Just How Critical Is It to Think Critically in Grad School?

It’s often said that, in grad school, you aren’t taught what to think but rather how to think. In high school and even in undergrad, there was likely an emphasis on learning factual information: in what year did Prince John sign the Magna Carta? How many countries make up the European Union? What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? In grad school, however, while you certainly have to absorb a lot of information, doing so and accurately regurgitating it will no longer be your focus. Instead, your primary task will be learning how to appropriately and expertly sift through, evaluate, and utilize that information. In brief, you will be learning how to think critically. 

The phrase “critical thinking” is bandied about a lot, but what does it actually mean? Unfortunately, a true understanding of what it means to be a critical thinker cannot be pithily encapsulated in one simple, concise definition. Don’t believe me? 

Well, Michael Scriven and Richard Paul, in an address entitled “Critical Thinking as Defined by the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking,” delivered at the Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking, defined critical thinking as “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”¹ Not terribly helpful as a definition, is it?

Fortunately, later on in that same page on criticalthinking.org, the writers provide a more broken down explanation, which I’ll summarize: we all have instinctive and often unconscious biases that color, shape, and often cloud what we think and how we think about it. Left unchecked, these biases can shape our views and conclusions in ways we don’t even realize. 

At their worst, they can even mislead us and cause us to form arguments or beliefs that are factually incorrect or logically flawed. Critical thinking is the antidote for this tendency. It counteracts our biases by reflecting not just on what we think we know but how we know it, why we believe it, what others believe, what the comparative strengths and weaknesses of each position are, and how these positions contrast and differ with each other, and so on.

This quality, this mode of thinking, is what grad school aims to instill in you. For most, it isn’t an easy or quick process. Critical thinking requires an intensity of thought that goes above and beyond the normal processing that most people apply to the information they come across. To use antivirus as an analogy, if ordinary thinking is the quick sweep, critical thinking is the complete system scan. Critical thinking involves:

• Checking the source of the information you’re being presented with
• Evaluating how self-consistent the argument being put forward is
• Evaluating how well it agrees with the existing discourse on the subject (with which, of course, you’ll need to be familiar to properly assess)
• Assessing whether the argument’s proponent makes any logical fallacies
• Being able to defend the argument in either its original or modified form or, alternatively
• Being able to counter the argument with either one of your own or that of another author (to which you will need to apply this entire process)

Learning how to perform each of these steps in isolation takes some learning—being able to synthesize them all and incorporate them into a mode of thinking that is second nature. That takes an advanced degree’s worth of learning.

The process of acquiring this mental skillset is long and involved; if you have an experience similar to mine, your teachers won’t exactly be lenient in correcting your missteps. However, it is essential that you master this. The purpose of academia is to take the single greatest asset of human evolution - our minds and intellects - and sharpen them into logical bayonets. To this end, you will be tested at every turn. 

Designing an experiment? You will need to know what hypothesis you’re testing and what question you’re asking. How will you ask those questions? What specific tests will you use? What are the possible outcomes of those tests? What do those outcomes (which may be a dark spot on a membrane or a particularly colored solution) mean? Do any of them answer the questions you initially wanted to answer? If so, do they do so exclusively? That is, do they rule out any other possible explanations? If not, what refinements or further tests could you conduct to eliminate these alternative possibilities?

Trying to answer a historical question? What are the possible answers to the question? Which ones have evidence to support them? Does all of that evidence agree, or are some of it contradictory? How solid is the evidence? Are there multiple sources? How well-verified are each of those sources? How fragmentary or complete are they? Does the better evidence favor one theory or another? Has new evidence emerged that recontextualizes or casts doubt on previous assumptions or evidence?

Doing an in-depth critique of a piece of art? What tradition is this piece a part of? Who was the artist? How reflective of their broader work is the piece? Is it exceptional in any way? What are its thematic elements? What techniques were employed in its composition? How did the prevailing culture at the time and place of its composition influence the artist? How was it received and interpreted, both in its time and subsequently? What were its influences, and what works has it gone on to influence in turn?

These are just a few examples of the kinds of questions with which you will need to contend and anticipate constantly in academia. The arena of higher learning is a sparring ground for the sharpest minds of both the present and the past. Your ideas will constantly be contested and challenged, and your ability to think critically will determine how well you can hold your ground on this battlefield.

So en garde.