Critical Thinking and Thinking Critically

‘Critical’; it’s a word so laden with meaning, so packed with finger wagging and self torture that I have to steel myself in a lecture-hall packed with vulnerable first years and try to reclaim it as a positive activity.

As my module is designed to develop students’ thinking about media content, I do use the term ‘critical thinking’ in my lectures even though the word ‘critical’ is not even mentioned in my module descriptor. I explain to them from the very first lecture that in order to create content for Radio, TV and film, the first step is back. Reading a news story, for example, is about deconstructing it, critiquing its structure, its intention and its outcome. We take it apart to look at what we can learn from it, and then step back again to assess what we would do to put it back together again. Of course, they’re more interested in doing that with themselves and each other at the moment. It’s hard for them to become critical friends when they’re still eyeing each other up.

I set the students an essay each week in which they have to reflect on how critical thinking applies to various broadcast genres. The resulting portfolio of work, which is their formal assignment, will be assessed on evidence of the development of their critical faculties. I explain to them that this is the mark of a graduate, that university is their training ground where they move from passive to active learners, exploring issues, evaluating information and supporting their findings based on evidence they have discovered themselves.

Barnett (1997) writes about critical beings graduating into the workplace; as media practitioners – radio or TV researchers or producers – our media graduates will have to critically assess every idea and contributor before taking it to the next research stage and negotiate their way though a minefield of ethical issues and well as practical ones. Will the idea work? How will it contribute to the overall hypothesis of the programme? How will the contributors’ lives be affected by the process? Is it even worth it? If the Marxist notion is a world constructed through action, I would argue that in the media, it’s constructed through thought, intention, responsibility and respect. And that starts with reflection and critical thinking.

Creativity comes from chaos and I’m constantly weighing up just where the line between safe space and unfathomable gulf is in order to allow the students to explore their own. In our first Active Learning Set, some of my fellow lecturers blanched at the idea that I ask my students to publish their inner thoughts on a blog. I’ve written about why I do this already, but with a new batch of first years mostly doing what they’re told, I’m now more interested in looking at those who don’t use the space to become critical beings. What makes them freeze? Why wouldn’t they want to see who they are?

Being in my lectures probably doesn’t help! Yesterday, for example, in a lecture on news narrative, I played the role of the news editor in the morning meeting and asked each student to pitch their news stories to me. The idea was for the class to feed back as critical friends, but this is a tough assignment for news virgins and some of their critical antennae were still turning inward. This was only week two, and of course most of them failed miserably to get their heads around how a newspaper story might develop and translate into an item for Drivetime on Radio Five or One. Of course I tried to show them how their mistakes were the best teaching aids – not just for the individual student but for the whole class. I do hope that the humour of their hopelessness avoided any self flagellation. I hope that they value the chaos of their young minds which Nietzsche says will give birth to their dancing stars. Looking through the blogs today suggests that they’re on the way.

Denial
Do you always know what you’re missing out on? Sometimes you do and you wish it was different but there is nothing you can do about it or maybe want to do about it. Maybe it’s stubbornness but when something triggers a little thing in your head saying this is what you’re missing but here’s your chance to grab it, you have to do it; it has to be done. Don't miss out on chances to get what you've maybe secretly always wanted - and possibly even needed.

Do I create a safe space? I don’t know. I really don’t. With the news yesterday of the suicide of one of our second years on her way to the first day back last week, I realised that those critical antennae can be unbearably sharp. Was she too self critical? Was that what tipped her over into the unfathomable gulf? I checked her blog when I got home:

Maybe the first step is getting on with the work and stop being too analytical.

And then, the leap into the void.

Sometimes it is nice to just chill out and not think of anything in particular. Not think about what's going to happen tomorrow or happened yesterday, the day before or even years back. It is nice to just live in the moment. This is what I am doing right this second. And I feel free.