If you are still following this thread, allow me to elaborate. In my comment above (4/14 @ 4:33) I suggest a better exercise would have been to write an amicus brief for both sides of the issue. My point was not to do so in order to understand how the other side thinks (the point you note in your comment above).

Your comment (“. . . in short, take the claims and compare them against evidence. THAT is true critical thinking”) is spot on. My intention was that by being forced to argue the other side you are forced to confront the facts to build an argument and if the facts don’t support the argument, the fallacious argument, itself, implodes.

Neither consensus nor passion contribute to the validity of any argument and it was not my intent to imply that either is critical thinking. They masquerade as critical thinking rather than substitute for it.

That’s got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard since 2008.

A better way to have taught critical thinking would have been to compare what the Nazi regime said about the Jewish people and compared that with how they really were. Or in short, take the claims and compare them against evidence. THAT is true critical thinking. You don’t have to fake advocacy for a side to understand where it’s coming from, and indeed, I fear that doing so sometimes can be misleading. You can’t often truly replicate how a person or group comes to their conclusions; you can only hope that the mutual interaction based on common or objective factors – such as logic – will illuminate things for all and lead to further development of stances, but the point is that you don’t always want to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes”. Doing so has utility, but can be overextended.

Critical thinking has always been less about the paradigm of “sides” and more about which line of thought has the better supporting evidence. I don’t have to advocate for the Nazi side to understand why they did what they did; I merely have to study their own stances and the context they were developed in. And from that, I can take lessons every bit as valuable as what I’d learn from advocating for a side, then having all that advocacy crushed by the weight of actual history. And I’d have gotten there sooner without having to have spent all that energy replicating the big, long trip.

I agree this is objectionable, and I wonder why more people don’t object to similar programs in college. Some hate is OK, I guess.

And the reason Althouse’s CT example is so exceptional is due to the hurdle one has to overcome to even present it. That hurdle is the possibility that the Masters Rules Committee is actually capable of conspiracy with Tiger,which conspiracy would lead to lying and allowing Tiger to cheat. In other words, Tiger and the Committee conspired and cheated together.

Posit the theories and consider the facts. Make your inferences and conclusions. Perhaps you never make a solid conclusion.

Here’s the factual situation:

On the 15th hole, Tiger hits a beautiful shot that bounces off the flag pole and into the water. What a freaking unleaky break. How unfair! Lots of irony here. Tiger is tied with the lead and remember his statement that “winning takes care of everything?” Kind of sets the stage for an alternative interpretation, the Althouse interpretation.

Tiger takes a “penalty drop” and continues his game. He finishes the days round of 18 holes and signs his score card.

A friend of a rules official sees the penalty drop on TV and brings a challenge that Tiger’s penalty drop was unlawful. The challenge is brought to the attention of the Masters Rules Committee and they rule the penalty drop was proper. An hour later, in interviews, Tiger admits facts which make his penalty drop unlawful. The facts he admits are that he took two steps away from the designated drop zone in order to avoid a grain of grass that makes striking the ball more difficult.

Wow. Since the Committee had previously ruled that Tiger’s drop was proper, the issue now is whether or not Tiger’s facts prove Tiger knew he had taken an “erroneous” penalty drop? This is important because a player is disqualified for signing an incorrect score card.

The above are the basis facts and rules. The first interpretation, the “pro-Tiger” interpretation, is that Tiger would not knowingly admit facts leading to his disqualification. Of course the main problem with this intepretation is that it requires Tiger to forget basic fundamental rules regarding the penalty drop, rules which everyone knows he knows. People believing Tiger respond that his state of mind should be credited, and it was also just a big mistake, and hey, are you calling everyone a cheater and a liar?

Yeah, Althouse says, as intepretation number two. It is at least a reasonable interpretation of the facts to consider that the Committee knew Tiger had taken an improper drop and colluded with Tiger and devised a process to allow him to continue to play. The evidence of the improper drop is there on vidoe. It’s recorded. And that evidence shows everyone that Tiger took a drop that violated the rules.

The interpretation requires something like this: The Committee tells Tiger, we’ll rule the drop proper if you later admit it was improper. Now your admission won’t be a confession. You won’t be admitting you knew you took an erroneous drop, but by relating the details, it will be apparent that the penalty drop was in violation of the rules. That way, the whole issue of whether or not we as the Committee made a bad ruling will be moot. Then, we will absolve you of the issue of signing an incorrect scorecard by saying we could not impose the harsh penalty of disqualification because our earlier decision failed to inform you that you had made an unlawful penalty drop.

Now, which is more likely: That Tiger forgets a basic rule of golf or that the promoters and Tiger conspired, lied and cheated in order to keep Tiger in play.

Which would have been a great follow up lesson after the essays were written.

This is not surprising. Guilds have always been exclusionary. Their purpose is to protect their members not serve the market place. You are a guild member or you are not; you are a member of the Socialist party or you are not. Many people forget that even in the U.S. unions originally excluded blacks.

Today, many unions don’t even protect their members—they protect their union leaders even at the expense of their membership.

Some very interesting history about this can be found here.

So they were mostly excluded, and then they were blamed for it.

Mead: . . . it’s much easier to get students to memorize facts than to get them to think about them. This may be more true of history than of other fields . . .

This is why I truly believe that art history is a truly unsung discipline of major importance.

[Pardon the following pseudo-commercial announcement]

When I taught art history, I always approached it as a fingerprint of culture, not as a history of style. I had the advantage actually illustrating the effect of historical change as opposed to simply ruminating over its theory.

One can compare the art of the Renaissance and Reformation to the Counter-Reformation and actually see the difference wrought by ideology, conquest, legislation and social structure. One can compare the Impressionists to the Salon tradition and suddenly those upstarts take on a personality that enlivens the world in which they live (all the better to learn its history).

I often received comments from students that they learned much more history in class than they ever expected to; this, IMO, is as it should be.