FROM CRITICAL THINKING to ARGUMENT and RESEARCH

FROM CRITICAL THINKING to

ARGUMENT and RESEARCH

PART ONE

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Critical Thinking

What is the hardest task in the world? To think. — RALPH WALDO EMERSON

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

— JOAN DIDION

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

— BERTRAND RUSSELL

Although Emerson said simply “to think,” he pretty clearly was using the word think in the sense of critical thinking. By itself, think- ing can mean almost any sort of mental activity, from idle day- dreaming (“During the chemistry lecture I kept thinking about how I’d like to go camping”) to careful analysis (“I’m thinking about whether I can afford more than one week—say two weeks—of camping in the Rockies,” or even “I’m thinking about whether Emerson’s comment is true”).

In short, when we add the adjective critical to the noun think- ing, we pretty much eliminate reveries, just as we also eliminate snap judgments. We are talking about searching for hidden assumptions, noticing various facets, unraveling different strands, and evaluating what is most significant. The word critical comes from a Greek word, krinein, meaning “to separate,” “to choose”; it implies conscious, deliberate inquiry, and especially it implies adopting a skeptical state of mind. To say that it implies a skeptical state of mind is by no means to say that it implies a self-satisfied fault-finding state of mind. Quite the reverse: Because critical

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thinkers seek to draw intelligent conclusions, they are sufficiently open-minded that they can adopt a skeptical attitude

• Toward their own ideas,

• Toward their own assumptions, and

• Toward the evidence they themselves tentatively offer,

as well as toward the assumptions and evidence offered by others. When they reread a draft they have written, they read it with a skeptical frame of mind, seeking to improve the thinking that has gone into it.

THINKING ABOUT DRIVERS’ LICENSES AND PHOTOGRAPHIC IDENTIFICATION

By way of illustration, let’s think about a case that was in the news in 2003. When Sultaana Freeman, an American Muslim woman in Florida, first applied for a driver’s license, she refused on reli- gious grounds to unveil her face for the photograph that Florida requires. She was allowed to remain veiled for the photo, with only her eyes showing. Probably in a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, she was informed in 2002 that her license would be revoked if she refused to allow the Department of Motor Vehicles to photograph her face. She sued the state of Florida, saying that unveiling would violate her Islamic beliefs. “I’m fighting for the principle and the religious freedom of all people in the country,” she said. “It’s not about me.”

Well, let’s think about this—let’s think critically, and to do this, we will use a simple aid that is equal to the best word processor, a pencil. Your own experience has already taught you that thinking is largely a matter of association; one thought leads to another, as when you jot down “peanut butter” on a shopping list and then add “bread,” and “bread” somehow reminds you—you don’t know why—that you also need paper napkins. As the humorist Finley Peter Dunne observed, philosophers and cows have the gift of med- itation, but “others don’t begin to think till they begin to talk or write.” So what are some thoughts that come to mind when we begin to talk or write about this Florida case?

Critical thinking means questioning not only the assumptions of others, but also questioning your own assumptions. We will dis- cuss this point at some length later in this chapter, but here we

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want to say only that when you write an argument, you ought to be thinking, evaluating evidence and assumptions, not merely col- lecting evidence to support a preestablished conclusion.

Back to the Florida case: Here is what we came up with in a few minutes, using a process called clustering. (We illustrate clustering again on page 7.)

In the center of a sheet of paper, we jotted down a phrase summarizing the basic issue, and then we began jotting down what must be the most obvious justification for demanding the picture— national safety. (We might equally well have begun with the most obvious justifications for refusing to be photographed—religious belief and perhaps privacy, to think of arguments that Sultaana Freeman—or, more likely, her lawyer—might set forth.) Then we

THINKING ABOUT DRIVERS’ LICENSES AND . . . 5

4. Not the point: She believes her face ought not to be seen by a cop who might ask for her license.

3. Compromise: Maybe have a woman photographer take the picture in private.

2. National security is more important than private beliefs.

1. Infringement on one’s religious beliefs.

5. She is not being discriminated against, as a Muslim. All people who want a Florida license need a photo.

6. Not quite true. Temporary licenses are issued without a photo.

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let our minds work, and one thought led to another. Sometimes almost as soon as we jotted down an idea we saw that it wasn’t very good, but we made considerable progress.

In the illustration, we have added numbers to the ideas, simply so that you can see how our minds worked, which is to say how we jumped around. Notice, for instance, that our fifth point—our fifth idea—is connected to our second point. When we were rereading our first four jottings, the fifth idea — that she is not being discrim- inated against as a Muslim — came to mind, and we saw that it should be linked with the second point. Our sixth point—a modifi- cation of our fifth, occurred to us even before we finished writing the fifth. The sixth point, that temporary licenses in Florida are issued without photographs, prompted us to start thinking more vigorously about the arguments that Ms. Freeman, or her lawyer, might offer.

A very brief digression: A legal case is pretty much a matter of guilty or not guilty, right or wrong, yes or no. Of course in some trials a defendant can be found guilty of certain charges and inno- cent of others, but, again, it is usually an either/or situation: The prosecution wins, or the defense wins. But in many other aspects of life, there is room for compromise, and it may well be that both sides win—by seeing what ground they share and by developing additional common ground. We go into this topic at greater length in Chapter 10, where we discuss Rogerian argument (named for Carl Rogers, a psychotherapist) and in our introduction to several chap- ters that offer pairs of debates.

Now back to Freeman v. State of Florida, Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, where we began by trying to list arguments on one side versus arguments on the other.

• After making our seventh note, which goes directly back to the central issue (hence we connected it with a line to the central issue) and which turned out to be an argument that the government rather than the plaintiff might make, we decided to keep thinking about government positions, and wrote the eighth note—that some states do not require pic- tures on drivers’ licenses.

• The ninth note—that the government is prohibiting a belief, not a harmful action—in some degree refutes our seventh note, so we connected it to the seventh.

Again, if you think with a pencil and a sheet of paper and let your mind make associations, you will find, perhaps to your surprise,

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THINKING ABOUT DRIVERS’ LICENSES AND . . . 7

4. Not the point: She believes her face ought not to be seen by a cop who might ask for her license.

3. Compromise: Maybe have a woman photographer take the picture in private.

2. National security is more important than private beliefs.

1. Infringement on one’s religious beliefs.

5. She is not being discriminated against, as a Muslim. All people who want a Florida license need a photo.

6. Not quite true. Temporary licenses are issued without a photo.

7. Maybe infringement. But the gov’t sometimes prohibits beliefs it considers harmful to society. It does not permit the use of drugs in religious ceremonies, or sacrifice.

9. But those things are harmful actions that the believer engages in. In the case at issue, the believer is not engaging in harmful action. It’s the gov’t that is doing the acting — taking a picture.

8. Some states do not require pictures on licenses.

10. Florida itself issues temporary licenses without photos.

that you have plenty of interesting ideas. Doubtless you will also have some not-so-interesting ones. We confess that we have slightly edited our notes; originally they included two points that we are ashamed we thought of:

• “What is she complaining about? In some strict Islamic coun- tries they don’t even let women drive, period.”

• “Being deprived of a license isn’t a big deal. She can take the bus.”

It will take only a moment of reflection to decide that these thoughts can scarcely be offered as serious arguments: What people

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do in strict Islamic countries has nothing to do with what we should do in ours, and that bus service is available is utterly irrele- vant to the issue of whether this woman’s rights are being infringed. Still, if a fear of making fools of ourselves had prevented us from jotting down ideas, we would not have jotted down any decent ideas, and the page would not have gotten written.

The outcome of the driver’s license photo case? Judge Janet C. Thorpe ruled against the plaintiff, explaining that “the State has always had a compelling interest in promoting public safety. That interest is served by having the means to accurately and swiftly determine identities in given circumstances.” (You can read Judge Thorpe’s entire decision online — sixteen highly readable double- spaced pages — by going to Google and typing in “Sultaana Lakiana.”)

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Plaintiff in Freeman v. State of Florida, Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. (Peter Cosgrove/© AP/Worldwide Photos.)

A RULE FOR WRITERS: One good way to start writing an essay is to start generating ideas—and at this point don’t worry that some of them may be nonsense. Just get ideas down on paper, and evaluate them later.

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TOPICS FOR CRITICAL THINKING AND WRITINGS

1. Think about Judge Thorpe’s comment, quoted in the preceding para- graph. Even if we agree that a photograph establishes identity— itself a debatable point — one might raise a question: Given the fact that Florida has not passed a law requiring a photo ID, why should it say that the driver of a vehicle must provide a photo ID? Isn’t a driver’s license a mere certification of permission to drive?

2. Judge Thorpe wrote the following as part of her explanation for her decision:

Although the Court acknowledges that Plaintiff herself most likely poses no threat to national security, there likely are people who would be willing to use a ruling permitting the wearing of fullface cloaks in driver’s license photos by pretending to ascribe to religious beliefs in order to carry out activities that would threaten lives.

Is the judge in effect saying that we should infringe on Sultaana Free-man’s religious beliefs because someone else might do something wicked?

3. In England in 2006 a Muslim woman—a British citizen—was removed from her job as a schoolteacher because she wore a veil. The stated reason was that the veil prevented her from effectively communicating with children. What do you think of the view that a woman has a right to wear a veil, but when she enters the mar- ketplace she may rightly be denied certain jobs? What are your reasons?

THINKING ABOUT ANOTHER ISSUE CONCERNING DRIVERS’ LICENSES: IMAGINATION, ANALYSIS, EVALUATION

Let’s think critically about a law passed in West Virginia in 1989. The law provides that although students may drop out of school at the age of sixteen, no dropout younger than eighteen can hold a driver’s license. (Several states now have comparable laws.)

What ought we to think of such a law?

• Is it fair?

• What is its purpose?

• Is it likely to accomplish its purpose?

• Might it unintentionally cause some harm?

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• If so, can we weigh the potential harm against the potential good?

Suppose you had been a member of the West Virginia state legisla- ture in 1989: How would you have voted?

In thinking critically about a topic, we try to see it from all sides before we come to our conclusion. We conduct an argument with ourselves, advancing and then questioning opinions:

• What can be said for the proposition, and

• What can be said against it?

Our first reaction may be quite uncritical, quite unthinking: “What a good idea!” or “That’s outrageous!” But critical thinking requires us to reflect further, trying to support our position and also trying to see the other side. One can almost say that the heart of critical thinking is a willingness to face objections to one’s own beliefs, a willingness to adopt a skeptical attitude not only toward authority and toward views opposed to our own but also toward common sense — that is, toward the views that seem obviously right to us. If we assume we have a monopoly on the truth and we dismiss as bigots those who oppose us, or if we say our oppo- nents are acting merely out of self-interest and we do not in fact analyze their views, we are being critical but we are not engaged in critical thinking.

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A RULE FOR WRITERS: Early in the process of jotting down your ideas on a topic, stop to ask yourself, “What might reasonably be offered as an objection to my view?”

Critical thinking requires us to use our imaginations, seeing things from perspectives other than our own and envisioning the likely consequences of our positions. (This sort of imaginative thinking— grasping a perspective other than our own and considering the pos- sible consequences of positions—is, as we have said, very different from daydreaming, an activity of unchecked fantasy.)

Thinking critically involves, along with imagination (so that we can see our own beliefs from another point of view), a twofold activity:

analysis, finding the parts of the problem and then separating them, trying to see how things fit together; and

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evaluation, judging the merit of our claims and assumptions and the weight of the evidence in their favor.

If we engage in imaginative, analytic, and evaluative thought, we will have second and third ideas; almost to our surprise we may find ourselves adopting a position that we initially couldn’t imagine we would hold. As we think about the West Virginia law, we might find ourselves coming up with a fairly wide variety of ideas, each triggered by the preceding idea but not necessarily carrying it a step further. For instance, we may think X and then immediately think, “No, that’s not quite right. In fact, come to think of it, the opposite of X is probably true.” We haven’t carried X further, but we have progressed in our thinking.

THINKING ABOUT STUDENT EVALUATIONS OF THEIR PROFESSORS

Many colleges and universities invite students to evaluate the courses they take, usually by filling out a questionnaire. Customarily the evaluations are made available to instructors after grades have been handed in. At Tufts University, for instance, students are invited to write about each of their courses and also to respond to specific questions by indicating a rating that ranges from 5 to 1 (5 � excel- lent, 4 � above average, 3 � average, 2 � below average, 1 � poor; na � not applicable). Among the eleven questions about the instruc- tor, students are asked to rate “clarity of presentation” and “tolerance of alternative views”; among the three questions about the course, students are asked to rate “overall organization.”

What is the point of such evaluations? Might there be argu- ments against using questionnaires illustrating negative aspects to their use? Consider the Idea Prompt which lays out the pros and cons (Idea Prompt 1.1).

We have already mentioned that the questionnaires may be used when administrators consider awarding merit increases, and in the last few years a new angle appeared. At Texas A & M, for instance, bonuses ranging from $2,500 to $10,000 are awarded to certain professors who are chosen by a committee of students. (At Texas A & M, tenure and promotion are not involved in the pro- gram, only money.) The gist of the Texas plan, approved by the Faculty Senate, is this: Members of the faculty who wish to com- pete—this particular practice is voluntary—may invite students in

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their classes to fill out a questionnaire prepared by a committee created by the Student Government Association. (In preparing the questionnaire, the committee drew on suggestions made by the faculty, students, administrators, and “system officials.”) Eleven students examine the questionnaires, and it is these students who decide who gets the bonus money, and how much. At the University of Oklahoma’s College of Engineering and College of Business a somewhat comparable program exists, with bonuses ranging from $5,000 to $10,000: In the College of Engineering, for instance, those faculty members who participate and who score in the top 5 percent on the evaluation are each awarded $5,000. Each of those who score in the next 15 percent receives $ 2,500.

The Texas A & M questionnaire has sixteen questions, to which students are asked to respond on a five-point scale, ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” Here are two sample questions.

1. My instructor seemed to be very knowledgeable about the subject matter.

2. My instructor seemed to present the course material in an organized manner.

Finalists in the evaluation must then submit a syllabus and a state- ment of their teaching philosophy, and the head of the department is invited to submit a comment. Students on the committee also may

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IDEA PROMPT 1.1 VISUALIZING PROS AND CONS

Benefits of Arguments against evaluations evaluations

Instructors Learn how they may May be reluctant to give improve their teaching low grades because of

fear of student retaliation

Students Will benefit in the future Are not always qualified because the instructor to give fair evaluations will do a better job

Administrators Receive additional May rely too heavily on information to help evaluations as evidence them make decision of a course’s merit about promotion, the award of tenure, or salary increases

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examine the grade distribution curve. The questionnaire, however, is said to be the chief criterion.

TOPICS FOR CRITICAL THINKING AND WRITING

1. Jot down any arguments you think of, not already mentioned, pro and con, for the use of evaluation questionnaires in college classes.

2. Even if you do not favor such questionnaires, jot down three questions that you think might be useful on such a questionnaire.

3. What do you think would be the best way to form a student eval- uation committee? Explain the merits of your proposal with respect to possible alternatives.

4. How would you distinguish between a good teacher and a popular teacher?

5. Draft a brief essay, about 500 words, arguing for or against the use of questionnaires in college courses. Be sure to indicate the pur- pose(s) of the questionnaires. Are the questionnaires to be used by administrators, by students, or both? Should they help to deter- mine promotion, tenure, and compensation?

WRITING AS A WAY OF THINKING

“To learn to write,” Robert Frost said, “is to learn to have ideas.” But how do you “learn to have ideas”? Often we discover ideas while we are in the process of talking with others. A friend says X about some issue, and we—who have never really thought much about the matter—say,

• “Well, yes, I see what you are saying, but, come to think of it, I’m not of your opinion. I see it differently— not X but Y.” Or maybe we say,

• “Yes, X, sure, and also a bit of Y too.”

Mere chance—the comment of a friend—has led us to an idea that we didn’t know we had. This sort of discovery may at first seem something like the discovery we make when we reach under the couch to retrieve a ball that the dog has pushed and we find a ten-dollar bill instead. “How it got there, I’ll never know, but I’m glad I found it.”

In fact, learning to have ideas is not largely a matter of chance. Or if chance is involved, well, as Louis Pasteur put it, “Chance favors

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the prepared mind.” What does this mean? It means that somehow, lurking in the mind, are some bits of information or hints or maybe hunches that in the unexpected circumstance—when talking, or when listening to a lecture or a classroom discussion, or especially when reading—are triggered and result in useful thoughts. A sort of seat-of-the-pants knowledge that, when brought to the surface, when worked on, produces good results.

Consider the famous episode of Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician, who discovered a method to determine the volume of an irregularly shaped object. The problem: A king gave a gold- smith a specific weight of gold with which to make a crown in the shape of laurel leaves. When the job was finished the king weighed the crown, found that it was the weight of the gold he had pro- vided, but he nevertheless suspected that the goldsmith might have substituted some silver for the gold. How could Archimedes find out (without melting or in any other way damaging the crown) if the crown was pure gold? Meditating produced no ideas, but when he entered a bathtub Archimedes noticed that the level of water rose as he immersed his body. He suddenly realized that he could thus determine the volume of the crown—by measuring the amount of displaced water. Since silver is less dense than gold, it takes a greater volume of silver to equal a given weight of gold. That is, a given weight of gold will displace less water than the same weight of silver. Archimedes then immersed the given weight of gold, measured the water it displaced, and found that indeed the crown displaced more water than the gold did. In his excitement at hitting upon his idea, Archimedes is said to have leaped out of the tub and run naked through the street, shouting “Eureka” (Greek for “I have found it”).

Getting Ideas Why do we tell this story? Partly because we like it, but chiefly because the word eureka comes from the same Greek word that has given our language the word heuristic (pronounced hyooRIStik), a method or process of discovering ideas, in short, of thinking. In this method, one thing triggers another. (Note: In computer science heuristic has a more specialized meaning.) Now, one of the best ways of getting ideas is to hear what is going on around you—and what is going on around you is talk, in and out of the classroom, and talk in the world of books. You will find, as we said at the beginning of this discussion, that your response may be, “Well, yes, I see what

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you are saying, but, come to think of it, I don’t see it quite that way. I see it differently—not X but Y.” For instance,

“Yes, solar power is a way of conserving energy, but do we need to despoil the Mojave Desert and endanger desert life with — literally — fifty thousand solar mirrors, so that folks in Los Angeles can heat their pools? Doesn’t it make sense to reduce our use of energy, rather than merely to develop sources of renewable energy that violate the environment? Some sites should be off-limits.”

Or maybe your response to the proposal (now at least ten years old) that wind turbines be placed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is,

“Given our need for wind power, how can a reasonable person object to the proposal that we put 130 wind turbines in Cape Cod, Massachusetts? Yes, the view will be changed, but in fact the turbines are quite attractive. No one thinks that windmills in Holland spoil the landscape. So the view will be changed, but not spoiled, and furthermore wind turbines do not endanger birds or aquatic life.

When you are asked to write about something you have read in this book, if your first response is that you have no ideas, remem- ber the responses that we have mentioned—“No, I don’t see it that way,” or “Yes, but,” or “Yes, and moreover”—and see if one of them helps you to respond to the work—helps you, in short, to get ideas.

A related way of getting ideas practiced by the ancient Greeks and Romans and still regarded as among the best ways, is to con- sider what the ancients called topics, from the Greek word topos, meaning “place,” as in our word topography (a description or repre- sentation of a place). For the ancients, certain topics, put into the form of questions, were in effect places where one went to find ideas. Among the classical topics were definition, comparison, rela- tionship, and testimony. By prompting oneself with questions about these topics, one finds oneself moving toward answers (see Idea Prompt 1.2).

If you think you are at a loss for ideas when confronted with an issue (and when confronted with an assignment to write about it), you probably will find ideas coming to you if you turn to the relevant classical topics and begin jotting down your responses. (In classical terminology, you are engaged in the process of invention, from the Latin invenire, “to come upon,” “to find.”) Seeing your

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ideas on paper —even in the briefest form—will help bring other ideas to mind and will also help you to evaluate them. For instance, after jotting down ideas as they come and responses to them,

1. You might go on to organize them into two lists, pro and con; 2. Next, you might delete ideas that, when you come to think

about them, strike you as simply wrong or irrelevant; and 3. Then you might develop those ideas that strike you as pretty

good.

You probably won’t know where you stand until you have gone through some such process. It would be nice if we could make a quick decision, immediately justify it with three excellent rea- sons, and then give three further reasons showing why the oppos- ing view is inadequate. In fact, however, we almost never can come to a reasoned decision without a good deal of preliminary thinking.

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IDEA PROMPT 1.2 UNDERSTANDING CLASSICAL TOPICS

Definition What is it? “The West Virginia law defines a high-school dropout as . . .”

Comparison What is it like “Compared with the national or unlike? rate of teenagers involved in

fatal accidents, teenagers from West Virginia . . .”

Relationship What caused it, “The chief cause of teenage and what will fatal driving accidents is it cause? alcohol. Admittedly, there are

no statistics on whether high school dropouts have a higher rate of alcoholism than teenagers who remain in school, but nevertheless . . .”

Testimony What is said “Judge Smith, in sentencing about it, for the youth, said that in all of instance, by his long experience . . .” experts?

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Consider again the West Virginia law we discussed earlier in this chapter. Here is a kind of inner dialogue that you might engage in as you think critically about it:

The purpose is to give students an incentive to stay in school by making them pay a price if they choose to drop out.

Adolescents will get the message that education really is important.

But come to think of it, will they? Maybe they will see this as just another example of adults bullying young people.

According to a newspaper article, the dropout rate in West Virginia decreased by 30 percent in the year after the bill was passed.

Well, that sounds good, but is there any reason to think that kids who are pressured into staying really learn anything? The assumption behind the bill is that if would-be dropouts stay in school, they—and society—will gain. But is the assumption sound? Maybe such students will become resentful, will not learn anything, and may even be so disruptive that they will interfere with the learning of other students.

Notice how part of the job is analytic, recognizing the elements or complexities of the whole, and part is evaluative, judging the adequacy of all of these ideas, one by one. Both tasks require imagination.

So far we have jotted down a few thoughts and then immedi- ately given some second thoughts contrary to the first. Of course, the counterthoughts might not immediately come to mind. For instance, they might not occur until we reread the jottings, or try to explain the law to a friend, or until we sit down and begin drafting an essay aimed at supporting or undermining the law. Most likely, in fact, some good ideas won’t occur until a second or third or fourth draft.

Here are some further thoughts on the West Virginia law. We list them more or less as they arose and as we typed them into a com- puter—not sorted out neatly into two groups, pro and con, or eval- uated as you would want to do in further critical thinking of your own. And of course, a later step would be to organize the material into some useful pattern. As you read, you might jot down your own responses in the margin.

Education is not optional, something left for the individual to take

or not to take—like going to a concert, jogging, getting annual

health checkups, or getting eight hours of sleep each night. Society

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has determined that it is for the public good that citizens have a

substantial education, so we require education up to a certain age.

Come to think about it, maybe the criterion of age doesn’t make much

sense. If we want an educated citizenry, it would make more sense to

require people to attend school until they demonstrated competence

in certain matters rather than until they reached a certain age.

Exceptions, of course, would be made for mentally retarded persons

and perhaps for certain other groups.

What is needed is not legal pressure to keep teenagers in school

but schools that hold the interest of teenagers.

A sixteen-year-old usually is not mature enough to make a decision

of this importance.

Still, a sixteen-year-old who finds school unsatisfying and who

therefore drops out may become a perfectly useful citizen.

Denying a sixteen-year-old a driver’s license may work in West

Virginia, but it would scarcely work in a state with great urban areas,

where most high school students rely on public transportation.

We earn a driver’s license by demonstrating certain skills. The state

has no right to take away such a license unless we have demon-

strated that we are unsafe drivers.

To prevent a person of sixteen from having a driver’s license prevents

that person from holding certain kinds of jobs, and that’s unfair.

A law of this sort deceives adults into thinking that they have

really done something constructive for teenage education, but it

may work against improving the schools. It may be counterproduc-

tive: If we are really serious about educating youngsters, we have

to examine the curriculum and the quality of our teachers.

Doubtless there is much that we haven’t said, on both sides, but we hope you will agree that the issue deserves thought. In fact, sev- eral states now revoke the driver’s license of a teenager who drops out of school, and four of these states go even further and revoke the licenses of students whose academic work does not reach a given standard. On the other hand, Louisiana, which for a while had a law like West Virginia’s, dropped it in 1997.

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If you were a member of a state legislature voting on this pro- posal, you would have to think about the issue. But just as a thought experiment, try to put into writing your tentative views.

One other point about this issue. If you had to think about the matter today, you might also want to know whether the West Virginia legislation of 1989 is considered a success and on what basis. That is, you would want to get answers to such questions as the following:

• What sort of evidence tends to support the law or tends to suggest that the law is a poor idea?

• Did the reduction in the dropout rate continue, or did the reduction occur only in the first year following the passage of the law?

• If indeed students who wanted to drop out did not, was their presence in school a good thing, both for them and for their classmates?

• Have some people emerged as authorities on this topic? What makes them authorities, and what do they have to say?

• Has the constitutionality of the bill been tested? With what results?

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✓ A CHECKLIST FOR CRITICAL THINKING Attitudes � Does my thinking show imaginative open-mindedness and

intellectual curiosity? � Am I willing to examine my assumptions? � Am I willing to entertain new ideas—both those that I

encounter while reading and those that come to mind while writing?

� Am I willing to exert myself— for instance, to do research— to acquire information and to evaluate evidence?

Skills � Can I summarize an argument accurately? � Can I evaluate assumptions, evidence, and inferences? � Can I present my ideas effectively— for instance, by

organizing and by writing in a manner appropriate to my imagined audience?

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Some of these questions require you to do research on the topic. The questions raise issues of fact, and some relevant evidence probably is available. If you are to arrive at a conclusion in which you can have confidence, you will have to do some research to find out what the facts are.

Even without doing any research, however, you might want to look over the ideas, pro and con, perhaps adding some totally new thoughts or perhaps modifying or even rejecting (for reasons that you can specify) some of those already given. If you do think a bit further about this issue, and we hope that you will, notice an inter- esting point about your own thinking: It probably is not linear (mov- ing in a straight line from A to B to C) but recursive, moving from A to C and back to B or starting over at C and then back to A and B. By zigging and zagging almost despite yourself, you’ll get to a con- clusion that may finally seem correct. In retrospect it seems obvi- ous; now you can chart a nice line from A to B to C —but that was not at all evident to you at the start.

A SHORT ESSAY ILLUSTRATING CRITICAL THINKING

When we read an essay, we expect the writer to have thought things through, at least to a considerable degree. We do not want to read every false start, every fuzzy thought, every ill-organized para- graph that the writer knocked off. Yes, writers make false starts, put down fuzzy thoughts, write ill-organized paragraphs, but then they revise and revise yet again, and they end by giving us a readable essay that seems effortlessly written. Still—and here we get to our real point—in argumentative essays, writers need to show their readers that they have made some effort; they need to show us how they got to their final (for the moment) views. It is not enough for the writer to say, “I believe X”; rather, the writer must in effect say, “I believe X —and I hope you will believe it also—because Y and Z, though attractive, just don’t stand up to inquiry as well as X does. Y is superficially plausible, but . . . , and Z, which is an attractive alter- native to Y, nevertheless fails because . . .”

Notice in the following short essay — on parents putting spy- ware into the computers of their children — that Harlan Coben fre- quently brings up objections to his own position; that is, he shows his awareness of other views, and then tries to show why he thinks his position is preferable. Presumably he thus communi-

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cates to his readers a sense that he is thoughtful, well-informed, and fair-minded.

Harlan Coben

Harlan Coben (b. 1962) is the author of Hold Tight (2009). Reprinted here is an essay published in the New York Times on March 16, 2008. Following are some letters that were written in response and were later published in the Times.

The Undercover Parent

Not long ago, friends of mine confessed over dinner that they had put spyware on their fifteen-year-old son’s computer so they could monitor all he did online. At first I was repelled at this inva- sion of privacy. Now, after doing a fair amount of research, I get it.

Make no mistake: If you put spyware on your computer, you have the ability to log every keystroke your child makes and thus a good portion of his or her private world. That’s what spyware is— at least the parental monitoring kind. You don’t have to be an expert to put it on your computer. You just download the software from a vendor and you will receive reports—weekly, daily, what- ever—showing you everything your child is doing on the machine.

Scary. But a good idea. Most parents won’t even consider it. Maybe it’s the word: spyware. It brings up associations of Dick

Cheney sitting in a dark room, rubbing his hands together and reading your most private thoughts. But this isn’t the government we are talking about—this is your family. It’s a mistake to confuse the two. Loving parents are doing the surveillance here, not face- less bureaucrats. And most parents already monitor their children, watching over their home environment, their school.

Today’s overprotective parents fight their kids’ battles on the playground, berate coaches about playing time and fill out college applications—yet when it comes to chatting with pedophiles or watching beheadings or gambling away their entire life savings, then . . . then their children deserve independence?

Some will say that you should simply trust your child, that if he is old enough to go on the Internet he is old enough to know the dangers. Trust is one thing, but surrendering parental responsi- bility to a machine that allows the entire world access to your home borders on negligence.

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Some will say that it’s better just to use parental blocks that deny access to risky sites. I have found that they don’t work. Children know how to get around them. But more than that—and this is where it gets tough — I want to know what’s being said in e-mail and instant messages and in chat rooms.

There are two reasons for this. First, we’ve all read about the young boy unknowingly conversing with a pedophile or the girl who was cyberbullied to the point where she committed suicide. Would a watchful eye have helped? We rely in the real world on teachers and parents to guard against bullies—do we just dismiss bullying on the Internet and all it entails because we are entering difficult ethical ground?

Second, everything your child types can already be seen by the world—teachers, potential employers, friends, neighbors, future dates. Shouldn’t he learn now that the Internet is not a haven of privacy?

One of the most popular arguments against spyware is the claim that you are reading your teenager’s every thought, that in today’s world, a computer is the little key-locked diary of the past. But posting thoughts on the Internet isn’t the same thing as hiding them under your mattress. Maybe you should buy your children one of those little key-locked diaries so that they too can under- stand the difference.

Am I suggesting eavesdropping on every conversation? No. With new technology comes new responsibility. That works both ways. There is a fine line between being responsibly protective and irresponsibly nosy. You shouldn’t monitor to find out if your daugh- ter’s friend has a crush on Kevin next door or that Mrs. Peterson gives too much homework or what schoolmate snubbed your son. You are there to start conversations and to be a safety net. To bor- row from the national intelligence lexicon—and yes, that’s uncom- fortable—you’re listening for dangerous chatter.

Will your teenagers find other ways of communicating to their friends when they realize you may be watching? Yes. But text mes- sages and cellphones don’t offer the anonymity and danger of the Internet. They are usually one-on-one with someone you know. It is far easier for a predator to troll chat rooms and MySpace and Facebook.

There will be tough calls. If your sixteen-year-old son, for example, is visiting hardcore pornography sites, what do you do? When I was sixteen, we looked at Playboy centerfolds and read Penthouse Forum. You may argue that’s not the same thing, that

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Internet pornography makes that stuff seem about as harmful as “SpongeBob.”

And you’re probably right. But in my day, that’s all you could get. If something more graphic had been out there, we probably would have gone for it. Interest in those, um, topics is natural. So start a dialogue based on that knowledge. You should have that talk anyway, but now you can have it with some kind of context.

Parenting has never been for the faint of heart. One friend of mine, using spyware to monitor his college-bound, straight-A daughter, found out that not only was she using drugs but she was sleeping with her dealer. He wisely took a deep breath before con- fronting her. Then he decided to come clean, to let her know how he had found out, to speak with her about the dangers inherent in her behavior. He’d had these conversations before, of course, but this time he had context. She listened. There was no anger. Things seem better now.

Our knee-jerk reaction as freedom-loving Americans is to be suspicious of anything that hints at invasion of privacy. That’s a good and noble thing. But it’s not an absolute, particularly in the face of the new and evolving challenges presented by the Internet. And particularly when it comes to our children.

Do you tell your children that the spyware is on the com- puter? I side with yes, but it might be enough to show them this article, have a discussion about your concerns and let them know the possibility is there.

Overall View of the Essay Before we comment in some detail on Coben’s essay, we need to say that in terms of the length of its paragraphs, this essay is not a model for you to imitate. Material in newspapers customarily is given in very short paragraphs, partly because readers are reading it while eating breakfast or while commuting to work, and partly because the columns are narrow; a paragraph of only two or three sentences may still be an inch or two deep.

The title, “The Undercover Parent” is provocative, attention- getting.

Paragraph 1 contains cues that telegraph the reader that there will be a change (“Not long ago,” “At first,” and “Now”.) These cues set up expectations, and then Coben to some degree fulfills the expectations. We say “to some degree” because the essay still has a number of paragraphs to go.

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Paragraph 2 presses the point, almost aggressively (“Make no mistake”).

Paragraph 3 pretty much does the same. The writer is clearly reassuring the readers that he knows how most of them feel. The idea is “scary,” yes—and then comes a crucial word, “but,” signaling to the reader that Coben takes a different view. We then expect him to tell us why. And—who knows?—he may even convince us.

Paragraph 4 reassures us that Coben does have some idea of why the idea is “scary,” and it goes on—with another “but”—to clarify the point. We may not agree with Coben, but it is evident that he is thinking, inching along from one idea to the next, fre- quently to an opposing idea.

Paragraph 5 shows that again Coben has a sense of what is going on in the world (“Today’s overprotective parents”), or, rather, he has two senses, because he adds “yet,” equivalent to “but.” In effect he says, “Yes A, but also B.”

Paragraph 6 begins “Some will say,” another indication that the writer knows what is going on. And we can expect that “some will say” will, sooner or later, lead into another “but” (or other compa- rable word), indicating that although some say X, he says Y.

Paragraph 7 again begins “Some will say.” We will say that again the reader knows Coben’s report of what “some” say will lead to a report that what Coben says (i.e. thought) is different.

Paragraph 8 begins, “There are two reasons.” OK, we as readers know where we will be going: We will hear two reasons. Now, when Coben drafted this paragraph he may—who knows?—have first written “There are three reasons,” or “There is one reason.” Whatever he wrote as a prompt, it got him moving, got him think- ing, and then, in the course of writing, of finding ideas, he revised when he found out exactly how many reasons he could offer. In any case, in the paragraph as we have it, he promises to give two reasons, and in this paragraph he gives the first, nicely labeled “First.” Notice too, that he provides evidence, and he draws in the reader: “we’ve all read.” In short, he establishes a cozy relationship with his reader.

Paragraph 9 begins, helpfully, “Second.” Fine, we know exactly where Coben is taking us: He is giving us the second of the two rea- sons that he discovered, and that he implicitly promised to give when in the previous paragraph he said, “There are two reasons.”

Paragraph 10 begins, “One of the most popular arguments against spying is,” and so we know, again, where Coben will be taking us: He will, in effect, be telling us what some folks—but not Coben—say. Very simple, very obvious—Coben will be summarizing

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one of the most popular arguments against spying—and we are grateful to him for letting us know at the beginning of the para- graph what his intentions are.

Paragraph 11 continues his intimate relation with the reader (“Am I suggesting eavesdropping . . . ?”) He thus lets us know that he has a good sense of how the reader probably is responding. As we will say several times in this book, good writers are able to put themselves into their readers’ shoes. Because they have a sense of how the reader is responding, they offer whatever the reader needs at the moment, for instance a definition, or an example.

Paragraph 12 begins with a question (“Will your teenagers find other ways of communicating . . . ?”), and this question again indi- cates that Coben is walking in the shoes of his readers; he knows that this question is on their minds. His answer is twofold, “Yes,” and “But.” Again the “but” is a sign of critical thinking, a sign that Coben has a clear sense of position A, but wants to move his reader from A to B.

Paragraph 13, beginning “There will be tough calls,” is yet another example of Coben’s demonstration to his readers that he is aware of their doubts, aware that they may be thinking Coben has simplified things.

Paragraph 14 (beginning “And you’re probably right”) contin- ues his demonstration that he is aware of how his readers may respond—but it is immediately followed with a “But.” Again, he is nudging us from position A to his position, Position B.

Paragraph 15, like several of the earlier paragraphs, shows Coben is sympathetic to the real-world problems of his readers (“Parenting has never been for the faint of heart”), and it also shows that he is a person of experience. In this paragraph, where he refers to the problem of a friend, he tells us of the happy solu- tion. In short, he tells us that life is tough, but experience shows that there is hope. (The letter-writer, Carol Weston, strongly implies that this bit of experience Coben offers in this paragraph is not at all typical.)

Paragraph 16 again indicates the writer’s sense of the reader (“Our knee-jerk reaction”), and it again evokes a “But.”

Paragraph 17, the final paragraph, pretty directly addresses the reader (“Do you tell your children that the spyware is on the com- puter?”), and it offers a mixed answer: “I side with yes, but . . . .” Again Coben is showing not only his awareness of the reader, but also his awareness that the problem is complicated: There is some- thing to be said for A, but also something to be said for B. He ends by

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suggesting that indeed this article might be discussed by parents with their children, thereby conveying to his readers the suggestion that he is a fair-minded guy, willing to have his ideas put up for discussion.

Following is Carol Weston’s response to Coben’s essay that the Times later published (March 23, 2008).

Letter of Response by Carol Weston

To the Editor: In “The Undercover Parent” (Op-Ed, March 16), the novelist

Harlan Coben writes that putting spyware on a child’s computer is a “good idea.”

As a mother and advice columnist for girls, I disagree. For most families, spyware is not only unnecessary, but it also sends the unfortunate message, “I don’t trust you.”

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Mr. Coben said a friend of his “using spyware to monitor his college-bound, straight-A daughter, found out that not only was she using drugs but she was sleeping with her dealer.” He con- fronted her about her behavior. “She listened. There was no anger. Things seem better now.”

Huh?! No anger? No tears or shouting or slammed doors? C’mon. If only raising teenagers were that simple.

Parenting is both a job and a joy. It does not require spyware, but it does require love, respect, time, trust, money, and being as available as possible 24/7. Luck helps, too.

CAROL WESTON New York, March 16, 2008

The writer is an advice columnist for Girls’ Life magazine.

TOPICS FOR CRITICAL THINKING AND WRITING

1. How important is the distinction (para. 4) between government invasion of privacy and parental invasion of privacy?

2. Complete the following sentence: An invasion of privacy is per- missible if and only if . . .

3. Identify the constructive steps a normal parent might consider tak- ing before going so far as to install spyware.

4. Do you agree with Weston’s statement that installing spyware translates to “I don’t trust you”? Would you feel differently or not if you were a parent?

LETTER OF RESPONSE BY CAROL WESTON 27

✓ A CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATING LETTERS OF RESPONSE After reading the letters responding to an editorial or to a previous letter, go back and read each letter. Have you asked yourself the following questions? � What assumption(s) does the letter-writer make? Do you share

the assumption(s)? � What is the writer’s claim? � What evidence, if any, does the writer offer to support the claim? � Is there anything about the style of the letter— the distinctive

use of language, the tone— that makes the letter especially engaging or especially annoying?

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5. Write your own letter to the editor, indicating your reasons for supporting or rejecting Coben’s argument.

EXAMINING ASSUMPTIONS

In Chapter 3 we will discuss assumptions in some detail, but here we want to introduce the topic by emphasizing the importance of identifying and examining assumptions—the assumptions you will encounter in the writings of others and the assumptions you will rely on in your own essays.

With this in mind, let’s return again to considering the West Virginia driver’s license law. What assumptions did the legislature make in enacting this statute? We mentioned earlier one such assumption: If the law helped to keep teenagers from dropping out of school, then that was a good thing for them and for society in general. For all we know, the advocates of this legislation may have made this assumption explicit in the course of their argument in favor of the statute. Perhaps they left this assumption tacit, believing that the point was obvious and that everyone shared this assump- tion. The assumption may be obvious, but it was not universally shared; the many teenagers who wanted to drop out of school at sixteen and keep their drivers’ licenses did not share it.

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✓ A CHECKLIST FOR EXAMINING ASSUMPTIONS � What assumptions does the writer’s argument presuppose? � Are these assumptions explicit or implicit? � Are these assumptions important to the author’s argument or

only incidental? � Does the author give any evidence of being aware of the

hidden assumptions in her or his argument? � Would a critic be likely to share these assumptions, or are they

exactly what a critic would challenge? � What sort of evidence would be relevant to supporting or

rejecting these assumptions? � Am I willing to grant the author’s assumptions?

� If not, why not?

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Another assumption that the advocates of this legislation may have made is this:

The provisions of this statute are the most efficient way to keep teenagers in high school.

Defending such an assumption is no easy task because it requires identifying other possible legislative strategies and evaluating their merits against those of the proposed legislation.

Consider now two of the assumptions involved in the Sultaana Freeman case. Thanks to the “clustering” exercise (pp. 5–7), these and other assumptions are already on display. Perhaps the most important and fundamental assumption Ms. Freeman made is this:

Where private religious beliefs conflict with duly enacted laws, the former should prevail.

This assumption is widely shared in our society and is by no means unique to Muslim women seeking drivers’ licenses in Florida after September 11, 2001. Freeman’s opponents probably assumed a very different but equally fundamental proposition:

Private religious practices and beliefs must yield to the demands of national security.

Obviously these two assumptions were on a collision course and neither side could hope to prevail so long as the key assumptions of the other side were ignored.