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The Chronicle Review

June 18, 2015

What 'Learning How to Think' ReallyMeansBy Barry Schwartz

t has always been taken as self-evident that higher education is

good for students and society at large, and that American

colleges and universities are doing an excellent job of providing it.

No more. Commentators, politicians, and parents are expressing

serious doubts, about whether colleges are teaching what they

should be teaching and about whether they are teaching it well.

Demands for accountability are everywhere, spurred in part by the

absurdly high cost of a college education and the trillion dollars in

student debt. What are students getting for all that money? What

should they be getting?

Two years ago, the Obama White House launched an admirable

initiative to make college more affordable and accessible. A part of

that initiative was an insistence that colleges be held accountable

— that federal aid be tied to measures of performance. This

accounting was to be done of both graduation rates and the

earnings profiles of graduates, an attempt to measure educational

value literally, by asking if the cost of a college education pays for

itself. Recently the Brookings Institution moved us a further step in

that direction when it introduced a rating system that ranks

colleges by the midcareer earnings of their graduates, student-loan

repayment, and the projected earning power of the occupations

that graduates pursue.

Many academics regard this reliance on financial outcomes as an

indicator of educational quality as philistinism, but one cannot

reasonably expect students or their parents to shell out a quarter

of a million dollars (the price of many highly selective institutions)

and be indifferent to what they will earn when they graduate.

Besides, if earnings are not a good measure of educational value,

then what is? Colleges can’t get away with smug silence on that

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question any longer. Society demands an answer.

Colleges andemployers alike saythey want studentswho know how tothink. But what does itmean to “know how tothink”?

Universities that offer specialized training in specific professions

have an answer: "We’re training the next generation of nurses,

accountants, physical therapists, teachers, software engineers,

etc., etc." Whether they do it well or not is a legitimate issue, but

that they should be doing it is not much in dispute. For programs

in the liberal arts, however, the answers are not straightforward.

You often hear defenders of liberal-arts education suggest that

their goal is less to teach the specifics of a particular discipline or

profession than to teach students how to think. It is hard to quarrel

with this goal, and it is echoed by those who frequently intone

about how fast the technological world is changing and how

important it is to have a flexible and innovative work force. Just as

the academy wants to teach students how to think, employers

want to hire students who know how to think.

But what does it mean to "know how to think"? Is there one right

way to think? If so, what is it? Every educator wants students to

learn how to think. But nobody really knows what that means. We

have to do better. We have to specify in greater detail what

"learning how to think" requires and then ask ourselves if colleges

and universities are meeting this goal.

nowing how to think demands a set of cognitive skills —

quantitative ability, conceptual flexibility, analytical

acumen, expressive clarity. But beyond those skills, learning how

to think requires the development of a set of intellectual virtues

that make good students, good professionals, and good citizens. I

use the word "virtues," as opposed to "skills," deliberately. As

Aristotle knew, all of the traits I will discuss have a fundamental

moral dimension. I won’t provide an exhaustive list of intellectual

virtues, but I will provide a list, just to get the conversation started.

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Love of truth. Students need to love the truth to be good students.

Without this intellectual virtue, they will get things right only

because we punish them for getting things wrong. When a

significant minority of Americans reject evolution and global

warming out of hand, the desire to find the truth can’t be taken for

granted.

It has become intellectually fashionable to attack the very notion

of truth. You have your truth, and I have mine. You have one truth

today, but you may have a different one tomorrow. Everything is

relative, a matter of perspective. People who claim to know the

"truth," it is argued, are in reality just using their positions of

power and privilege to shove their truth down other people’s

throats.

This turn to relativism is in part a reflection of something good and

important that has happened to intellectual inquiry. People have

caught on to the fact that much of what the intellectual elite

thought was the truth was distorted by limitations of perspective.

Slowly the voices of the excluded have been welcomed into the

conversation. And their perspectives have enriched our

understanding. But the reason they have enriched our

understanding is that they have given the rest of us an important

piece of the truth that was previously invisible to us. Not their

truth, but the truth. It is troubling to see how quickly an

appreciation that each of us can attain only a partial grasp of the

truth degrades into a view that there really isn’t any truth out there

to be grasped.

Finding the truth is hard. Relativism makes intellectual life easier.

There is no need to struggle through disagreements to get to the

bottom of things if there is no bottom of things. Everyone is

entitled to an opinion — the great democratization of knowledge.

Love of truth is an intellectual virtue because its absence has

serious moral consequences. Relativism chips away at our

fundamental respect for one another as human beings. When

people have respect for the truth, they seek it out and speak it in

dialogue. Once truth becomes suspect, debates become little more

than efforts at manipulation. Instead of trying to enlighten or

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persuade people by giving them reasons to see things as we do, we

can use any form of influence we think will work. This is what

political "spin" is all about.

Honesty. Honesty enables students to face the limits of what they

themselves know; it encourages them to own up to their mistakes.

And it allows them to acknowledge uncongenial truths about the

world. Most colleges encourage a kind of honesty: Don’t

plagiarize, don’t cheat. But it is uncommon to see students

encouraged to "face up to your ignorance and error," or "accept

this unpleasant truth and see how you can mitigate its effects

instead of denying it."

Fair-mindedness. Students need to be fair-minded in evaluating

the arguments of others. There is a substantial literature in

psychology on what is called "motivated reasoning," our almost

uncanny ability to emphasize evidence that is consistent with

what we already believe, or want to believe, and to ignore evidence

that is inconsistent. This may be especially true in the moral

domain. As the psychologist Jonathan Haidt pointed out in his

book The Righteous Mind (Pantheon, 2012), people use reason

more like a lawyer who is making a case than like a judge who is

deciding one.

Humility. Humility allows students to face up to their own

limitations and mistakes and to seek help from others. As Carol

Tavris and Elliot Aronson wrote in their book, Mistakes Were Made,

but Not by Me (Harcourt, 2007), we often hear people use passive

constructions when describing failures. Students say things like "I

got an A," but "she gave me a C."

Perseverance. Students need perseverance, since little that is

worth knowing or doing comes easily. At the moment, we’re

cultivating the opposite. Worried that our students suffer from

collective ADD and will give us bad course ratings if we make them

struggle, we are dumbing down our courses to cater to short

attention spans. We assign a TED talk instead of a journal article; a

popular (and short) book instead of a scholarly one. We don’t

appreciate that perseverance (or the related attribute, "grit") is

more like a muscle that needs to be developed than a natural

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resource that needs to be excavated.

Courage. Students need intellectual courage to stand up for what

they believe is true, sometimes in the face of disagreement from

others, including people in authority, like their professors. And

they need courage to take risks, to pursue intellectual paths that

might not pan out.

Good listening. Students can’t learn from others, or from their

professors, without listening. It takes courage to be a good listener,

because good listeners know that their own views of the world,

along with their plans for how to live in it, may be at stake

whenever they have a serious conversation.

Perspective-taking and empathy. It may seem odd to list

perspective-taking and empathy as intellectual virtues, but it takes

a great deal of intellectual sophistication to get perspective-taking

right. Young children "feel" for a peer who is upset but are clueless

about how to comfort her. They try to make a crying child feel

better by doing what would make them feel better. And teachers,

at all levels, must overcome "the curse of knowledge." If they can’t

remind themselves of what they were like before they understood

something well, they will be at a loss to explain it to their students.

Everything is obvious once you know it.

Workplaces needpeople who haveintellectual virtues,but workplaces are notin a good position toinstill them. Collegesshould be doing thisfor them.

Perspective-taking and empathy pay enormous dividends in

professional life. In his wonderful book, Critical Decisions (Harper

Collins, 2012), Peter Ubel, a professor and physician at Duke

University, makes a compelling case that while the physician

paternalism of the old days is happily gone, it has been replaced by

an equally inadequate model of "patient autonomy" in which

doctors present the data and patients make the decisions. Though

it is true that doctors can’t tell prostate-cancer patients whether or

not to have surgery, it is also true that patients can’t figure it out on

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their own.

Good decisions require both medical expertise and an

understanding of the patient’s unique life circumstances. They

require shared decision-making. But for that sort of doctor-patient

conversation, doctors have to be good listeners who are able to

take the perspective of their patients. Moreover, medicine in the

developed world has increasingly become a matter of managing

chronic disease rather than curing acute disease. But the

management of chronic disease (diabetes, hypertension, cardiac

insufficiency, musculoskeletal pain) often makes difficult

demands on patients to change how they live. A list of lifestyle

changes is of little use. Most people know what to do. The problem

is how to motivate them to do it. It takes empathetic, perspective-

taking medical providers to get patients to work as partners in

managing their diseases.

Similarly in law, knowledge of the law may be the key to effective

advocacy, but by itself, it will not tell lawyers what they have to

know about clients who need to be counseled. A good lawyer

needs to know the client as well as the law.

And in education, good teachers eschew one-size-fits-all lesson

plans and opt, instead, to reach each student where she is. But if

the teacher can’t gain insight into the thoughts and aspirations of

each student, the one-size-fits-all lesson plan is the best he can do.

Wisdom. Finally, students need what Aristotle called practical

wisdom. Any of the intellectual virtues I’ve mentioned can be

carried to an extreme. Wisdom is what enables us to find the

balance (Aristotle called it the "mean") between timidity and

recklessness, carelessness and obsessiveness, flightiness and

stubbornness, speaking up and listening up, trust and skepticism,

empathy and detachment. Wisdom is also what enables us to

make difficult decisions when intellectual virtues conflict. Being

empathetic, fair, and open-minded often rubs up against fidelity to

the truth. Practical wisdom is the master virtue.

My argument for wisdom as the manager of the other intellectual

virtues has a parallel in the writings of Thomas Kuhn, whose The

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Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) changed the way people

think about science. Indeed, it changed the way some people think

about almost everything. Kuhn’s point was that scientific progress

could not be understood as a logical, rule-governed advance in

understanding that accumulates brick by brick, fact by fact. There

have been periods in which science seemed to move in one

direction, but also periods of upheaval, when everything changed.

Few such "revolutionary" periods were produced by a key new

fact. So the lesson that many nonscientists drew from Kuhn was

that truth is arbitrary, and that scientific change is as much about

intellectual fashion as about progress. Kuhn was appalled by this

conclusion and tried to make clear that just because scientific

advance was not governed by rules did not mean that it was

arbitrary. Scientists, he argued, adhere to what he called

"epistemic values" — simplicity, accuracy, comprehensiveness,

fruitfulness — that make some theories better than others. Values

are not rules, so scientists can disagree about how important each

value is and how well a given explanation exemplifies each value.

But scientists do tend to converge on allegiances to certain

theories for good, non-arbitrary reasons. This convergence reflects

the collective wisdom of science. My list of intellectual virtues

plays the same role in understanding good thinking that epistemic

values play in understanding good science.

n my view, the way to defend the value of college is to defend

the importance of intellectual virtues and then show that the

education that colleges provide is successful at cultivating those

virtues. Cultivation of intellectual virtues is not in conflict with

training in specific occupations. On the contrary, intellectual

virtues will help to create a work force that is flexible, able to admit

to and learn from mistakes, and open to change. People with

intellectual virtues will be persistent, ask for help when they need

it, provide help when others need it, and not settle for expedient

but inaccurate solutions to tough problems. In the Stanford

business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer’s important book The Human

Equation (Harvard Business School Press, 1998), he argues that the

right way to hire is to focus on the skills you don’t know how to

train, and trust that you can teach the skills you do know how to

train. Workplaces need people who have intellectual virtues, but

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workplaces are not in a good position to instill them. Colleges and

universities should be doing this training for them.

Students with trainingin the liberal arts willbe not only betterpeople and bettercitizens but also betterprofessionals andemployees.

Are they? Few colleges and universities think systematically about

how to encourage intellectual virtues. Mostly their cultivation is

left to chance, not to institutional design. Aristotle argued that

virtues are developed through practice, and by watching those

who have mastered the relevant virtues. Professors have to model

intellectual virtue in their everyday behavior. The questions we ask

in class teach students how to ask questions. How we pursue

dialogue models reflectiveness. Students watch who we call on, or

don’t, and learn about fairness. We teach them when and how to

interrupt by when and how we interrupt. We teach them how to

listen by how carefully we listen. If they see us admitting that we

don’t know something, we encourage intellectual honesty as well

as humility. We are always modeling. And the students are always

watching. We need to do it better. A good start is to do it

deliberately and not by accident.

Most professors do not have the luxury of teaching small classes

and seminars, as I do, and it is hard to model intellectual virtues

when one is lecturing to 300 students. Nor do I envision a time

when small classes will be commonplace at large institutions.

Nonetheless, I think there are practices that can enhance the

cultivation of virtue, even if they are imperfect substitutes for

teacher-student dialogue.

In Poetic Justice (Beacon Press, 1995), the philosopher Martha

Nussbaum makes the point, in discussing virtue more generally,

that narrative fiction is a good tool for displaying people living

virtuous or not so virtuous lives in a way that provides vividness

and specificity that didactic classroom instruction lacks. Providing

students with narratives (they needn’t be fictitious) of people

displaying intellectual virtues may be a good way to make the best

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of student-faculty ratios that are inhospitable to having professors

model these virtues for their students.

or the most part, students come to Swarthmore, where I have

been teaching for almost 45 years, wanting and expecting

that their education will be broad and their interactions with

faculty significant. But now, even here, this model of liberal-arts

education is being challenged, as students come hellbent on

learning something that will make them employable (it seems as

though every student at Swarthmore has at least a minor in

computer science). Liberal-arts education is a precious jewel, and

we must do a more serious job of defending it.

It was an axiom of the social and political upheavals of the 1960s

and 1970s that "you can’t take down the master’s house with the

master’s tools." What this means in the context of higher

education is that you can’t discover the deep limitations of

economics by studying only economics. You can’t uncover the

deep limitations of genetics or evolutionary biology by studying

only genetics and evolutionary biology. To see the limitations of a

discipline — any discipline — requires a perspective developed at

least partly outside that discipline. General education is not a

substitute for disciplinary expertise. What it is, however, is an

essential ingredient to keep disciplines from running around in

circles and swallowing their own tails. General education enriches

the specialized training in the disciplines.

The challenges to colleges and universities are coming from all

sides. The White House wants to make sure that future earnings

justify current costs. Parents faced with six-figure tuition bills join

the chorus, as do students faced with backbreaking debt. As if

more pressure were needed, employers want to hire people who

can do the job "right out of the box." They want "plug-and-play"

employees.

I am not sure that even institutions inclined to resist this pressure

will be able to. To do so, colleges must articulate their unique

value in real detail, and in a way that makes clear that students

who have training in the liberal arts will be not only better people

and better citizens but also better professionals and employees.

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The right way for colleges and universities to defend themselves is

by describing themselves as nurturers of intellectual virtues and

then devoting themselves to that task.

David Brooks, in his new book, The Road to Character (Random

House), distinguishes between what he calls "résumé virtues" and

"eulogy virtues." The former are the skills that get you good grades,

good jobs, nice houses, and hefty bank accounts. The latter are

what make you a good person. Though I think the distinction

between skills and virtues is an important one, Brooks is wrong to

imply that résumé virtues are all that we need to produce

excellence at work, or that eulogy virtues are for what comes after

one’s work has ceased. Eulogy virtues are just as important to

becoming good doctors, good lawyers, good teachers, good nurses,

good physical therapists, and even good bankers as are résumé

virtues. And they are also important to becoming good children,

parents, spouses, friends, and citizens. As Aristotle knew, virtue is

needed for material success just as it is needed for moral success.

Barry Schwartz is a professor of social theory and social action at

Swarthmore College and the author, with Kenneth Sharpe, of

Practical Wisdom (Riverhead Books, 2010). His new book, Why We

Work (Simon & Schuster/TED), will be published in September.

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11259960 • 6 days agoAlways been self­evident? No. Have a look at the history of history educationbefore writing throw­away lines that simply aren't true. A set of mixed personalitytraits is not the same as "knowing how to think." As a professor of the humanities,I am embarrassed that we so seldom advance a cogent AND knowing case forourselves or anything. resembling HIGHER education. The problem is only inpart, to use this writer's word, "philistinism."

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11259960 • 6 days agothat should be "history of higher education"

• Reply •

nowak • 6 days agoWOW! What a lecture!

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IkeRoberts • 6 days ago

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IkeRoberts • 6 days agoAll of these virtues take practice, just like perseverance. What I especially likeabout this is that you can't "just Google it" for any of them.

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trendisnotdestiny • 6 days agoThis article is a good conversation starter. When I was reading it, I was thinking ofTony Benn, the now deceased British, socialist parliamentarian. ParaphrasedBenn suggests: 'it is much easier to govern a people when they lack resourcesaround health, time, education, and retirement.'

By expending a lifetime of energy on tasks that should be a public good, we seehow the public is herded into the cattle stall of education ­­ waiting to be fed. AsChris Hedges puts its ­­­ colleges and universities are teaching students what tothink instead of how to think. There is a wonderful book by Robert Proctor andLonda Schiebinger called Agnotology (the study of ignorance) which alsocaptures an important part of this meme.

The place where I would spend the most time helping students develop criticalthinking skills ­­ would be around the origins of the public relations field (AdamCurtis' documentaries) as well as the process called financialization (where theneoliberal think tanks, economists, corporatists hijacked the last vestiges of ourdemocracy and turned it into a mall. Public relations (Lying for Professionals) andFinances (Monetary shell games) are the most fruitful places to teach criticalthinking skills as most of despise being lied to and cheated financially.

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Gopher63 • a day ago> trendisnotdestiny

Of course the alternative to college and hopefully learning how to think(and not what to think) is what many in the public experience: being taughtwhat to think, by those with religious or other ideological and politicalagendas. The number of people who rant on newspaper forums that"Evolution is a lie", etc., is distressingly large.

• Reply •

DF • 6 days agoIs the corollary view that plumbers and electricians do not know how to think?College is for people who like to think, but it's hardly the sine qua non for learningto think that this piece seems to suggest. There's a fine line at the edge ofpretentiousness and I think you may have wandered across a couple of times, asI did with a Latin prhase.

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shawnpg • 6 days ago> DF

Excellent point which begs the question, "How much credit should acollege get for 'educating' someone who already knows how to think?" Ihave many friends in the professions you describe who put my knowledgeof literature, music, history, politics to shame but some are self­consciousabout their lack of "formal" education. They seem to think that they are atsome kind of intellectual disadvantage for having not gone to college andthey don't believe me when I tell them that those with college degrees donot have any sort of magic understanding of the world that they lack.

Let's take a close look at those who don't need to be taught thesignificance and love of thinking.

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Reythia • 6 days ago> shawnpg

Agreed. I've noted that a lot of people tend to ignore the fact thatthe knowledge taught in liberal arts classes is often learned by a lotof people without a formal degree in those majors. As you noted,there are plenty of non­college­educated folks to learn a lot on theirown. And even more, people who get college degrees in non­liberal­arts majors are also often interested in history, literature,

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liberal­arts majors are also often interested in history, literature,economics, etc. We take individual classes and/or teachourselves, both in college and for decades after ­­ library books arefree, after all!

It seems to me that you can learn the skills and knowledge of amajor without formally getting the degree.

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• Reply •

Unemployed_Northeastern • 6 days ago> Reythia

"I've noted that a lot of people tend to ignore the fact that theknowledge taught in liberal arts classes is often learned bya lot of people without a formal degree in those majors."

That goes both ways, of course. What do Bill Gates, SteveJobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Nikolai Tesla, Thomas Edison,Henry Ford, Pierre de Fermat, Isambard Kingdom Brunel,and approximately 90% of IT workers have in common? NoSTEM degree. Hell, Fermat was a lawyer, so maybe there'shope for me yet...

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99Luftballons • 6 days ago

see more

> Unemployed_Northeastern

U_N, 90% is too high in the current market, and the keypoint for the rest is they mainly started their own companiesso that there was no need to convince an employer of theirvalue. Starting your own company is key in a world ofcredentialism or being able to get your app to go viral.

These gross numbers seem to reflect the Dot Com Boomand other aspects like industry certifications from Microsoft,CISCO and the like. But IT people have generally beenexpected to train themselves especially for the latest fads.

* Only about a third of the IT workforce has an IT­relatedcollege degree.

* 36 percent of IT workers do not hold a college degree atall.

* Only 24 percent of IT workers have a four­year

• Reply •

99Luftballons • 6 days ago> Unemployed_Northeastern

U_N, Shakespeare had no college degree and neither didSocrates, Plato, Xenophon, Alcibiades, Hesiod, Homer,Herodotus, Pericles or Thucydides.

Reythia • 5 days ago> Unemployed_Northeastern

Half right, half wrong. Yes, you're obviously right that thereare some prominent individuals who are largely self­taught.That was particularly true in the 1970­90s, when theresimply wasn't an older generation with large amounts ofcomputer experience to be taught BY. The students (ornon­students, as the case might be) knew as much as theirteachers, since their teachers knew so little and thingswere changing so fast. So yes, agreed.

On the other hand, my seven years of living in IT­philicAustin, TX, taught me that your 90% approximation isWAAAAAY off. I know a LOT of Austin­area IT workers,working for places like IBM, AMD, Samsung, etc, and not a

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see more

working for places like IBM, AMD, Samsung, etc, and not aone of them that I've met doesn't have at least a bachelorsin something relevant, and often a masters as well. Themost typical degrees were in computer science, computerengineering, and electrical engineering of course, but I'veknown several with degrees in things like physics,

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• Reply •

shawnpg • 2 days ago> Unemployed_Northeastern

Jobs and Gates couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.

• Reply •

Unemployed_Northeastern • 2 days ago> shawnpg

Nor, I suspect, can Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley VC, neo­Randian libertarian godhead, and... a philosophy major.

• Reply •

Gopher63 • a day ago> DF

Agreed, but as I posted elsewhere, tradespeople and others are alsoexposed to those who preach what to think usually baseless propaganda.

• Reply •

crowfoot • 6 days agoThis topic is at the heart of higher education and is increasingly important becausehigher education has major responsibility for and culpability for environmentalunsustainability. It has promoted a limited way of thinking along with the hubris toadvocate and claim it is the best and most advanced epistomology. In realitymultiple ways of knowing as manifested in different cultures including particularlyindigenous/traditional cultures as they are minimally impacted by scientism in thecontext of Western industrial culture, are essential to understand, appreciate andrespect. Many if not most such cultures accept a deep interdependence withnature from which they learn and for which they exhibit deep respect on whichthey ground their understandings of social relations and particularly community. Ihave been helped in understanding the above by C.A. Bowers and morespecifically his book, Revitalizing the Commons; Cultural and Educational Sites ofResistance and Affirmation (2006) and integral philosophy through the writings ofKen Wilbur and more specifically Sean Esbjorn­Hargens' "Integral Teacher,Integral Students, Integral Classroom: Applying Integral Theory to Education"(http://nextstepintegral.org/wp... June 17, 20150

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11299051 • 6 days agoThinking skills require hard work to develop and maintain. I am reminded of aformer student who, when questioned about a regrettable lack of preparedness forclass, shrugged his shoulders and said, "it's only hard work if you do it." I'mfinding fewer people willing to commit to this level of hard work.

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educationnet2007 • 6 days agoWhat impressed me was Schwartz' attempt to define how to think. It's adiscussion starter, not a discussion ender. Although my limited mind cannot focuson all the principles (I guess that's the word I want) at the same time, I can sensewhere students need the most help and use the one or two ideas that seem to fit.For me, grit has come up more frequently than any other needed virtue. I failed topursue mathematics, not because I don't have a "flair" for them, but because Igave up too soon, too easily. So it is with many, many students in highereducation. "Good on you, Barry!" Thanks.

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Sam Yang • 6 days ago

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6/24/2015 What 'Learning How to Think' Really Means ­ The Chronicle Review ­ The Chronicle of Higher Education

http://chronicle.com/article/What­Learning­How­to­Think/230965/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en 14/20

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Sam Yang • 6 days agoWhat an articulate treatise on thinking.

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fmorriso9 • 6 days ago> Sam Yang

I agree. 1

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Babagranny • 6 days agoThis is indeed a starting point for a healthy discussion. But I wonder at theauthor's observation: "Few colleges and universities think systematically abouthow to encourage intellectual virtues. Mostly their cultivation is left to chance, notto institutional design." Having visited many colleges and universities onaccreditation visits, I find that most of them do in fact systematically approach thischallenge, not only in the humanities but also in professional education such asengineering, architecture, law, etc. Regional accreditation requires colleges tooffer degree programs that include "general education." I can tell you that theycontinually struggle officially and sincerely with this concept and how to ensurethat students achieve the intellectual abilities that are desired and/or intended. Butthis is not easy. As the Seabees said in WWII, "The difficult we do at once. Theimpossible takes a little longer."

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22235571 • 6 days agoI have been reading the Chronicle for more than 17 years, and this is the bestarticle I have read in all that time. Kudos to Barry!

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shivaji28 • 6 days ago

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This is an excellent article. My colleague, Professor Rene Ramirez calls the list of"intellectual virtues" Prof. Schwartz has given, "epistemic virtues." In an paper Dr.Ramirez wrote on the subject in his book, "Within Reason" (2014) he argues thatepistemic virtues, when practised, allow us to know and interact with the worldthrough some fundamental moral bases. Moral ­ to me ­ is our sense of right, fromwrong: don't do to others what you don't want done to you; or vice versa.Professor Barry Schwartz might find Ramirez' article interesting.

But what makes these intellectual/epistemic virtues possible to be practised?

In my, and Professor Ramirez' institution, Boricua College in New York City, aprivate not­for­profit liberal arts institution, we have two compulsory sets ofcourses that focus on students' intellectual skills development, and thedevelopment of their affective skills. Students have to take these two courses, atdeeper levels of complexity throughout their tenure at the College ­­ fromfreshman to the master's ­­as they study subject matter knowledge.

Affective Skills courses, given as seminars, through structured curricula developstudents' ability to listen, respond and engage in values clarification as they

Socratease2 • 6 days agoIntellectual virtues sound swell and all but since when is "truth" itself a virtue? Ican see "a search for truth" as a human virtue but, even there, what a fool's game.What kind of truth is Schwartz referring to? The truth about which minerals are thehardest? The truth of the meaning of life? These are very different kinds of truth.

"Finding the truth is hard. Relativism makes intellectual life easier. There is no need to struggle through disagreements to get to the bottom of things if there is no bottom of things."

Yeah, it's hard because it is mostly impossible unless you are simply willing tosubstitute "group consensus" for "truth." Schwartz is saying that everythingeventually has "a bottom?" I guess if you want it to. And how does relativism

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6/24/2015 What 'Learning How to Think' Really Means ­ The Chronicle Review ­ The Chronicle of Higher Education

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make life easier? Relativism is a problem of which "shoulds" need to be believedin, as in, "you should believe in Christ in order to be a good person," or "Youshould never have more than one wife at the same time." Relativism in humanaffairs points out the absurdity of trying to define universal human norms or to findunitary truths.

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michael317 • 6 days ago> Socratease2

Aspiring to truth does not mean proclaiming absolute and eternal truth(leave that to religion). "Truth" to many of us is an informed hypothesis,tested by the best empirical evidence available. The next time you fly onan airplane you're relying on multiple tested hypotheses aboutaerodynamics. Improvements and refinements certainly will come, butwe've captured enough truth to give you a margin of safety.

One of the best statements about the ongoing nature of truth­seeking inthe sciences can be found in Richard Feynman's Nobel Prize banquetspeech. Note his reference to "further mysteries" always left to explore. _______________"Imagination reaches out repeatedly trying to achieve some higher level ofunderstanding, until suddenly I find myself momentarily alone before onenew corner of nature's pattern of beauty and true majesty revealed. Thatwas my reward.

Then, having fashioned tools to make access easier to the new level, I seethese tools used by other men straining their imaginations against furthermysteries beyond. There, are my votes of recognition."

_________________

This tentative, yet cumulative process is how finite beings try tounderstand truth. It's quite different from throwing up our hands and saying"all truth is relative."

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Babagranny • 6 days ago> michael317

I've always assumed that "the search for truth" is in itself the goal.What is it that we proclaim to be the truth? If one is honestly andsincerely and actively committed to "finding the truth" I think that initself is the desirable intellectual virtue we wish to instill in students.

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Socratease2 • 6 days ago> michael317

As long as empirical evidence is the standard then I am all for truthstatements, it is when the subject involves human understandingsof non­empirical subjects that the search for truth with a capital Tstarts to break down. I can't remember where I read this quip and Ican't quote exactly but something to the effect of: To those whoclaim they are searchers of truth I have nothing but respect, tothose who say they have found the truth, I have nothing butdisgust.

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mkt42 • 4 days ago> Socratease2

Schwartz didn't say that truth is a virtue; he said that love of truth is avirtue. Big difference.

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Brown_Dog • 6 days agoThanks to our political parties and their love of the testing industry, education hasbeen defined as knowing facts and obtaining fairly minor skills that can beobtained in a 16 week semester. If there was any idea concerning the concept ofthinking, reasoning and developing it over several years in our state and federalgovernments, it died of loneliness years ago. No better example of this can be

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6/24/2015 What 'Learning How to Think' Really Means ­ The Chronicle Review ­ The Chronicle of Higher Education

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governments, it died of loneliness years ago. No better example of this can befound than the Texas Republican's platform wanting to do away with criticalthinking years ago, and the resurrection of this same idea in Wisconsin with ScottWalker and his band seeking removal of the Wisconsin Idea from education.

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tuliptree • 6 days agoThis article is baffling. It states the intention of addressing "how to think," as aproper goal for colleges and universities. But it skips over the elements of criticalthinking and lands on a set of virtues that are more like desirable character traits.These virtues would of course be desirable in any person, but post­secondaryeducation is far from the only venue where they are learned and practiced. As Iread, the people who came to mind as having these virtues were almost entirelypeople with no education beyond high school. And it also seems to me that theprocess of gaining admission to a selective college these days actuallydiscourages the development of several of them ­­ especially humility andcourage.

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willynilly • 6 days agoThe very first paragraph which seems to be intended to encapsulate the problemof reduced public support of the value of higher education and calls for greateraccountability, actually fails in that purpose. It ignores the elephant standing nextto it. That elephant is the for­profit scam schools which many members of thepublic view as being an accepted member of the family of higher education. Somerealize that these scheming schools are not, but too many American citizens havenot yet figured out that they are higher education impostors. There single purposeis to yield huge profits for their unscrupulous owners and operators, They have nointerest in providing quality teaching or in guaranteeing actual meaningful learning.These are "cut every corner" operations because spending the amounts of moneynecessary to insure quality is not a part of their business plan. They are motivatedonly by the notion of profit and increasing their profits to the maximum ­ and thatmeans spending little ­ very little. That is why their highest expense item ismarketing, recruiting and securing enrollments. Get them (their victims) suckeredin, get them paid, keep them in and continually paying, give them nothing of value,then get them out and away with a useless exit credential.It seems as if every solution contains a recommendation to find new ways ofimproving access. Actually we would benefit more handsomely if we limitedaccess to these fraudulently operated for ­profit ripoff schools. We need to findways to educate higher education consumers to avoid these profit­only schoolsand become affiliated with a legitimate higher education institutions. Then we willsee a real positive difference of public opinion and perception.

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Richard Sherry • 6 days ago> willynilly

This is, of course, a complete hijacking. For the scope of the problem, seebelow.

Total undergraduate enrollment, in 2013 (NCES): public: 13.3 million (76%)not­for­profit: 2.9 million (16%)for­profit: 1.4 million (8%)

(http://nces.ed.gov/programs/co...

Graduate enrollment (all masters, doctoral):public: 1.4 million (42.6%)not­for­profit: 1.2 million (48.7%)for­profit: 286,000 (8.9%)

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Reythia • 6 days agoI've no problem with the idea that a good college experience should encouragestudents to learn the morally­good and practically­useful "virtues" listed here. But

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6/24/2015 What 'Learning How to Think' Really Means ­ The Chronicle Review ­ The Chronicle of Higher Education

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students to learn the morally­good and practically­useful "virtues" listed here. Butwhy does this author limit his thoughts to ONLY the liberal arts? I've no issue withthe conclusion that "students who have training in the liberal arts will be not onlybetter people and better citizens but also better professionals and employees."But why stop there? Why not generalize and note instead that students who havetraining in the ANY well­designed college field will be not only better people andbetter citizens but also better professionals and employees? Whether that'shistory or music or physics or computer science, ALL specialties can encouragestudents to learn about the broader world, not merely their own specialty's minutia.

The author notes at the top that "Universities that offer specialized training inspecific professions have an answer [to what their students are getting for theirtuition money]: "We’re training the next generation of nurses, accountants,physical therapists, teachers, software engineers, etc., etc." Whether they do itwell or not is a legitimate issue, but that they should be doing it is not much indispute. For programs in the liberal arts, however, the answers are notstraightforward."

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cwinton • 6 days ago> Reythia

It is ironic that disciplines which emphasize the virtues of being articulatehave so much trouble articulating what their intrinsic values are.

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Reythia • 6 days ago> cwinton

Agreed. And, really, most educated people LIKE at least bits andpieces of the output from many of the liberal arts! It shouldn't bethat hard to convince people that formal study into them is alsouseful.

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Charlie • 6 days ago"Love of the truth," I would replace with "a commitment to understanding," whichchanges an emotion (emotions wax and wane) to an intention and accommodatesboth a perspective that believes in truth and one that doesn't.The only other thing I'll add is that when state governments plan to, for example,graduate 60,000 students by 2020, it makes just as much sense as the plannedeconomy in the Soviet Union. How do they plan to do this? Shorten the degree tothree years! Offer online B.A.s and B.S.s! Four years attendance in a real learning environment is necessary to BEGIN toinculcate the author's "intellectual virtues."

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nomadjcd • 6 days agoWhat is scary here is that colleges are on the line for "educating" graduates atextremely high cost to enter a neoliberal market world that could care less aboutindividual workers...What about the pay is controlled by the (post­educated)worker? The benefits? Job security? What about the employers who control allthese facets of post­graduate life? Why not turn the lens on them? In any case,college costs way too much, and it is the corporatization of the university that isresponsible. The everyday stakes (post­graduation) are way out of the youngperson's control. Those with monied resources and networks will manage fineenough, but most kids will be burdened with a debt that will be very hard torepay...

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22060080 • 6 days agoWhere's evidence? Like any other opinion ­­ including my own ­­ this and a fewdollars will buy you a Starbucks but to be convincing, points of view like this needto learn to use evidence, not just vent.

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6/24/2015 What 'Learning How to Think' Really Means ­ The Chronicle Review ­ The Chronicle of Higher Education

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kathden • 6 days ago> 22060080

Show me a double­blind study that proves students do better in courseswhen they read assignments.

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shawnpg • 6 days ago> kathden

Double blind? So the students won't know if they are in theReading or Non­Reading group?

Seriously, though, I've done the closest thing possible in my largeintro classes. The first exam results typically yield a bi­modaldistribution and, back when I was green, this puzzled me until Iwent to a colleague who pointed to the higher mode and said "Havethe books." Then, he pointed to the lower mode and said "Don'thave the books."

I tested his hypothesis and it was consistent with my findings.(Even empiricists tend to avoid the word "prove.")

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kathden • 6 days ago> shawnpg

I was just joking. But was your correlation with book­reading or book­possessing?Ah, empirical tests! They always have to be hedged roundwith qualification after qualification....My beef is with the guy who tries to close down discussionat the start by asking whether you have evidence, meaningexperimental studies with appropriate statistical analysis.The problem is that the studies almost never manage toaccomplish anything definitive, other than to assure furtherstudies to either confirm, or disconfirm, or amplify, ornarrow down results.

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Feudi Pandola • 6 days agoThere is much food for thought in Professor Schwartz's article. The cost ofattendance at Swarthmore College is $61,400 per year, or about a quarter of amillion dollars for a bachelor degree. That might be a great place to start the questfor the virtues he discusses.

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Unemployed_Northeastern • 6 days ago> Feudi Pandola

IPEDS net price is about $20k/year for Swarthmore.http://www.collegecalc.org/col....

EDIT: This actually makes it less expensive than Penn State, whoseIPEDS net price clocks in at $22.5k/year. http://www.collegecalc.org/col...

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reineke • 6 days ago> Unemployed_Northeastern

Writer Pandola takes a cheap shot. He has looked up the costs,but ignored everything else on the Swarthmore Financial Aid page.Swarthmore awards $31 million in scholarships every year andmeets 100% of need for every accepted student. All acceptancesare calculated independently of a student's ability to pay. Aremarkably diverse student body is the result. From its earliestyears, Swarthmore graduates have attested to the values aboutwhich Schwartz writes by leading lives of service and makingexemplary contributions to society.

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6/24/2015 What 'Learning How to Think' Really Means ­ The Chronicle Review ­ The Chronicle of Higher Education

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blowback • 5 days ago

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Some of the thinking here seems very outdated: "liberal arts education is aprecious jewel," love of truth," etc. No one who reads this kind of analysis will beconvinced that any of this has much value. Those who wish to defend the study ofthe humanities need to stop arguing that somehow study the liberal arts will turnyou into a better person. To learn to think well requires attention to skills of closereading and precise analysis. Too often those who wish to defend the study of theliberal arts assume one need to become an liberal arts major. One can study thehumanities without earning a degree in any of its disciplines. I do not know whythere is never any discussion of demanding that students become double majors.Indeed the failure of Prof. Schwartz to give any serious re­thinking of what is amajor or what should a course of study in the humanities be or how to redefine thevery outdated idea of how we define majors and departments merely highlightwhat has been left out of Prof. Schwartz's analysis.And of course none of this is very helpful when the real problem is that too manystudents are not prepared to undertake the hard work of learning. Maybe the timehas come to realize that the study of the humanities should be directed only to thevery few and not to the masses who want professional training. Maybe the verytraditional notion of general liberal arts education has outlived its usefulness to a

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mnogojazyk • 5 days agoI like this, but when I was going through my doctoral studies, it became clear tome that "how to think" was synonymous with 'what to think'. This synonymityeventually drove me out of my studies, I am sad to say.

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Gopher63 • a day ago> mnogojazyk

Sorry for your unfortunate grad school experience. Was in in the liberalarts? My background, heavy in STEM but with enough liberal arts to helpme be more well rounded yielded the opposite.

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selfdeflection • 5 days agoI tend to agree with Schwartz, but he is at Swarthmore. My institution is third tier,public, and prides itself on producing a maximum number of degrees as quickly aspossible for lots of students who in decades past would never have gone tocollege. That is, an entirely different cohort. We, as faculty, mouth the samecritical thinking platitudes, but when it comes to what happens in class and howwe evaluate it, we are teaching factoids and assessing with multiple­choiceexams. Yes, we're trying to change (service learning, flipped classrooms, groupprojects in the community), but this is what our cohort can manage absentextensive remediation, which we haven't the resources to do (and, to be honest,the students don't want to have their "thinking" messed with; they just want thecredential.). At our institution, the liberal arts degrees are, in actual fact, FAILINGto teach students how to think, although it is theoretically possible to do so, ofcourse. We are teaching them little bits of fact­y stuff and then pretending that itadds up to "thinking."

Then there is the whole issue of "character training." Half of what Schwartz talksabout seems to bear as much on personal values and character as it does oneducation (and, indeed, the two dimensions are closely related.) But as a publicinstitution, we stay as far away from espousing values as possible (except,obviously, for valuing diversity and a few other tropes). In a heterogeneous cultureand with the degree a stand­in for economic mobility options, we just can't gothere without risk. And heaven knows, these days higher ed leaders areunderstandably scared to death of courageous stands.

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ulyssesmsu • 2 days agoDoes "learning how to think" mean reading books that come exclusively from left­

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Does "learning how to think" mean reading books that come exclusively from left­wing writers? Do we help students to "think" when we steer them to books thatcome from only one political viewpoint?

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