Like many universities, the one that I teach at lists “critical thinking” as one of its core goals for educating students. That is, a student’s experience at Mount Mercy University is meant to help them think critically about their life and the world.
It’s not the answer to life, the universe and everything (42); it’s more a way to approach the “big questions.” And I firmly buy into that idea—that the life examined is more worthwhile, and whatever else we’re doing in our classes, we all should be examining life. Critically.
“Critical,” in this sense, is not a negative term.
To think critically means, first of all, to actually pay attention and follow the thread of an idea. And it means to bring differing points of view to your understanding of an idea. A critical thinker may indeed reject an idea as too flawed; yet, a critical thinker, a critic, should also recognize value.
To be a critical thinker does not mean to criticize everything so much as to discern at a deeper level—and, thus, to recognize things that are good, too, and why they are good.
The week before last, an interesting speaker, Dr. Joshua Hochschild of Mount Saint Mary’s University, led discussion at the Sr. Monica S. Ryan Workshop, meant as the culminating event of the Ryan Circle, a year-long discussion of liberal education that involved more than a dozen faculty members. I was not part of the circle, but I attended and enjoyed Hochschild’s presentations–an afternoon discussion and evening talk.
One of his points is that the goal of a liberal education doesn’t stop at critical thinking. It needs to emphasize what he called “integrative” thinking, where an educated person can apply perspectives from multiple points of view to a large question in order to build a framework of understanding. And he said that a Catholic university, as part of a Catholic intellectual tradition, should be aiming at that kind of thinking.
And Wednesday of last week was Scholarship Day at MMU, an annual celebration of the research students engage in at this university.
Due to my teaching schedule, I could only attend a few Scholarship Day events. In particular, I wish I could have been there for the “Creative Writing in PAHA 2024” session. Paha, the annual literary-art student magazine published on The Hill, is always a fun and interesting punctuation point to the end of each school year.
And no, I don’t know why a magazine run by English majors that is named after a type of hill (a paha) would be PAHA and not Paha—makes you wonder what the acronym could be for, right? “Poetry, Art, Heroes and Antiheroes?” “Pure Adolescent Heartfelt Agony?” English majors of MMU, what gives with always shouting PAHA rather than calmly stating Paha?
Never mind. Back to my thread of uncritical thought. Critical thinking, right? I was able to go to three Scholarship Day events—a presentation about Catholic social teaching and social work; a biology presentation on protein research; and, briefly, senior nursing research poster presentations.
The first presentation was “Holistic Approaches to Social Work and Connections to Catholic Social Teaching” by Elyse Keeffer, a social work senior—and it was, to me, a good illustration of Hochschild’s idea of integrative thinking.
Keeffer’s analysis wasn’t casual, nor opinion based—she researched her question by reading four papal encyclicals published over a span of more than 100 years.
She spoke about the intersection of, but differences between, the common good and individual good, and noted Catholic teaching is aimed at people working to create a society where, to quote one of the encyclicals, “everyone has what they need in due proportion.”
In applying those ideas to practice in social work, she noted that “client self-determination” is a key component of the practice. “It’s not my place to go all Catholic on them,” she said, even if her role as s social worker stems from a motivation rooted in Catholic teaching.
Interestingly enough, she founds the integration of that Catholic thinking into practice to be sometimes easier in sites that weren’t faith-based, as the faith-based agencies sometimes had a particular framework that constrained what could be done to aid those being served.
The biology session was, to me, a bit more of a challenge—a reminder of why I switched from studying a STEM discipline to a more humanities-based education after my freshman college year. It was interesting, but filled with technical terms that I don’t understand. Still, I liked experiencing visible evidence that “hard” science research is also taking place on The Hill.
Finally, I simply dipped into the nursing research presentations as a kind of tourist. I enjoyed brief chats with a few students about their projects, but had to hurry along to get to class on time.
All in all, it was two weeks and two events that gave me joy. It’s nice to think of myself as a part of a place with multiple rich intellectual endeavors intersecting. That may not be a critical remark, but it’s heartfelt, and in the rush at the end of spring semester, those were refreshing events to attend.