9
Universal Intellectual Standards – and questions that
can be used to apply them
Universal intellectual standards are standards which must be applied to thinking
whenever one is interested in checking the quality of reasoning about a problem,
issue or situation. To think critically entails having command of these standards. To
help students learn them, teachers should pose questions which probe student
thinking, questions which hold students accountable for their thinking, questions
which, through consistent use by the teacher in the classroom, become internalised
by students as questions they need to ask themselves.
The ultimate goal, then, is for these questions to become infused in the
thinking of students, forming part of their inner voice, which guides them to better and
better reasoning. There are a wide variety of intellectual standards, including:
Clarity:
Could you elaborate further on that point? Could you express that point in another
way? Could you give me an illustration? Could you give me an example?
Clarity is a
gateway standard. If a statement is unclear, we cannot determine whether it is
accurate or relevant. In fact, we cannot tell anything about it because we don’t yet
know what it is saying. For example, the question “What can be done about the
education system in America?” is unclear. In order to adequately address the
question, we would need to have a clear understanding of what the person asking
the question is considering the “problem” to be. A clearer question might be “What
can educators do to ensure that students learn the skills and abilities which help
them function successfully on the job and in their daily decision-making?”
Accuracy:
Is that really true? How could we check on that? How could we find out if that is true?
A statement can be clear, but not accurate, as in “Most dogs are over 100 kg in
weight.”
Precision:
Could you give me more details? Could you be more specific?
A statement can be
both clear and accurate, but not precise, as in “Jack is overweight.” (We don’t know
how overweight Jack is, 1 kg or 100 kg).