RAIL

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest article by longtime critical thinking advocate and researcher Donald Lazere.  Prof. Lazere is Professor Emeritus of English at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

WHY IS THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS SAYING SUCH AWFUL THINGS ABOUT CRITICAL THINKING?

Donald Lazere, Professor Emeritus of English, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo

Two of National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood’s recent “Innovations” blogs in the online Chronicle of Higher Education renewed NAS’s long-running attack on the theory and teaching of critical thinking, about which he and I had an e-mail go-round a few years ago. I think there have been several semantic misunderstandings here that have needlessly exacerbated the dispute, and I will try, once again, to overcome these here.

In “The Curriculum of Forgetting“ (Nov. 21), Wood wrote “What we need is a reversal of cultural tides, a restoration of the basic principle that the university is responsible for keeping the past imaginatively alive and available for the present.  The stance of generalized antagonism to the whole of Western civilization and the elevation of “critical thinking” in the sense of facile reductionism (everything at bottom is about race-gender-class hierarchy) makes the university function more and more as our society’s chief source of anti-intellectualism.”

In “Leaf Taking” (Dec. 4), he added, “We have elevated ‘critical thinking’ as the chief and worthiest end of a liberal education.  Perhaps it is time for a reassessment.   The critical thinker who is deaf to culture’s deeper appeals is impoverished in some profound ways.  He is equipped to take everything apart but not to put anything together.  We need more minds capable of moving at ease and grasping the whole.”

I posted the following comment in response to the Dec. 4 piece, but as I should have made clearer, it was directed more to the previous one:

I am inclined to agree with much of what Professor Wood says here and in his post on K-12 education policy, until he starts scapegoating and attacking straw critical thinkers.

His account of critical thinking is held by no serious scholar in the field that I know, no one belonging to the Association for Critical Thinking and Informal Logic, devoted to college-level critical thinking teaching and scholarly research, about whose work Wood seems ignorant.  Nor do any colleagues I respect hold “generalized antagonism to the whole of Western civilization” or promote anti-intellectualism.  To be sure, there are strains of anti-intellectualism on the academic and political left, but far more on the right in American academics and politics. . . .  Why does he not acknowledge and seek common cause with those of us on the left who are equally dedicated to upholding intellectual and academic standards?  The level of manichean invective he habitually engages in contributes nothing to the upholding of those standards.

I might have asked in addition, what basis in scholarly research does Mr. Wood have for his sweeping generalizations here about the discipline of critical thinking? What body of evidence can he cite to rank-order as “the chief source of anti-intellectualism” in the university the liberal-by-inuendo forces he identifies, in comparison to the conservative pressures toward job-training at the expense of liberal education, faculty research and consulting for business, and the mindless adulation of intercollegiate sports? Within “our society,” has he conducted research measuring the anti-intellectualism in the university to that in corporate news and entertainment media––preeminently 24/7 TV news and sports channels, whose target audience is at the lowest common denominator of intellect, and which are increasingly saturated by endlessly repeated, stupefying commercials? Has NAS conducted research rank-ordering the social influence of anti-intellectualism in the university with that in the right wing of the Republican Party, e.g., Herman Cain, “We need a leader, not a reader,” and other Republican candidates for office who openly disdain science and boast of their low level of education? Thus even if Wood’s and NAS’s allegations were accurate in specific instances, to assert that “the university functions more and more as our society’s chief source of anti-intellectualism” is not remotely verifiable. I urge Wood to retract this recklessly hyperbolic accusation.

Wood responded online to my comment, I think on the assumption I was criticizing his Dec. 4 piece (which I generally agreed with, especially in the emphasis on teaching history and “grasping the whole”–integral elements in my model of critical thinking):

As in our earlier exchange, Professor Lazere assumes a position of intellectual authority over commonly used words.  Those who want to conform themselves to his particular definitions of “critical thinking” or to join discussions promoted by the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking are more than welcome to, but I am confident that the few points sketched in my essay are lucid to most readers. As for “undefined terms, sweeping over-generalizations, stereotyping, and straw-man argumentation,” this is heavy artillery to bring against a short musing. I don’t think it is warranted but it does rather add to my case that the focus on “critical thinking” has become more an instrument of rhetorical assault than a way to advance higher learning.

Beyond the misunderstanding about which points in his blogs I was addressing (I reiterate that I agree with much in them), he implied here that he belittles my definitions of critical thinking and the work of AILACT. Like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, he seems to believe that words mean whatever HE says they do, not what scholarly authorities say they do.

What is the basis for Wood’s several allegations about what instruction in critical thinking is or “has become”? The absence of direct citations here and in several other NAS statements suggests straw-man argumentation. (See my following section on the history of NAS on this issue.) Even if some such citations were produced, the question would remain of whether they might represent an inadequate sampling, hasty generalization, the exception rather than the rule. If those citations indeed say what he claims they do, I and most others in AILACT will readily join NAS in condemning those cited for giving critical thinking a bad name. (Note that in this paragraph I am applying the terminology of critical thinking/informal logic. Does Mr. Wood consider this just a “rhetorical assault,” unworthy of substantive response, a move he frequently makes to shirk responsibility for his illogical statements?)

I should interject here that I have several dogs in this fight. First, as a scholar in rhetoric, I have long been concerned with seeking means for toning down culture-war polemics by devising principles of common civility that those on the left and right should agree to follow, as first formulated in my article “Ground Rules for Polemicists: The Case of Lynne Cheney’s Truths” (College English, October 1997). I include the list of rules here as an appendix and will be referring to it.

Second, since the 1980s I have been active in development of critical thinking theory and curriculum in the California State University system and elsewhere, particularly in English, and have published numerous versions of my model for critical thinking. That model is distinctive in proposing that critical thinking/informal logic/argumentative rhetoric can and should provide a disciplinary framework for promoting civic literacy, through which political disputes are addressed, not in order to advocate for one side but to teach students to explicate, research, and evaluate opposing positions and arguments–including but not limited to arguments about race, gender, and especially class or wealth and poverty. Moreover, my model, far from isolating “skills” from factual knowledge and disciplinary content, agrees with E.D. Hirsch that the two are inseparable, and agrees with NAS’s particular emphasis on history, through the skill of “reasoning back and forward from the past to the present and future.” Two recent reiterations of my model have appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education as a print column in 2009, “A Core Curriculum for Civic Literacy,” http://chronicle.com/article/A-Core-Curriculum-for-Civic/63742/ , and as a blog in 2011, “‘Baby Logic’: The Disdained Discipline in Higher Education,” http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/critical-thinking-in-the-curriculum-donald-lazere/37094. As I remember, no one in NAS took issue with either.

Third, my own political position is that of a leftist, but one who is concerned about the problem faced by all teachers and scholars of honestly taking account of and compensating against our own biases. (A propos, NAS would gain more credibility if its spokespeople occasionally acknowledged their own conservative biases instead of pretending to a rhetorical stance of Olympian impartiality.) Finally, as proof that not all leftists march in lock step, I have published many articles (and have a book in progress) repudiating some tendencies on the academic left and agreeing at least in part with the agenda of NAS and ACTA. I was an ally in the nineties of Gerald Graff, Gregory Jay, and John K. Wilson in Teachers for a Democratic Culture, whose byword was “Political correctness exists, even if Lynne Cheney and NAS say it does,” and whose position was to be critical both of irresponsibility on the academic left and its irresponsible exploitation by some (not all) conservatives to score political points for the Republican Party. We always found NAS and its journal Academic Questions to be equivocal in lurching between claiming to represent a politically unaligned scholarly association and acting like a branch of the conservative attack apparatus, openly in allegiance with Republican party-liners like Lynne Cheney, William J. Bennett, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz. Carol Iannone, a recent editor of AQ, along with NAS officers Herbert London and Stephen Balch, wrote polemics bashing the academic left for Commentary under the editorship of Podhoretz when that journal had in effect become a Republican Party organ, as attested to by its former assistant editor Benjamin Balint, in his revealing memoir Running Commentary.

The History of NAS on Critical Thinking

Let’s go back several years to look at NAS’s claims and their supporting evidence, beginning with Wood’s “Critical Thoughtlessness,” on the NAS web page, December 8, 2008, which cites three sources for his claims: “‘Critical Thinking’ Minus Criticism and Thought,” by Stephen Zelnick, posted by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, November 25, 2008; “Critical Thinking in the Tower Ivory [sic] by Albert Keith Whitaker, published in NAS’s Academic Questions 16, 1 (Winter 2002-03); and “A Roof Without Walls,” by Michael Booker, Academic Questions 20 (Fall 2007).

Zelnick spoke as an English professor at Temple, who has taught a critical thinking course that was a general education requirement. He fair-mindedly traces the history of the critical thinking movement from its California origins and acknowledges the legitimacy of its stated intentions. He argues, however, that the concept has been widely misappropriated, as at Temple, where “it is intended to recruit the next generation of students into an oppositional force to carry out the struggle for social justice, a renovation that is needed in an ideologically blind-folded America.” He cites three textbook readers used there that are one-sidedly leftist, about which he says, “Missing entirely is support for debate and true critical thinking. Opposing positions are foreclosed without discussion. If Ward Connerly and Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele have such dismissible things to say, would not their writings help students develop critical thinking abilities by wrestling with the critically-alert arguments of these oppositional voices?”

Steve Zelnick happens to be an old colleague of mine in MLA, whose judgment I trust; I am disposed to accept the accuracy of his account of Temple and to agree with his argument here, aside from the use of a very limited, local sampling of anecdotal evidence, as I’m sure he admits. It would also have helped if, following my Ground Rule #6, he had considered that there might be “another side to the story” and included a response from those who taught the courses he criticized. My main reservation is about how typical these three courses and textbooks are of others in critical thinking nationally, for which Zelnick does not claim to amass a larger body of evidence. Like most people, I resent being lumped together in guilt by association with people I have painstakingly dissociated myself from. My Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: The Critical Citizen’s Guide to Argumentative Rhetoric (First Edition, 2005), a textbook rhetoric and reader, did precisely what Zelnick calls for, in juxtaposing articles for analysis on specific disputes by the usual leftist suspects with counter-statements by Thomas Sowell (two articles), William J. Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, Christina Hoff Sommers, Stephen Moore, Lynne Cheney, Deroy Murdock, David Horowitz (two articles), Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, George Will, and P. J. O’Rourke. So can either Zelnick or Wood really claim to know whether approaches to critical thinking nationally are in general more like the one at Temple, like mine, or like other models?

When Wood and Carol Iannone, then editor of Academic Questions, and I first went around on these issues a few years ago, I sent them my critique of the other articles Wood had cited, by Whitaker and Booker, requesting that they consider posting or printing it, with responses from the authors or editor. They angrily refused, with no review process or substantive response to my arguments. So here it is again, somewhat amended, with an invitation to the authors, Wood, or Iannone to respond to my substantive criticisms.

Response to Booker’s and Whitaker’s Articles in Academic Questions

The two older articles in Academic Questions cited by Wood are so different from each other that they ought not even be part of the same discussion. Booker’s “A Roof Without Walls,” about Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of higher-order reasoning, is a responsible scholarly article, far better reasoned and documented then Whitaker’s “Critical Thinking,” and mostly free from the latter’s political tendentiousness and over-heated invective. Here is a portion of Booker’s abstract:

 Bloom’s taxonomy was intended for higher education, but its misappropriation has resulted in a serious distortion of the purpose of the K-12 years. Michael Booker attributes the inability of American children to compete internationally to a great extent to our reliance on Bloom in expecting critical and advanced thinking from kids who have been trained to regard facts and substantive knowledge as unimportant. (347)

The first sentence of the abstract accurately conveys the portion of the article stressing that Booker (unlike Whitaker) is not discussing critical thinking at the college level at all, but at the K-12 level, where he argues that the crucial first step in Bloom’s taxonomy, factual knowledge, has largely been eclipsed in undergraduate schools of education and in teaching practice, by excessive emphasis on skills and self-expression. The second sentence of the abstract, however, is more sweeping than the article’s actual text, which provides little hard evidence for the assertions about international competition or for the allegation about teachers dismissing the value of facts and substantive knowledge. (Some certainly do that at the college level, deplorably, but under theoretical auspices other than critical thinking; see my “Postmodern Pluralism.”) Concerning the former, Booker cites some familiar data showing poor performance by American schools, including declines in international standing. He recognizes:

 There are many candidates for blame whenever one finds a problem of this scope. Predictably, groups will opportunistically exploit public ills (or perceived public ills) to push their private agendas. I will not feign impartiality in my analysis. . . . I also recognize that no one factor can explain the current state of the American educational system, and that the role I am assigning Bloom’s Taxonomy does not take place in a cultural and professional vacuum. (348)

Having made these honest provisos, though, Booker then concentrates his fire on various aspects of the misuses of Bloom’s taxonomy, with no serious effort to rank them in relation to other possible factors in educational decline. I am not an authority on teacher education or K-12 curriculum, or on some of the other subjects of Booker’s criticisms like social constructivist educational theory, so I defer studied responses to colleagues more familiar with these subjects. My own teaching experience disposes me to agree with some of his criticisms, like the inadequacy of requirements in discipline-specific subject matter in many teacher-education programs, or the dumbing-down of the goal of cultivation of autonomous reasoning to the expression of students’ opinion or feelings about subjects about which they have little or no factual knowledge. But certainly there are more complex causes than Bloom’s taxonomy for these inadequacies. Booker discretely steers clear of political finger-pointing in this article, but in my own writings I find fault on both the political/cultural left (for some of the reasons conservatives emphasize) and the right—for example, in the latter’s low esteem for the profession of public-school teaching and consequent indifference to providing adequate financial incentives for it, in tandem with corporate interests lobbying for privatization.

Making students (and citizens in general) feel good about themselves and their uninformed opinions is by no means limited to the academic or political left, but is essential to the appeal of right-wing politicians and talk-show blowhards. Conservatives have perfected a little game of “heads I win, tails you lose” in both education and media. When liberals in teaching or media seek to make their constituents (e.g., minorities, feminists) feel good about themselves, they are denounced for betraying intellectual standards. But if they stand up for those standards (against, say, the ignorance of Glenn Beck or racist Obama-phobes) they are denounced as “snobbish cultural elitists.” Conservative college students have learned to insist that professors make them too feel good about spouting their uninformed opinions, and to play the victim card in denouncing any liberal professor who “coerces” them into acquiring some factual knowledge of what they’re talking about. Mightn’t Booker (along with Whitaker and Wood) agree that teachers’ misuses of Bloom’s taxonomy pale in significance to the massive cultural, corporate, and political forces saturating young Americans in instant gratification, narcissistic self-esteem, and sound-bite reasoning? NAS’s cultural positions would seem to be unapologetically elitist, so shouldn’t its spokespeople be the first to denounce anti-intellectualism in the current Republican base and its champions like Cain, Beck, Limbaugh, and Palin who incite their followers to believe their uneducated opinions are as good as those of any wine-sipping Ph.D or scientist?

In short, Booker ends up implicitly placing a far greater burden of blame on Bloom’s taxonomy or critical thinking generally than his evidence can support, and certainly ((to his credit) provides little warrant for Wood’s sweeping denunciations, which seem to draw more from Whitaker’s far inferior article. It is difficult to write about Whitaker without descending to his own level of snarling invective, but I will try to limit myself simply to enumerating his substantive faults. Vincent Ruggiero’s and Scott Lilienfeld’s responses in AQ 16:4 (2003) are absolutely correct in pointing out some of the logical fallacies Whitaker’s article is riddled with, but here is a supplement. In case my account strains credibility, here is a link to the text: https://www2.bc.edu/~whitakal/Critical Thinking.pdf

Whitaker goes to great lengths patching together every reference to critical thinking he can find, though many of them are vague generalizations and some are not even from educators or about education. (On p. 4, he cites a 1975 report in the New York Times, “which later became a powerful advocate for critical thinking,” about a lobbyist for Common Cause who allegedly bragged about his unethical conduct in the New York Assembly by claiming he was “trying to provoke some critical thinking.”) Whitaker takes snippets of very broad formulations from accomplished scholars like Robert Ennis, Richard Paul, Diane Halpern, and Matthew Lipman, but makes no effort to summarize the contents of their books objectively or to show he has gone beyond skimming them for sound bites, and he attributes views to them that I defy him to find in their works—such as the separation of thinking skills from academic subject matter or the dispensability of the latter. Disregarding the wide range of differing and often opposed conceptions of critical thinking, Whitaker selects the most lame statements he can find by random idiots and uses them to tar the entire movement with the same brush. Having patched together a straw man from vastly disparate sources, he attributes monolithic group-think to it and claims (without empirical verification) it is a vastly powerful “giant,” which is surely a surprise to those of us who have seen the (verifiable) decline of critical thinking courses and instruction since the 1990s. (See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-zini/the-education-reform-para_b_1161527.html.)

Thus Whitaker violates my “Ground Rules for Polemicists,” #3:

Summarize the other side’s case fully and fairly, in an account that they would accept, prior to refuting it. Present it through its most reputable spokespeople and strongest formulations (not through the most outlandish statements of its lunatic fringe), using direct quotes and footnoted sources, not your own, undocumented paraphrases. Allow the most generous interpretation of their statements rather than putting the worst light on them; help them make their arguments stronger when possible.

As Ruggiero notes, Whitaker indulges in the wildest versions of over-generalization, non sequitur, slippery slope, scapegoating, name-calling, and reductive fallacies to claim that the critical thinking movement has contributed to, if not singlehandedly caused, a horrendous array of educational and social ills, reminiscent of Professor Harold Hill’s litany of dire consequences of the arrival of a pool table in River City. But Whitaker does not produce a shred of concrete evidence to support any of these causal claims. Nor does he consider a host of other possible causes of social ills, some arguably the results of conservative political and economic policies. Isn’t this the kind of disconnect that should have raised a red flag for a peer reviewer or editor? And aren’t his the same kind of sweeping, unsupported claims that NAS writers would savage in a leftist text?

On p. 4, he attributes a view to the movement for critical thinking or “informal logic” that “went something like this,” followed by what appears to be a direct quotation, “`Why study old, out-of-date books . . . that won’t help you land a high-paying job? Because when you converse with Shakespeare and Plato, you learn to think critically, an essential skill in today’s fast-paced world! At least they may help you score high on the GRE or LSAT’” This is followed by a reference to endnote 20, which cites two articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education that discuss students being motivated by the quest for high-paying jobs but that make no reference whatsoever to critical thinking courses. QED? He does not present an actual quotation from any critical thinking scholar as a source for this ludicrous pseudo-quotation, and even if he were able to come up with one, it would be contradicted by the vast majority of scholars like me who view critical thinking in opposition to uncritical vocationalism. (One might, of course, reasonably suggest that mastery of critical thinking can foster sound mental traits useful in business or professions, just as “old books” can, as Whitaker might agree. So what?) This paragraph is sheer nonsense, and, again, should never have gotten by an editorial reviewer and fact-checker.

Again, on p. 7, Whitaker’s paragraph beginning “Like the famous ‘puppies’ of Plato’s Republic who happily tear apart anything old and established simply because it is old, a far greater number of young people find critical thinking’s charms irresistible,” is a completely undocumented rant against another straw-man critical thinking villain. The endnote reference 27, to a paper by Louis Menand, has nothing to do with critical thinking, but with “postdisciplinarity,” which Menand defends, even while seeing the “great danger, which is that the culture of the university will become just an echo of the public culture.” Whitaker then loopily attributes “the subsumption of universities by pop culture” to, I guess, both postdisciplinarity and critical thinking, though he has presented no evidence for either as a cause–compared to, say, pop culture as competitor against education for student attention, or commercial mass media’s deliberate stupefaction and breeding of passivity in audiences, which carry over to students’ educational performance. It so happens that my version of critical thinking is precisely opposed to the subsumption of the university by pop culture. Mightn’t even Whitaker and Wood agree that critical thinking courses should oppose the irrational, stupefying effects of pop culture? (In my correspondence with NAS officials, they have said straight out that they are not centrally concerned with criticism of popular culture’s destructive influence on education, which I take it to mean that they are compulsively fixated on the academic left as the root of all cultural evil.)

Beginning on p. 4, Whitaker has charged that critical thinking “has come to join hands with the continental, radical cause of ‘critical theory’ or, as it is sometimes called by its practitioners, ‘critical pedagogy.’” (One pictures a conspiratorial meeting where Jacques Derrida, T. W. Adorno, Paolo Freire, and AILACT linked hands and took a blood oath together.) Whitaker continues, “The assumption implied in this alliance is that, although one cannot learn anything substantial from these old books, one can learn to ‘think critically’ by tearing them apart and refuting them, all in line with the professor’s ideological direction.” Here he (and Wood in his recent echoes of these claims) makes an inductive leap ignorantly conflating critical thinking with (presumably) deconstruction and postmodernist literary theory, Frankfurt School critical theory, Freirean critical pedagogy, multicultural/diversity studies, and (later) composition theory. Never mind the paucity of direct, contextualized quotations from the most influential theorists in any of these fields that Whitaker or Wood presents in support of these wild claims. Never mind that Whitaker and Wood lump together many different academic disciplines and positions that often have no direct connection or affinity with each other. Even within the separate realms of literary theory, critical political theory, and critical pedagogy, there are multiple schools that disagree vehemently with one another. Critical thinking scholars like those in AILACT are mainly educational philosophers and psychologists, few of whom are involved with critical theory or political criticism (in fact, I have long urged them to pay more attention to the political dimensions of critical thinking). Never mind that this account of critical literary and cultural theory seems to derive from its most vulgar-minded, uninformed enemies rather than its most reputable practitioners, whom Whitaker and Wood show no signs of having read. (Several of my works cited below document erroneous and malicious claims about the academic left by conservative critics including many associated with NAS.) I have always found Derrida unreadable myself, but I would welcome an article by philosopher Whitaker or polymath Wood about Derrida’s many writings on Plato to see whether they find support for the implication that deconstruction is just about tearing apart and refuting old books like his.

Whitaker also presumes to be knowledgeable about composition studies, a field outside of his discipline but squarely within mine. He lumps together several purported versions of critical thinking there: expressivism, diversity, and critical theory, and critical pedagogy. In fact, my article “Postmodern Pluralism and the Retreat from Political Literacy”–in Journal of Advanced Composition–was a critique of the exclusion of both critical thinking and critical pedagogy in writing courses by a-political expressivism and what I call “diverseology.” I and most composition teachers I respect are strong defenders of teaching grammar, spelling, organization, reasoning, memorization, and canonical literary works, against colleagues who disparage them. I have repeatedly chastised composition teachers who belittle “basics,” who do not demand difficult texts for reading and argumentation, and who avoid this task by having students “read and comment upon only the poorly written work of their peers,” as Whitaker rightly says, though such teachers are as often politically conservative (or proudly a-political) as leftist. So where do I fit in his rogue’s gallery?

Whitaker’s climactic exhibit item is a series of public lectures (not a course) at Duke University on “Queer and Native Politics of the Sexual and Transnational.” The sponsor was Duke programs in women’s and GLBT studies—which appear to have no connection to a critical thinking program. Whitaker provides no first-hand account of what academic value these lectures might actually have had, nor did he apparently read their texts. Denouncing cultural studies presentations solely on the basis of their title was a pretty tired gambit even by 2002.

And here is Whitaker’s peroration:

Critical thinking has left students tongue-tied and thoughtless, literally bereft of ideas and meaningful expressions. Together with the political movements it serves so well, it has undermined and dispersed the disciplines meant to preserve civilization and it has thwarted students’ disposition to become civilized. It has filled minds with fog and duskiness and the air with a strange, and empty, phraseology.

Why not just substitute “the worldwide Communist conspiracy” for “critical thinking?”

Conclusion

The most regrettable aspect of Whitaker’s article (and Wood’s championing of it) is that it totally evades the issue of the proper place in the academic curriculum for the study of basic reasoning and argumentative rhetoric, including political argumentation—and how such studies can best be integrated with the more traditional curriculum supported by NAS.

Here is what I propose to Wood, Zelnick, Whitaker and Booker. As a representative survey of current scholarship in critical thinking, read Kevin Possin’s “A Field Guide to Critical Thinking Assessment” and the works he cites, in Teaching Philosophy 31, 3 (September 2008). Next, report back to us with all the direct quotations you can find in Possin and his sources that remotely sound like your hydra-headed monster or express “generalized antagonism to the whole of Western civilization and the elevation of ‘critical thinking’ in the sense of facile reductionism (everything at bottom is about race-gender-class hierarchy)” or in the sense that “makes the university function more and more as our society’s chief source of anti-intellectualism.” If you come up empty, I then propose that you apologize to the large body of your academic colleagues whom you have slandered.

To return to my initial point about semantic misunderstandings, Mr. Wood and the other authors here could have spared us all much wasted time and rancor by following a few elementary rules of, ahem, critical thinking. Recognize the complexities and ambiguities of subjects under study and definitions of key words. Qualify generalizations by degrees—all, most, many, some, a few–and especially by giving credit to those opponents who do not fit your negative examples. If you would make such an effort, you might find that you have more common ground with those you demonize than you think. In place of sweeping, snarling over-generalizations about scholars and teachers on the left (or whatever other snide label you might apply to them, like “the political movements it serves so well”), will you acknowledge that they range all the way from those of highest integrity and scholarly prowess to fools and charlatans, as do those who “serve the political movements” on the right (or again, however you label the positions that NAS champions)?

The issues of how most responsibly to deal in teaching with partisan politics, and with the whole broader culture that impinges on students’ political consciousness, are far more complex than Steve Zelnick or NAS acknowledges, or that I myself have acknowledged here, though I have written widely on them elsewhere. But the kind of vulgar exaggeration and “facile reductionism” by Wood, Whitaker, and some others in NAS over the years just perpetuate polarization and obstruct possible cooperation by scholars of good will on opposing sides politically in addressing these complexities. Or might perpetuating polarization be their whole intention?

Appendix: Ground Rules For Polemicists

Do unto your own as you do unto others. Apply the same standards to yourself and your allies that you do to your opponents, in all of the following ways.

1. Identify your own ideological viewpoint and how it might bias your arguments. Having done so, show that you approach opponents’ actions and writings with an open mind, not with malice aforethought. Concede the other side’s valid arguments–preferably toward the beginning of your critique, not tacked on grudgingly at the end or in inconspicuous subordinate clauses. Acknowledge points on which you agree at least partially and might be able to cooperate.

2. Summarize the other side’s case fully and fairly, in an account that they would accept, prior to refuting it. Present it through its most reputable spokespeople and strongest formulations (not through the most outlandish statements of its lunatic fringe), using direct quotes and footnoted sources, not your own, undocumented paraphrases. Allow the most generous interpretation of their statements rather than putting the worst light on them; help them make their arguments stronger when possible.

3. When quoting selected phrases from the other side’s texts, accurately summarize the context and tone of the longer passages and full texts in which they appear.

4. When you are repeating a second-hand account of events, say so–do not leave the implication that you were there and are certain of its accuracy. Cite your source and take account of its author’s possible biases, especially if the author is your ally.

5. In any account that you use to illustrate the opponents’ misbehavior, grant that there may be another side to the story and take pains to find out what it is. If opponents claim they have been misrepresented, give them their say and the benefit of the doubt.

6. Be willing to acknowledge misconduct, errors, and fallacious arguments by your own allies, and try scrupulously to establish an accurate proportion and sense of reciprocity between them and those you criticize in your opponents. Do not play up the other side’s forms of power while denying or downplaying your own side’s. Do not weigh an ideal, theoretical model of your side’s beliefs against the most corrupt actual practices on the other side.

7. Respond forthrightly to opponents’ criticisms of your own or your side’s previous arguments, without evading key points. Admit it when they make criticisms you cannot refute.

8. Do not substitute ridicule or name-calling for reasoned argument and substantive evidence.

Selected Works by Donald Lazere

Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: The Critical Citizen’s Guide to Argumentative Rhetoric. Second Edition. Paradigm Publishers, 2009.

“A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: Has the Right Been Misusing JFK’s Quote?” History News Network, 6 April 2009.

“David Gelernter’s Facts and the Weekly Standard’s Standards.” History News Network, 15 September 2008.

“Rethinking the Culture Wars.” Inside Higher Education online, 22 Aug, 2006.

“Money and Motives.” Inside Higher Education online, 20 July, 2005.

“Postmodern Pluralism and the Retreat from Political Literacy.” Journal of Advanced Composition 25: 2 (2005)

“Partisan Review, Our Culture and Our Country.” College English, January 2005.

“The Contradictions of Cultural Conservatism in the Assault on American Colleges.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 July 2004. Reprinted in Cultural Studies 19:4 (July 2005).

“Patriotism, Partisanship, and the Conscience of Conservative Scholars.” Journal of Advanced Composition 23 (2003).

Review of Norman Podhoretz, Ex-Friends. San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, March 28, l999.

Presenter and organizer of panel, “Can We Talk?: Is Dialogue Possible Between the Cultural Left and Right?” Modern Language Association convention, l998. Panelists: Sanford Pinsker, Robert Alter, Sandra Gilbert.

Presenter and chair, workshop on “Teaching Politically Without Political Correctness.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, l998.

“Ground Rules for Polemicists: The Case of Lynne Cheney’s Truths.” College English, October l997. Comments and Reply, September l998, by William Rice and Sanford Pinsker.

“Teaching the Political Conflicts: A Rhetorical Schema.” College Composition and Communication 43 (l992): l94-213. Reprinted in The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook, Gary Tate and Edward Corbett, eds., Oxford UP, l994.

“Back to Basics: A Source of Oppression or Liberation?” College English 54 (l992): l-l6.

“Political Correctness Left and Right” (Review of Allan Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs and Peter Shaw, The War Against the Intellect). College English 54 (l992): 79-88.

“Literary Revisionism, Partisan Politics, and the Press.” Modern Language Association, Profession 89, l989. Response by Herbert London, Profession 90.

Opinion: “Academic Marxists Are Being Falsely Accused of Guilt by Association With Totalitarian Communist Regimes.” Chronicle of Higher Education, June l3, l990, p. Bl.

Review of Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education and Page Smith, Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America. Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 22, l990, p. l.

Review of Greywolf Annual Five: Multicultural Literacy. New York Times Book Review, December l7, l989, 22-23.

Point of View: “Conservatives Have a Distorted View of What Constitutes Bias in Academe.” The Chronicle of Higher Education Nov. 9, 1989, p. A52.

American Media and Mass Culture: Left Perspectives. U of California P, 1987.

Critical Thinking in College English Studies. ERIC Digest, 1987.