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Hello, and welcome to this tutorial on what it means to be a critical student.
One of the most important distinguishing features of Higher Education study is the extent to
which you are expected to be 'critical'.
The following quote from the classic satirical novel, Catch-22, in many ways sums up what
being critical - indeed, what being at University - is all about.
The ability to think and act critically is very closely linked to the ability to ask
questions - to question your lecturers, to question your fellow students and last, but
not least, to question your own ideas, beliefs and attitudes.
Across universities, academics - who rarely agree about anything - are united, at least,
in their firm belief that students should be critical. At this point, you might be entertaining
the entirely reasonable assumption that, given such a collective strength of feeling, there
must be a clear and consistent definition of what it actually means to be critical.
Unfortunately, you would be wrong. As Barnett (1997) has pointed out:
'Critical thinking is a defining concept of the Western university. Almost everyone is
in favour of critical thinking, but we have no proper account of it'.
The remainder of this tutorial aims to provide a clearer explanation of what it does, indeed,
mean to be a critical student.
To help us illustrate what it means to be a critical student, we would like you to forget
for a moment about studying textbooks and writing essays, and imagine instead that you’re
looking to rent or buy a new apartment.
Early on in your search you notice the following advert on an estate agent’s website for
a place within your price range:
Now, upon reading this, an exceedingly uncritical person might think: 'Perfect, that sounds
like just what I’m looking for, I’ll take it immediately!'
Most of us, however, would want to know a great deal more before making such a commitment.
We would want to see the apartment for ourselves, in order to judge if the advert was valid.
We would have numerous questions to ask about the apartment in order to come to a more informed
judgement about it.
Last, but not least, we would want to examine critically other apartments and compare and
contrast the alternatives before deciding which was the best one for us.
Only once we felt satisfied that that our questions had been answered and that we had
explored alternatives would we feel confident to decide one way or another.
Importantly, even if we eventually concluded that the original apartment was, after all,
the one we wanted, and that the advert had been highly accurate and fair, we would still
consider the preceding process of close scrutiny, questioning and comparison with alternatives
to have been a valuable, indeed vital, one. Without having gone through this process,
how could we know if our decision was the right one?
So what’s all this got to do with being a critical student, and why is finding a new
apartment in anyway similar to studying for a degree?
Well, first of all, we’re not suggesting for a second, that the people who write the
textbooks and journal articles you encounter on your course are in the same sort of business
as estate agents! Far from it!
They are, however, in the business of persuasion and argument and, as such, the material they
write should be treated with a certain degree of caution together with a healthy, respectful
scepticism. You should certainly not accept arguments without first scrutinising and asking
questions about them. And, you should definitely reserve any judgements or conclusions until
you’ve had a chance to properly examine and explore what others have to say on the
same subject. Crucially, all of this is just as important for the arguments you like and
agree with as it is for those you’re not that keen on or disagree with.
In other words, although the processes of studying for a degree and finding an apartment
are very different in lots of ways, in both cases a critical stance, or attitude, is crucial
to success.
To summarise, then, a student who adopts a critical stance or attitude to their subject
is one who does the following things:
maintains a healthy scepticism, even when it comes to ideas they like and agree with
does not accept arguments or ideas before first checking what alternatives are on offer
And finally, asks lots and lots of questions.