So one of the dumbest debates in higher education (and that’s a real tough league right now) is whether “general education” or the “core curriculum” should be about teaching “content” or acquiring “methods” (or skills) of thinking and collaborating that can be readily applied to any content. Do you, for example, study history to learn what happened in the past, or as a mode of mastering “critical thinking” or “analytical reasoning” or some such cognitive method that can be acquired in any number of ways? I’m not going to answer that question, precisely because it turns out to be a dumb or false choice.

I will say that when history professors actually give in to the pseudo-experts and tout the study of history as all about “critical thinking,” it turns out to be fatal for the case for history as something worth studying in particular. The experts tell us that there are all kinds of ways to “get critical” without being saddled with all that historical baggage. Anyway, here’s a sermon I wrote along these lines.

Here’s my takeaway: The most vacuous phrase in higher education now might be “critical thinking.” So if you use it (as I’m afraid you must), use it ironically or “critically.”