I teach undergraduate college-level critical thinking classes online and introduce many students, who span all demographics, to the concept of thinking critically. Through my work, I've found that class discussions on recognizing and resisting advertising pitches are generally well received; those that delve into subconscious or learned barriers to critical thinking, however, tend to meet with more resistance. And, although I used to be able to motivate students to think critically by focusing on the pursuit of truth, this approach has been complicated by a flood of alternative sources of news, purported facts, and forms of reasoning. For example, one strategy for sparking student interest in critical thinking is to present the process of vetting websites as akin to detective work. Following a path from the "About Us" section of a webpage to owners, affiliates, and their possible motivations works well with students who want to find unbiased information. However, some students, despite understanding why websites should be vetted, will not do so outside the realm of academia. We can teach them how to tell fact from fiction, but we cannot make them do it.
E-learning, although convenient and a potential boon to an array of students, has a particular vulnerability: while students engage in classwork in one tab, they may have Facebook open in another. Despite concerns about the proliferation of fake news and propaganda through sites like Facebook, many people consider social media to be their main, if not only, news source. Socially verified "facts" gain momentum as people accept and share claims without question. In this new media landscape, "Many of us just 'know' things that turn out not to be true" (Newell, 2017). In this context, "knowing" can be interpreted as "choosing"—choosing facts, choosing proof, choosing a comforting, less-challenging reality.
This presents a dilemma for teachers seeking ways to intervene and encourage analysis. Rhetoric is replacing individual responsibility for learning, resulting in more general acceptance of platitudes, slogans, and propaganda. It is difficult for a teacher to convince students that the effort required to delve into information is worth it. According to British professor David Tollerton, "Under the banner 'Make America Great Again' the type of argumentation I have been demanding of my students became defunct" (2016). The time-honored strategy of researching and evaluating evidence has been pitted against easy adoption of popular partisan realities, where in-depth analysis of a primary source is replaced by believing the information with the most "likes."
When I was a teenager, I wore a button that said "Question Authority" on my leather jacket. A decade later, I replaced that button (not to mention the jacket) with one that said "Question Authority but Not Your Mother." It seemed clever at the time but could not have been more of a mistake. These are perilous times. We need to not only question everything we see and hear but also what we think and why. And we need to listen to others so we can understand why they think the way they do, whether or not we agree. Consider the Indian fable about six blind men who had never encountered an elephant before. Each man touched a different part of the animal and described what he felt. Because they were all experiencing different parts, they described the animal very differently and could not agree on whose description was correct. (Jainworld.com, n.d.). The moral of this story is that we must be tolerant of different points of view and seek out varied sources of information, as truth is often found in a combination of facts. Now, more than ever, we must teach the importance of research, analysis, and open-minded debate.