Louis Newman featured in CBC News piece
Newman is John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies, emeritus at Carleton.
Louis Newman, John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies, emeritus, was featured in a CBC News story titled, “In the age of AI, how do we teach young people to think critically?”
The idea of boosting young people’s critical thinking skills is receiving renewed attention amid the steady creep of generative AI into digital spaces already overloaded with information.
But how are we teaching students to think critically?
Some advocate being more explicit in how we guide students from elementary through post-secondary to practise and build this skill — and spell out why it’s necessary.
“Critical thinking is essentially about asking questions,” whether that’s while perusing an article or a social media post, said Louis Newman, author of Thinking Critically in College, from Los Altos, Calif.
“We’re gonna need critical thinking much more now than ever.”
Newman says that in post-secondary and sometimes in high school, we’ve traditionally taught this skill by assigning students readings, ideas or concepts to evaluate. This analysis is generally done in four ways: exploring the context, comparing alternatives, weighing evidence and considering implications or new applications. Rinse and repeat.
We assume students become more critical thinkers by osmosis, as “they sit in our classes, engage with us around the material that we’re teaching [and receive] feedback on the assignments,” said Newman, who is also a former dean of academic advising at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of Carleton College.
“There are certainly students who pick it up gradually over time, by kind of trial and error. But a lot of students don’t.”
Newman believes explicit instruction helps more students overall.
“You have to make it clear to students precisely what kinds of thinking they’re being asked to do, how well they did on it and where they could have done better,” he said.