I think it is also useful to think about the separate skills that are necessary for applying the concepts and techniques that Joseph described to complex real-life situations. Alas, we often have the most need for critical thinking when confronting the situations where this is the hardest to do: situations that are really complex, that matter a lot to our lives, which involve complex emotional dynamics or serious interpersonal conflict, and so on. So, to best use critical thinking in our own lives we need to be able to handle "messy" situations like those. For example, it is useful to understand your own and others' agendas and motivations, the emotional dynamics of a situation, how to act in ways that have the best chance of making a difficult discussion more rational and more constructive. When I teach critical thinking, I prefer to teach the reasoning skills that Joseph describes together with serious reflection on the "messy real life" issues that I sketch out above. The best critical...

I agree that critical thinkingskills are vital. Taking a course in critical thinking is not the onlyway to gain these skills, however, and so I think the most importantquestion is whether high school students have plentiful opportunitiesto do this. Inpart, this is a matter of curriculum. I suspect that required coursesin critical thinking or introduction to philosophy are not the bestways to inspire high school students to work hard on developingcritical thinking skills. Instead, I agree with the idea that criticalthinking should be taught “across the curriculum,” which is to sayshould be taught in diverse ways in nearly every course. The trick, ofcourse, is designing excellent curriculum that does this well. Thatsaid, I suspect that quality of teaching matters more than curriculardesign: it is our relationships with individual teachers that caninspire us to work hard and learn the most, and the most importanteducational reforms may be those that help our teachers to learn how...