

Right now we are not even teaching the skills and dispositions of the critical mind in our schools. We are not cultivating the intellect.

Everyone thinks; but we don't always think well. In fact, much of our thinking, left to itself, is sloppy, distorted, partial, uninformed, or prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and all of the decisions we make depend precisely on the quality of our thought. At present, the act of thinking is virtually ignored.

Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking that aims to take the reasoning we all do naturally to a higher level. It is the art of analyzing and evaluating with the goal of improving thought. When making a decision, it is the difference between weighing information to come to a logical conclusion and making snap judgments without understanding the information.

Consider some of the great thinkers: H.L. Mencken, Tom Paine, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Bertrand Russell, and Jane Austen. They became some of the greatest thinkers by not accepting information at face value, but by thinking deeply for themselves, asking questions, and refining their thinking over time. It wasn't easy. Of his own thinking, Charles Darwin said: "I have as much difficulty as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; and this difficulty has caused me a very great loss of time, but it has had the compensating advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sentence, and thus I have been led to see errors in reasoning and in my own observations or those of others."

His diligence paid off. Darwin's critical thinking pushed the boundaries of science and society. And isn't the purpose of education to give students the tools to thoughtfully contribute (on a small or large scale) to society? Right now we are not doing that. With few exceptions, we are not teaching them how to fully and deeply comprehend what they read or write with clarity, precision, and purpose. We are not teaching students to integrate ideas within and among subjects. We are not teaching them to entertain (in good faith) viewpoints with which with they disagree.

We are failing them at the most fundamental level.

Some believe that critical thinking was once cultivated in schooling. But it is fair to ask if it has ever really been fostered in a meaningful way in mainstream schooling (and the standardized testing movement is only making it worse). Teachers, like students, live in a nonintellectual culture, one that, for the most part, neither values fair-minded critical thinking nor encourages it.

If we want to effectively deal with the tremendous problems we now face, we must begin teaching students to discipline their own thinking. Teachers must move beyond rote and merely active engagement, and work toward transforming how students reason through complex issues, to look beyond easy answers.

We must teach students that the only way to learn a subject or discipline is to learn to think within the logic of it, to focus on its purposes, questions, information, to think within its concepts and assumptions.

It is true that some students learn some critical thinking implicitly along the way. But, as is evident in the dismal state of affairs, our collective thinking simply isn't good enough.

There is some good news. Many global organizations such as the Peace Corps, UNICEF, and Amnesty International are promoting critical thinking within a particular area of importance. As part of their reaccreditations, the University of Louisville and Eastern Kentucky University are both making concerted efforts to bring critical thinking across the curriculum. But much work is still needed. William Graham Sumner, the Yale academic and essayist may have put it best when, in 1906, he said:

"The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators.... They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens."

His warning resonates today. Though there is no quick and easy fix, we can all start by beginning to think about how we think. We can question our purposes, our assumptions, our ideas, and our inferences. We can question whether we are considering the views of others to understand them, or to dismiss them. We can open our minds to the larger world with all of its complexities. If we are to reverse the downward spiral we are presently experiencing, we must begin to actively and deliberately foster fair-minded critical thinking in our schools, our homes, our social institutions, in government, and indeed, in every part of human life.

Linda Elder is the president of the Foundation for Critical Thinking, an education nonprofit organization concerned with fostering fair-minded critical societies. She is an educational psychologist who has co-written four books on critical thinking and 20 thinker's guides.