‘Critical’

A comment at last week’s conference on humanities at community colleges has stuck with me.

The context was a discussion of student responses to controversial topics. Someone mentioned that in the K-12 world, students are taught—sometimes deliberately, sometimes by default—that the book they’re reading is true. They generally assume that it was chosen for them on the grounds that it’s correct. Fiction is an obvious exception, but even there, it’s assumed that the work is generally recognized as great or it wouldn’t have been assigned.

When they get to college (or college classes), that assumption doesn’t always hold. Texts will be assigned that clash with each other. Some texts will be largely correct and/or worthy, but they’ll have some glaring flaws. Others will be substantially wrong or off-base but in interesting ways that reward close attention. Still others won’t be so much “right” or “wrong” as emblematic of the time and place in which they were written.

We often try to convey that idea through terms like “critical reading” or “critical thinking,” but those terms contain multitudes. The word “critical” can mean so many different things.

In the vernacular, “critical” usually means “negative.” “Why are you being so critical?” “Stop being so critical.” A student who understands “critical” in this sense is likely to resort to one of two habits: either ducking engagement altogether or fully attacking. The latter is probably the preferable of the two, since it presumes some level of awareness of the text, but it hits diminishing returns pretty quickly. It can devolve into a dispiriting game of “gotcha.” A statement like “that’s problematic …” should start a conversation rather than end it.

Academics tend to use “critical” to mean “nuanced.” An interpretation of a text or an idea can be both critical and sympathetic; the best ones usually are. That involves seeing texts and ideas as flawed products of flawed people but not expecting otherwise. It involves the student, or reader, seeing themselves as peers with the producers of the work rather than either being unworthy of the wisdom or posing as a hanging judge.

It’s a difficult position to get to, especially in the early going. It involves risking getting something wrong, or having to defend a position against someone who disagrees. It means doing the work of digging into the text beyond first impressions and sometimes fighting the urge to dismiss a frustrating piece with a zinger. (I may have done that once or twice …) But done well, it can lead to real understanding.

Sometimes open-ended questions can help. I still remember being struck when a sociology professor in college asked us why we thought the civil rights movement in the U.S. happened when it did, rather than 20 years earlier or 20 years later. It was a great question because it prevented the easy retreat to platitudes. It required actual thought. When I taught political theory, one question that quickly helped me gauge students’ comprehension was to start the session on Marx with “What did Marx like about capitalism?” (No, the answer is not “nothing.”) Until they could answer that, they couldn’t really grasp what he was trying to do. It wasn’t about whether they liked him or agreed with him; that could come later. It was about whether they had actually understood him. Without that, a summary judgment wouldn’t mean much.

That sense of being able to engage a text or an idea as an equal can take time. It takes practice. Students who grew up reading voraciously may bring it with them to college; others may need to develop it from scratch. I see it as similar to what we want democratic citizens to be able to do. Excessive deference to authority defeats the purpose of democracy, but ritualistic bashing doesn’t lead anywhere good, either. Citizens who feel able to engage with public issues and public figures as equals are the best chance for democracies to thrive. I’m much quicker to trust someone who sees flaws in both sides but can still prefer one to the other for reasons they can explain. That posture allows for persuasion as an alternative to force.

Wise and worldly readers, have you found effective ways to help students develop the “critical” posture in the sense that academics use the term? If so, I’d love to hear about it. I can be reached via email at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com, on Twitter at deandad, or on Mastodon at deandad at-sign masto (dot) ai. With permission, I’ll share some of the more interesting ones in an upcoming post.