If we don’t move away from the term “critical thinking,” it will be co-opted by activists sooner or later.

The more I think of this, the more convinced I am that Dr. Inouye’s 620 class was the optimal setup for learning to think on a higher order. I’m deconstrucing a course right now, and I will follow his template as I build it back up.

I’m not an English speaker so I started by having a look at the dictionary (the Oxford one ) and I understand that term can trigger a negative halo [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect] or other subtle inferences to some people.

In my case (my cultural background?) my understanding is closer to the second sense of the word: “expressing or involving an analysis of the merits and faults of a work of literature, music, or art” which collides in a sort of mental oxymoron with the first one: “expressing adverse or disapproving comments or judgments”.

I don’t want to be swallowed in the shifting sands of word meanings so I jump out into the key issue: how to think better and especially:

Why ‘why’ questions?

I think there are some assumptions here: 1) our mind is a symbolic system we play with, that is, you can apply some operations (in Piaget’s sense) to some symbols 2) in critical thinking, questions trigger suitable operations to those symbols 3) questions are mainly those operations

I disagree with 3) but it would take too long to be written down now.

I’m also [still] interested in hearing Dr. Inouye stories. Which one of you is going to write his biography? Quit talking about him on your blog and showing off that you knew him, and teach his philosophies to the rest of us! =o)

That’s not to say that you can’t change your classroom. You just have to do it in the small (seemingly meaningless) ways that the system allows you.

The systemic issues are not only related to teachers’ power and not only in the public school systems. To apply for a professorship in many teacher education programs, one must have three years of public school teaching experience. At first, we think, yeah, that makes sense. How are people supposed to train teachers if they’ve never been in the schools themselves.

But if we think about using teacher education as a change agent, then we see a problem with requiring professors to be products of the system they’re (supposedly) trying to change. It’s not that every former teacher is a zombie, but there are many fresh ideas (and people) that originate out of the system that should be welcomed in.

2. My fondest memory of Dr. Inouye was his take-home final exam for IP&T 620. It took me 16 hours to complete, and I wound up slipping it under his door instead of bringing to the final exam time. See, my wife had given birth the day before.

Well, I was the one who missed out. As the six other students in his class met, he declared, “Gosh. I’m hungry. Is anyone else?” And with that he drove them to Osaka’s and fed them sushi while they chatted about the final.

Another good one: Four years after I had his course we sat on a couch at Dr. Gibbons during the Christmas social.

“You must be getting close to graduating,” he asked.

“Yes, it always seems that way.”

“What will you do with your degree?” He always sounded so genuinely interested.

“I’m looking for a position on the tenure track.”

“Really? Well, when you finish you dissertation bring it by my office and we’ll see about changing your grade from 620.”

“Dr. Inouye, I’m happy with the B you gave me.”

“I know, but it may help you in you job search.”

I never took him up on the offer (and I had my position before I finished my dissertation anyway), but he taught me something very important that day: When we educate someone, we do it with the end in mind. Just because I didn’t reach an A-level in his course didn’t mean I would never reach it. He was willing to re-evaluate my work several years later, then update my grade accordingly.