Mission Critical (Gr. 8-12)
Mission: Critical (The concepts of critical thinking)
The goal of Mission: Critical is to create a "virtual lab," capable of familiarizing users with the basic concepts of critical thinking in a self-paced, interactive environment.
Critical thinking is part of the transfer core curriculum recognized at all state-supported institutions of higher education in California. As might be expected, however, approaches to teaching critical thinking are as varied as the disciplines in which qualifying courses are taught. At San José State, for example, there are critical thinking courses in the departments of Communication Studies, English, History, Linguistics and Language Development, Philosophy, and Psychology; in addition, the critical thinking requirement is among those satisfied by special lower-division courses in American Studies and Humanities. We hope to make Mission: Critical flexible enough to be of use in as many of these diverse courses as possible. By relieving the classroom instructor of the necessity for drilling, often associated especially with deductive reasoning and fallacious appeals, use of Mission: Critical will allow him or her to concentrate on the more theoretical, conceptual, and pratical issues and techniques which constitute the most efficient use of class time.
In order to evaluate and improve Mission: Critical, we are seeking the involvement of critical thinking instructors and their classes. Please contact Mission Control with any feedback, suggestions, or criticisms.
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Mission Control of Mission: Critical is headed by D. Mesher, a professor of English who has been teaching critical thinking at SJSU since 1988, and whose work on this project during 1996 was supported by a fellowship from SJSU's Institute for Teaching and Learning.
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You can also use any of the following to contact D. Mesher:
E-mail: mesher@email.sjsu.edu
Phone: (408) 924-4440
Fax: (408) 924-4580 ("attn. D. Mesher")
Post: D. Mesher / SJSU / San José, CA 95192-0090
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