ENGLISH 5 SRJC SPRING 1996 M.GIORDANO, instructor.




Given what you have learned from lectures so far about what I mean to teach in what I have defined as Critical Thinking class and given Ortega y Gassset's injunction to teachers to teach not their subject but the need for it, suggest ways I might do so. When was the last time you needed to do what I have been describing as "critical thinking" and when do you think you might need it in the future?

Consider also the revolutionary model teaching the need for knowledge imposes upon the curriculum. At present you have the names for certain subjects, departments at colleges and universities with those names. Would these necessarily remain? Remember to distinguish authentic need from the need, imposed from without, to secure the skills for a reasonably comfortable job. Any authentic need-based model must assume a coherent model of an authentic human being, not merely a salary-earning, commodity-buying, tax-paying economic unit. Try to envision that model.

Consider the different methods of teaching required by that model. What trappings of the educational system--homework, grades, periods, semesters, tests,--would have to be rejected? What replacements would be demanded?

Consider also that the student who has for twelve years attended educational institions based on a false model of their students and their enterprise has been molded into the image of that model. Imagine the model of a student inevery way resistant to the critical thinking approach I have tried to outline describe itand consider what methods may be applied which would be effective given this alternative educational model.

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