What's Missing in Critical Thinking?

An unsupported opinion is worthless.

Approximately 456 years ago I was a seventh and eighth grade music teacher on the West side of Chicago. The curriculum was teaching these budding adolescents how to read music, play recorders, sing children’s songs. Standard elementary school fare.

Being who I was (and am to this day) I went another direction. The seventh grade focused on the instruments that create the music, the science behind sound, the construction of brand new instruments out of junk they brought in. The eighth grade was treated to my college music history text and learned about every style of music I could fit in. Both groups, every Monday, were required to write a Critical Listening Essay.

The rules were relatively simple. One week I’d pick a piece of music for them to listen to—jazz, rock, opera, orchestral, blues, reggae, Gregorian chant. They’d sit quietly and listen. Then we’d listen a second time and they would write down what they heard. The third listen, they would then write a review of the music.

“Anyone—any moron—can tell me that it sucks. Your opinion is only as valuable as your ability to explain why you have it. If the best you have is to tell me how it sucks or it’s awesome, I don’t have a bit of respect for your opinion. Eventually, you learn to skate across the surface of any opinion you have about things more important than your reaction to a bit of music. Compare and contrast, list how it makes you feel, whatever you write it needs to expand on the idea that it sucks or is great by giving me understanding. Convince me you’re right rather expect I’ll just take your word for it.”

Once they got the hang of it I’d let one of them choose the piece of music from what they regularly listened to. It made it fun and more personal. One week, here’s some Dvorak, the next might be some Hip Hop. We’d spend a little time talking about their reasoning and hone their critical knives. It was a back door to just getting them to expand their musical repertoire. It was also a method to get them thinking critically about, well, everything else.

The difficulty with much of the discourse surrounding the Critical Theory movement is that many of the conclusions of the theories are stated aggressively but are weak on rationale. Held up to even a bit of scrutiny, evidence, and empirical data, it tends to fall apart. This is not to say that the opinions are not honestly held just that the hard work of looking deeply into the reasons and the facts on the ground is not being done. Lots of theory and not a whole of substantive criticism. I’d further suggest that this is likewise the issue with many of our current culture war issues.

I’m predisposed to this sort fact-checking mentality—I’m a natural contrarian, a skeptic, and I love to argue. My debate coach in high school, Mr. Warren, drilled into my developing brain that for every assertion made there needed to be at least three credible sources backing up the claim. Each and every statement of perceived fact sends me into a spin and search for corroboration. I’m such a hardass about it that my family loves nothing more when I get something wrong—correcting me is a familial past time.

“Anyone—any moron—can parrot a talking point fed to the media to underscore an agenda. Your opinion is only as valuable as your ability to back it up.”

A couple of thoughts along those lines:

• A handful of isolated examples caught on a smartphone video does not constitute a trend, an emergency, or an epidemic.

• A statistical fact from ten or fifteen years ago is no longer a statistical fact. That’s not how statistics work.

• There are no monolithic groups in a planet with seven billion people. Reducing whole groups into an easy mindset is stereotyping. Anyone who claims to “speak for” an entire population is a grifter.

• “Lived experience” is an academic term for “personal opinion.”

• Most headlines in media are designed to convince you to read or watch so they are wholly manipulative.

• Social media is a horrible place to gain authentic information or insight.

• History is a brilliant teacher of perspective.

I’d like to hope that in the decade I taught in Chicago at least a few of those kids, now adults, have managed to avoid the rhetoric of the culture wars. I’d like to hope that one or two can see past the unsubstantiated opinions they hear and read. At the very least, I hope they do some critical assessment of their most heartfelt beliefs, interrogates them, and come out better informed and ready to defend their ideas.