{"id":43366,"date":"2024-01-26T01:48:37","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T09:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=43366"},"modified":"2024-01-24T10:51:49","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T18:51:49","slug":"critical-thinking-a-vital-skill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2024\/01\/26\/critical-thinking-a-vital-skill\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical thinking a vital skill"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a 20-something in the mid-1990s, I taught high school English. Part of my course load was a collaborative Grade 10 World Civilizations course that I co-taught with a social studies teacher. One day, I flippantly advertised our next assignment to a room of 16-year-olds, saying, \u201cOh, hey, we\u2019re going to start reading Candide<\/i> by Voltaire next week! You\u2019ll love it! It\u2019s full of sex, drugs and violence.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To my surprise, many of those students talked to their parents. I received a flurry of concerned phone calls, messages and emails. Parents were worried about the curriculum. In the end, my explanations were successful. Yes, it\u2019s true that Candide<\/i> is probably rated R, but this fantastical satire was first published in 1759. It\u2019s a famous classic, it\u2019s definitely \u201cliterature,\u201d with lots of intrigue and ideas we can learn from \u2013 and, oh yeah, it\u2019s not true.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Literature teachers often speak of the great truths found in the classics, but fiction isn\u2019t \u201cthe truth.\u201d It\u2019s complicated to untangle, and that\u2019s why we study it to develop our critical thinking skills. In our multi-discipline history and English course, we had opportunities to discuss how history evolved, how we could examine primary sources to draw conclusions, and more. Literature was just a part of our opportunity to read and analyze important texts.<\/p>\n

All this came to mind recently when some antisemitic posts came my way via social media concerning the Talmud. People started quoting the Talmud and inferring from brief quotations that Jews did all sorts of evil things. This was something of a modern blood libel approach; using brief snippets out of the huge body of law and literary work to condemn an entire ethnoreligious group. What followed was both a lot of nonsense and some deep belly laughs from Jews and scholars who study Talmud. Now, if you want to understand this text, buy all the tractates of the Babylonian (and don\u2019t forget the Jerusalem) Talmud. You\u2019re looking at a several-thousand-dollar purchase, which you can\u2019t read unless you know Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew, as well as Rashi script, to read his commentary.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Sefaria, an online database, has offered access to Talmud and many other Jewish texts, both in the original and in translation, for free. It\u2019s been a tremendous gift and democratization of these ancient texts. However, having access doesn\u2019t mean you have understanding. Like reading Candide <\/i>for the first time, it\u2019s helpful to have a teacher, some historical context, and lots of support to aid in your comprehension. These online X commenters, taking short rabbinic quotes out of context, had no idea what they were talking about. In many cases, the Talmud\u2019s rabbinic musings explore arbitrary legal situations that never happened in order to explore and define the minutiae of Jewish law.<\/p>\n

Also online, I saw others bemoaning how learning historical \u201cfacts\u201d seemed solid and unquestionable \u2013 dates and events \u2013 but that, with modern events, it seemed hard to define what had happened and what was true as compared to misinformation. This anecdotal experience is common but it\u2019s misleading. It takes a long time to establish a common narrative around a historical event, and \u201cthe winners\u201d of war or political events create their version of history. Using multiple primary sources, as well as multiple historians\u2019 accounts, helps learners see how historians lend their biases to their interpretation of what happened. We only get a full picture of \u201cwhat happened\u201d through exploring many perspectives from multiple sources. Even then, it\u2019s hard to know if the history we\u2019ve learned is \u201ctrue,\u201d or not.<\/p>\n

Developing a mature understanding of literature and world events requires us to be critical thinkers. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1936, \u201c\u2026 the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still\u00a0<\/span>retain the ability to function.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d say that, often, intelligent people explore complex political, historical, social or literary scenarios that hold multiple opposing ideas at once. But this kind of learning takes time and energy. It does not happen automatically. Our society loves binaries, where we get a quick yes\/no answer.<\/p>\n

My kids aren\u2019t in high school. Yet, as a parent, I look forward to the day they come home excited about a \u201cmature\u201d literature assignment full of \u201csex, drugs and violence.\u201d Each new milestone achieved fills me with hope. This year, for the first time, I have two kids who skate on their own, and I don\u2019t always have to lace them up. At the same time, we\u2019re trying to get to complex, but age-appropriate understandings of the Hamas-Israel war. We explore what is happening along with how the media depicts the situation. Who shapes our understanding of what\u2019s happening? How? Most difficult is exploring the questions around whether anyone \u201cwins\u201d in a war when there is so much suffering involved.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The world is complicated. We can use literature and ideas for enjoyment, but also as tools to help think about big issues. Thinking critically about complex issues is a sign of intelligence and maturity. We must cultivate this skill. I hope it\u2019s something my kids achieve as those long-ago high school students did.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Critical thinking is also a lens through which to examine the multiple simplistic social media and news narratives we\u2019re facing every day. One can ask why the description of an event is so simplistic or who is consistently blamed in the narrative. Often, a short take on Talmud doesn\u2019t demonstrate a deep understanding. A news article that fails to include the back story isn\u2019t going to cut it. A view that always blames only one country \u2013 Israel \u2013 or one ethnoreligious group \u2013 Jews \u2013 might be similarly flawed.<\/p>\n

Developing our thinking skills enables us to understand complexity. It also helps us discern an argument\u2019s flaws. Let\u2019s nurture smart thinkers so they can recognize and discard the nonsense, misinformation and hate that pops up so frequently now online and in the news.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Joanne Seiff<\/b> has written regularly for the <\/i>Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including <\/i>From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner<\/a> or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a 20-something in the mid-1990s, I taught high school English. Part of my course load was a collaborative Grade 10 World Civilizations course that I co-taught with a social studies teacher. One day, I flippantly advertised our next assignment to a room of 16-year-olds, saying, \u201cOh, hey, we\u2019re going to start reading Candide by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[801,22934,20350,3076,22729,6761,6002,2231,22933],"class_list":["post-43366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-ed","tag-antisemitism","tag-candide","tag-critical-thinking","tag-education","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-literature","tag-social-media","tag-talmud","tag-voltaire"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}