TeachingThinking

am going to reflect here on why it is intellectually,morally, and politically im-portant to teach college stu-dents thinking, in addition to providing them withknowledge and developingtheir capacity for sound rea-soning. I distinguish thinkingfrom calculative and instru-

mental reasoning—from deduc-tion, by which we relate principlesto particulars that come underthose principles, and from induc-

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B y E l i z a b e t h K a m a r c k M i n n i c h

Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich is Core Profes-sor at The Union Institute & University’sGraduate School for Interdisciplinary Artsand Sciences. Her publications includeTransforming Knowledge (Temple Universi-ty Press, 1990).

Change � September/October 2003 19

Moral and Political Considerations

i

tion, by which we abstract from particulars to create general-izations that subsume them.

I also differentiate it from rational deliberation, in whichpeople following the same basic rules of reasoning try to reachagreement by eliminating unsound arguments. Thinking differsfrom all these uses of cognitive capacities that follow pre-scribed rules and conventions which, if used well with otherswho have assented (or been submitted) to the same rules and/orconventions, can coercively prove a conclusion to be correct.

Thinking is neither coerced nor coercive. It is explorato-ry, suggestive; it does not prove anything, or finally arriveanywhere. Thus, to say people are thoughtful or thought pro-voking suggests that they are open-minded, reflective, chal-lenging—that they are more likely to question than to assert,inclined to listen to many sides, capable ofmaking sensitive distinctions that holddifferences in play rather than dividing inorder to exclude, and desirous of persuad-ing others rather than reducing them to si-lence by refuting them.

I am interested in a student’s thinkingwhen I ask, having just heard a comment Iam tempted to dismiss as irrelevant, evenjust wrong, “How did you get there? Wewere here; you went there. Can you re-trace your thinking for us?” Some of themore interesting insights I have heard inclasses have emerged from such retrac-ings, and sometimes they take us off thetrack we were on in fascinating ways. Wehave then, as Heidegger put it, laid downsome fresh paths through the woods—paths that may not go anywhere, butwhich do something nevertheless. Think-ing, that is, has effects, not products (or,when it leads to knowledge, it may pause,but it does not stop: the questioning al-ways begins again).

Here is my premise about the relation-ship of thinking to morality: The activityof thinking prefigures, prepares for, andlets us practice the freedom of mind werequire to exercise discerning judgment while living amongpeople who differ from us. Thinking, reflecting, questioning,pondering—turning things around in our minds, exploring dif-fering perspectives, considering differing contexts—dissolvesconcepts and conventions. This effect of thinking, which isfrustrating to those who seek absolutes, holds us open and ableto engage with others in quests for knowledge, while also—and for the same reasons—enabling moral ways of being inour complexly plural, relational public world. Thinking, thatis, persistently undoes certainties, thereby opening us to whatis unique about individuals, contexts, and situations.

Maxine Greene writes eloquently of teaching that engagesstudents in thinking together. She sees the classroom as apreparation for political life among differing equals:

Even in the small, the local places in which teaching is done,educators may begin creating the kinds of situations where, atthe very least, students will begin telling the stories of what

they are seeking, what they know and might not yet know, ex-changing stories with others grounded in other landscapes, atonce bringing something into being that is in-between. It is atmoments like these that persons begin to recognize each otherand, in the experience of recognition, feel the need to take re-sponsibility for each other.

I take thinking not to be a source of any moral code or set of ethical principles but a propaedeutic, a preparation for dis-cernment and indeterminate judgment. We want students toemerge as more thoughtful people who will continue to seekmeaningful lives. I don’t think this is hard to assent to. It iswhy we speak of education, as distinct from training, as learn-ing not only that something is so, but why and how, to what

effect, and with what significance. In thisspirit, John Dewey concludes Democracyand Education with this: “Interest inlearning from all the contacts of life is the essential moral interest.”

Teaching ThinkingThe subject matter of a course in

which thinking is the primary (though notthe only) topic provides an occasion forits practice. Texts of whatever sort arenot, in such courses, purveyors of materi-al to be mastered, but examples of some-one else’s thinking with which to con-verse. We do not teach Platonic Doctrine(which Plato says he never wrote); wepractice thinking with him and his charac-ters. We do not learn Freud’s Theory; weare puzzled and reflect with him as hetries to figure out what he is hearing (ornot) and what that suggests simultaneous-ly about a unique individual and the hu-man psyche. We join Patricia Williams inputting the law back into its political, his-torical, and personal contexts, consultingoutrage and hope as well as reason tocomprehend its realities. As HannahArendt once wrote to her philosophy pro-

fessor Karl Jaspers, “Communication as a form and a way ofthinking stands in contrast not only to ‘advocatorial’ but alsoto purely logical thinking.”

Here is an example of teaching thinking from one of my ownclasses. When I use Plato’s Republic as an occasion for thinkingpractice, I start by observing that Socrates and his friends, agi-tated by what they have encountered in the teeming port ofAthens—with its heady and confusing mixture of tongues andnationalities, of festivals and businesses—turn to the old man,Cephalus, to ask their questions. Then I ask the students, “Towhom would you take a question raised for you by an encounterwith people(s) whose differences suddenly make you unsure ofyour own, hitherto unquestioned, values? Would you take it toan old person? A religious authority? A political leader? Yourmother or father? A scientist? A friend? A professor (and if so,in what field)? A seasoned traveler? An astrologer?”

And then, “Why? What kind of help would you be lookingfor? Why not the kinds you did not seek?” And so on. Of course,

20 Change � September/October 2003

The activity

of thinking

prefigures,

prepares for, and

lets us practice

the freedom of mind

we require to

exercise discerning

judgment while

living among

people who

differ from us.

we are also thereby asking ourselves why we might take ourquestion to Plato or to other thinkers from different traditions.

I confess that I often do not get through what I set out to cov-er in a course. It is my conviction that students who leave class-es practiced in thinking along with texts, teachers, and a diversesampling of other students are better off than those who leavewith more content “in mind.” I go for awakening interest andinforming capacities over stocking minds in a world in whichstorehouses are ever more accessible. I do not want to preparestudents primarily to become experts in a field. I want them touse their intellectual discipline to reflect on their own and oth-ers’ lives, their times and situations, the issues that call for ourattention. Independent, open minds that regard knowledge andskills as resources to be used for responsible purposes, ratherthan possessions to be exploited for per-sonal gain and power, remain all too rare.

I know many teachers who engagetheir students in questioning rather thanpropounding doctrine to be memorized.But some worry that, if overdone, thisstrategy leaves students without guidance,and with no knowledge by which to steertheir lives. Others worry that it might pro-duce people who, like Socrates’ foes (thesophists), take any position that servestheir purposes, whether right or wrong,true or false.

Such anxieties may reflect the assump-tion (or reasoned position) that right andwrong, like true and false, must be abso-lute—or at least clear, firm, and capableof giving us criteria by which to selectamong varying perspectives, schools ofthought, traditions, or opinions. I am notadvocating teaching an equal acceptanceof all opinions. I am advocating practicingthinking that can hold knowledge open,rather than locking it in as unquestionable.

When we read the works that continueto change lives, we encounter people whorisked thinking afresh and then tried to tellus how that was and where it led, in a waythat invites us into the process so that we may keep it going,renewed. I believe that we must accept that invitation, becauseyou cannot understand an answer if you haven’t asked thequestion for yourself. I also believe that answers do not remaininteresting, or become meaningful, if we do not discuss themwith other people; part of this, though, is that we must keepdoing so as we act—even if the conversations are carried on in our own heads.

Arendt, writing to Jaspers years after her flight to the Unit-ed States as Hitler was coming into power, said, “I may havethought or done some things in those years [of separation] thatwill put you off, but there is hardly anything I’ve done that Ididn’t do without thinking how I would tell you about it or jus-tify it to you.” She is not referring to what he taught her, al-though certainly she had that in mind, but rather to his poweras a conversational partner. This suggests a relation betweenknowledge, thinking, and conscience, in which consciencerefers not only to rules and principles but also to internal con-

versation with admired others (including those we meetthrough books) of whom we wish to remain worthy friends.

Explaining and justifying her own thinking and choices as if Jaspers were still with her had been helpful to Arendt inmaking decisions neither he nor other scholars could have an-ticipated in their pressing specificities. He had taught her phi-losophizing, beyond Philosophy.

This, then, is how I (and others) think about teaching: notsolely or even primarily as conveying knowledge along withthe ability to reason critically about it, but as practicing think-ing with respected others (living or dead, present or absent) inconversations. Such conversations continue long afterward toprovide good company when, in our complex lives, we need tothink through what we should do and who and how we should

be. There are clearly both moral and politi-cal values in play when we think together,practicing rather than preaching equalityand freedom, respect, and independence.

But, in school, is not our primary obli-gation to conserve and pass on knowledge,with its various criteria for truth, sound-ness, validity, as distinct from “mere”opinion, however thoughtfully discussed?

KnowledgeI take knowledge to comprise coherent

sets of answers (or responses; knowledgecan be tentative, an offering for further con-sideration rather than a full stop) to ques-tions posed over time within culturallyspecified and legitimated sub-communitiesof people who share specialized languagesand logics. The responses to such sharedquestions can then be recognized by othersas appropriate, adequate, satisfying (or not).

We teach knowledge, as we teach lan-guage and socialize our children, to con-serve our world by preparing newcomers to join and continually revitalize it. In this sense, knowledge is, as Arendt put it,“world-building.” She writes that the questfor truths leaves behind “a growing trea-

sure of knowledge that is retained and kept in store by everycivilization as part and parcel of its world.”

A culture’s knowledge is public, shared and shareableamong those allowed, willing, and able to enter the communityof knowers. It is also more broadly public in that it is widelyaccepted outside of a community of knowers as legitimate. Forexample, there is a community of scientists whose knowledgeis validated by its professional norms. It is easy to assume thatin relation to such knowledge, a student’s individual opinionsshould be secondary. Those opinions are to become better in-formed, better reasoned; a student is supposed to learn to makea case for his or her opinions and to renounce them if such acase cannot be made.

This is not wrong: of course there are more and less in-formed, responsible opinions. And of course, even well-reasoned and informed opinions should not be confused with knowledge. But individuals and citizens also needinformed opinions, including opinions about knowledge.

Change � September/October 2003 21

Knowledge gives us something we share that mattersenough to have opinions about; opinions give us differing per-spectives about the meanings as distinct from truth claims ofknowledge. This is why, as teachers, we try both to conveyknowledge and to encourage students to develop worthy opin-ions about it—to think about it, without submitting to it. In thiswe are recognizing that what is taken to be truth within a dis-course of knowledge should not trump but remain in genera-tive tension with our human plurality, our differences, ourmultiple perspectives, and our responsibilities.

Concern for knowledge and moral considerations can cometogether without conflict and without being conflated. Theyare, instead, complementary. Experts have knowledge; mem-bers of the public who are affected by knowledge have andshould have differing opinions concerningits meaning, its significance, its moral re-lation to our worlds. The physicist hasknowledge about nuclear bombs that non-scientists do not; citizens have opinionsabout the creation, the stockpiling, thepossible uses of such bombs. Both are im-portant. Neither should be confused withor silence the other, and, if we care aboutthe world that is in our collective keeping,both need to be cultivated as we practicethinking in our classes.

Such “wanderings,” as Heideggerdescribed this kind of free speculation,also keep a known world, a set of rules, adisciplined field, a conventional order, adecision-making process from becomingclosed to fresh insights and therefore frompetrifying. This is why thinking with ourstudents is our primary (though not exclu-sive) purpose and why it is in our self-interest as well as theirs. We want them,and ourselves, to comprehend the knowl-edge for which they come to us, not tomove inside it and shut the door, emerg-ing only to apply what is already knownlike cookie cutters.

Evaluation But how are we to evaluate progress in such thinking, par-

ticularly when pressed to do so in terms of measurable out-comes? How can we measure increased freedom of mind,capacious interests, open mindedness, playfulness, inclusive-ness? If knowledge can to some extent be tested for because it is something students can have or fail to have, and opinionscan be evaluated on the basis of their being well or ill informedby knowledge, and both can be well or poorly reasoned by pre-vailing cognitive rules, how are we to evaluate free thinking?How are we to know if we have succeeded?

In a class I recently taught, I assigned and graded “thinkingpapers.” The students found them exceedingly difficult, saying,“We don’t know how to do this.” But then they wrote beautifulpapers that mattered greatly to them, each startlingly differentfrom the others, just as their authors were. A woman who readher paper in class (their final exam was to present their paperand talk about it with the others), cried as she did so. She said,

“I’m not used to being so visible in a class.” She was not sorryto be crying, nor was she or anyone else embarrassed.

Thinking papers rarely offer sound bites or pithy conclu-sions—they keep unraveling. For example, the woman I men-tioned set out to think about “a connection between womenand nature” but quickly realized that she wasn’t sure what she“really meant in asking this question.” Being a “good student,”she knew she must “define her terms,” and that useful rulemade her realize that she was not thinking of all women, oronly of women. She asked herself of what, and whom, shereally was thinking. To do that, she consulted her memories:

I have a very painful memory of my neighbor beating her pup-py. I was just waking up and heard her yelling, the loud thud of

an object hitting hard repeatedly, andthe scream of the puppy. When I lookedout the window, the air left my lungs as Isaw her standing over the drenched andtrembling puppy with an adult man’shigh top shoe....When I called [the]abuser back out onto the porch, I wasappalled at the look of calm on herface....[Her] only response to my impas-sioned questioning and insistence thatshe could not do this to a living creaturewas ‘Yes I can, it’s mine.’ ‘It’s mine’stood between her and clearly seeing the crumpled dog....How can you argueagainst ‘It’s mine’...?

She had her real question. It led to others: What did she think our relation to animals should be, and how was she topersuade others to share the concern forthem that impelled her to ask that ques-tion? Thus re-grounded, she encounteredanother difficult moment. She remem-bered that “often I’m accused of hangingon to childish sympathy, and informedthat I need to be reasonable....I find my-self trapped, having to defend myself inthe language of the very system I’m try-ing to refute.” How was she to think as

herself and still communicate with others? She, like Arendt,sought good company:

I look for other people who have a way to do this. They comefrom a variety of disciplines and areas. Ecofeminists, philoso-phers, people in Women’s Studies, members of the UnitarianUniversalists, and activists for indigenous and environmentalissues have all contributed to my increasing ability to ‘saywhat I mean.’ These people also remind me that I am not asbizarre as the dominant society would deem me....At least I’mnot alone.

Then, with her own feet under her and her friends gatheredto help, she returned to her opening move to define her terms:“The first part of my question regarding the connection be-tween women and nature is, ‘Who, really, am I talking about?”And from there she continues her thinking.

I think this is a good paper: it is honest, courageous, elo-quent, and clear. That its author knows the rules of “good pa-

22 Change � September/October 2003

pers” is evidently useful, as is her storehouse of knowledge ofdiffering schools of thought, more and less formal. But thenshe moved off and around what she knew to find what she“really meant.” Her highly individual quest does not lose her readers. On the contrary: we were intensely with her.

Another example: In a final paper by a student for a seminar,I saw the effects of his thinking as well as new knowledge. Thisman, deeply interested in journalism, concluded his paper witha gathering of insights about which he wanted to think further.For example: “Thinking and judgment....I want to pick up thethread from Kant to Arendt on the relationships between think-ing for oneself, thinking in the place of others, and thinking outloud together as the basis for a democratic life.” He had gath-ered strands of our discussion and rewoven them to hold hisown particular interests. Then he proposesto examine some other lines of inquiry forhimself: “I want to think about…how pub-lic space both connects and separates us asindividuals…[and] the notion of ‘distinc-tion without division.’ I want to knowmore about that. I’m wondering whetherthe journalist also can be framed as par-venu or pariah.”

I have no trouble in judging this highlysuggestive, independent thinking to begood—nor in judging the work of otherswho were less clear about what we haddiscussed and less exploratory in examin-ing it in relation to their own interests asless good.

My experiences in these classes havegiven me some insights about how think-ing might be evaluated. I cannot, and donot want to, reduce effects of thinking to a checklist. But I can perhaps group thesorts of characteristics I have found my-self watching for in evaluating students’work:

Freedom of mind. In a course in whichthinking is primary, I read a student’s pa-per for signs that its author is not just fol-lowing rules and conventions skillfully. I want to see the activity of an individual mind, to see theeffects of moments of confusion from which fresh insightsarose. I want to see the student inviting my agreement withsuch insights, rather than trying to force me to assent. A think-ing paper eschews “play by the rules or you’re out” relationswith its readers: It risks mutual freedom.

Inclusiveness. A thinking paper also shows the effects ofthe author’s having anticipated possible other perspectives(not just objections), taken them into account, and been en-riched by them. It is not a paper that refutes, although it selectsamong possible alternative views. It is a paper in which wewalk together around the elephant, learning something about itfrom many angles. It may then reach a conclusion, but it maysimply leave a reader with a more complex picture.

Rhetoric. The writer of a good thinking paper practices thearts of rhetoric in the rich sense. The work reaches out to speakwith many people, engaging them through understanding oftheir languages, their ways of thinking, their knowledge, and

their emotions. It does so not to manipulate the readers but toacknowledge that they will assent only if they are moved to doso as independent thinkers themselves.

Beauty. The thinking papers I have received, and those I taketo be exemplary from various literatures, give the reader a senseof wholeness or informing integrity. As Dewey says of art inArt As Experience, what we respond to is an experience that hashad intensity, during which something has happened, and thatgives satisfaction. There is a kind of beauty in such papers. Sen-tences (even imperfect ones) flow, words and phrases are bothapt and evocative. In the best of them there is a kind of unself-conscious joy, not unlike that some feel in running, in dancing,or in making art even from pain. The woman who cried readingher paper was feeling release—a returning lightness of being

without forgetting suffering. Play. In a course in which thinking

is primary, I can applaud a moment in apaper in which something takes off ener-getically, imaginatively, even if it “goesnowhere” and by the usual criteria “wentoff track.” Throughout the paper I watchfor markers that indicate the writer wascaught up in imaginative moments, nottied down to or locked within what he orshe already knew or what logically fol-lowed. Such play is not always fun: Itcan take us to scary places. But it alsounclenches, releases.

Emotion. The author is present to thereader as a full person—one who cares,gets frustrated, feels anger, remembershurt, becomes excited in ways that pressthinking farther and deeper. The lan-guage of the paper is therefore rich, oftenrather idiosyncratic, and moving. Theunfolding of feelings carries the readeralong. The reader can sense the satisfac-tion, the relief, perhaps the gloating ofeven a deductive “therefore this is true.”

Originality. These papers, when theyare good, are never interchangeable invoice, logic, or language. They are the

author’s own work, recounting a story of an intellectual, emo-tional, imaginative experience. It may be a familiar experi-ence, with no brand-new insights evident—but we will nothave gotten to what we already knew in quite that way before.The familiar, even cliched, is refreshed by being thoughtfullyrecounted and reflected upon.

Reflexivity. One can see the author thinking about her/hisown thinking as it unfolds. He or she stops and says, “But I didnot mean to say that”; or “I became confused, so I asked my-self what Toni Morrison might think”; or “All this leads backto the accepted definition of ‘anxiety neurosis,’ but I am stilluncomfortable with it”; or “This is true, but I don’t like it:what is it violating?”

Revelation. The author says, “Now I understand,” or “Abetter question merged,” or “I recognized that....” There is asense of illumination.

Connections. With and through all of the other qualities,such papers track the often odd affiliations among ideas and

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There is a kind

of beauty in

such papers....

In the best of them

there is a kind of

unselfconscious

joy, not unlike

that some feel

in running,

in dancing, or

in making art

even from pain.

feelings, other perspectives, audiences, and purposes. Thewriter has wandered, as Heidegger put it, or explored, inDeweyan terms—seen metaphorical connections and tried out what else might be evoked thereby. This is an independentmind, open and communicating in a way that respects and en-joys differences and wanders across and around them withoutan anxious desire to reduce them to sameness.

Can we evaluate thinking, then? Yes, obviously I think wecan. And we must. Thinking cannot be considered a luxury forthe few if we would be a democracy. And, if thinking is relat-ed to moral responsibility and public life, how can we confineit to courses for the advanced or for the few who can affordschools with small classes? We ought not to hand off responsi-bility for it to only a few departments. If we can teach writingacross the curriculum, surely we can and should also teachthinking across the curriculum.

But can we measure thinking? No, not if measurement re-quires paying attention only to that which is similar, varyingonly by degree. But we can exercise our own discerning judg-ment, as we do when we judge art, or character, or what a newsituation may ask of us. Can we then prove our judgments tobe correct? No, any more than art critics can prove that theirinformed taste is correct rather than apt.

Will we differ? Yes, but if we talk together about what weare doing, share our questions, examples, and stories, we candevelop a communal sense of what we are doing that will helpus as we make our judgments. Imagine discussing the teachingand evaluating of thinking with people knowledgeable aboutrhetoric, studio art, writing essays, ethnography, Pragmatism,relational psychology, critical thinking, and poetry. What fun!

To judge work that shows the effects of thinking, we need topractice our own thinking and discerning judgment with manydiffering others; there is no way around it. Will we be support-ed in doing so as a necessity for our teaching? Can we make a case for it to those who confuse education with training? I am not at all sure we will or can, but I believe we should resistpressures to submit ourselves and our students to standardiza-tion, as if that were the only way to honor standards.

* * *

[A] certain difference is found among ends; some are activi-ties, others are products apart from the activities that producethem....Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clear-ness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in allthe products of the crafts.

—Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Author’s Note: This article reflects that I have been thinking a greatdeal with the people whose names appear here, as well as many moreunnamed ones. The student whose paper I quoted first is Valerie Jones(who gave me permission to name her and discuss her work). The classwas “Thinking Women: Philosophy, Politics, Morality”; I taught itwhen I was the Whichard Visiting Distinguished Professor of Humani-ties and Women’s Studies at East Carolina University in 2001. The au-thor of the second paper is Cole Campbell, who wrote it for a UnionInstitute & University seminar on Hannah Arendt. I am very grateful tohave had these and a remarkable number of other truly wonderful peo-ple in my classes. Peg Miller, who is the lead editor for this issue ofChange, gifted me with her interest, her wisdom, her artful clarity.

24 Change � September/October 2003

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