30 Days to Better Thinking and Better Living Through Critical Thinking

Introduction 1 Day One: Discover Your Ignorance 47 Day Two: Strive to Be a Person of Integrity: Beware of Your Own Hypocrisy 51 Day Three: Empathize with Others 55 Day Four: Deliberately Target Your Purposes 57 Day Five: Don't Be a Conformist: Think for Yourself 61 Day Six: Clarify Your Thinking 67 Day Seven: Be Relevant: Stick to the Point 71 Day Eight: Be Reasonable 73 Day Nine: Ask Deep Questions 77 Day Ten: Distinguish Among Questions of Fact, Preference, and Judgment 81 Day Eleven: Think Through Implications 87 Day Twelve: Distinguish Inferences from Assumptions 91 Day Thirteen: Don't Be Fooled by the Words People Use: Look Underneath Words to Unspoken Realities 97 Day Fourteen: When You Think You Have Arrived as a Critical Thinker, Think Again 103 Day Fifteen: Be Fair, Not Selfish 107 Day Sixteen: Get Control of Your Emotions 111 Day Seventeen: Take Control of Your Desires 115 Day Eighteen: Don't Dominate Others: Don't Be a Top Dog 119 Day Nineteen: Don't Be Submissive: Don't Be an Underdog 123 Day Twenty: Don't Be Brainwashed by the News Media 127 Day Twenty-One: Carefully Choose the Ideas You Take in from Television, Ads, Movies, and the Internet 131 Day Twenty-Two: Don't Be Bamboozled by Politicians 135 Day Twenty-Three: Don't Be a Blamer 139 Day Twenty-Four: Don't Be Righteous: Show Mercy 143 Day Twenty-Five: Vow to Spend No Time Worrying 147 Day Twenty-Six: Be a Citizen of the World 151 Day Twenty-Seven: Do Something, Anything, to Help Make the World Better 155 Day Twenty-Eight: See Your Development Occurring in Stages 157 Day Twenty-Nine: Educate Yourself 163 Day Thirty: Figure Out Where to Go from Here 167 Reading Backwards 171 Recommended Readings to Augment the Strategies 173 Appendix: Glossary of Terms 177 Index 219

Dr. Linda Elder is an educational psychologist, executive director of the Center for Critical Thinking, and president of the Foundation for Critical Thinking. She is highly published and has a special interest in the relationship between cognition and effect, or thought and emotion. She has developed an original theory of the stages of critical-thinking development. She is a major keynote presenter at the International Conference on Critical Thinking, is highly sought after as a speaker, and is a recognized leader in critical thinking. Dr. Richard Paul is founder of the Foundation for Critical Thinking and director of Research and Professional Development at the Center for Critical Thinking. He is an internationally recognized authority on critical thinking, with nine books and more than 200 articles on the subject. His views on critical thinking have been canvassed in The New York Times, Education Week, The Chronicle of Higher Education, American Teacher, Reader's Digest, Educational Leadership, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. The works of Linda Elder and Richard Paul have been translated into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Chinese, Turkish, Greek, Thai, and Korean. The growing demand for translations into increasing numbers of languages testifies to the emerging international recognition of the importance of critical thinking in human life. It is a testament to the contributions of Paul and Elder to the growing field of critical thinking studies. The Foundation for Critical Thinking seeks to promote essential change in society through the cultivation of fairminded critical thinking, thinking predisposed toward intellectual empathy, intellectual humility, intellectual perseverance, intellectual integrity, and intellectual responsibility. In a world of accelerating change, intensifying complexity, and increasing interdependence, critical thinking is now a requirement for economic and social survival. Contact the Foundation for Critical