Critical thinking is unfortunately not a path that all students use to become enlightened as to proper behavior outside the classroom, and in this paper I will provide examples of poor judgment by students based on the lack of critical thinking. Basically, critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process in which a person carefully and with skill (based on practice) goes through a process of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation to determine upon deep reflection what is the best thing to do or best plan of action. Critical thinking is not a matter of manipulating ideas to suit a person's pre-designed plans and schemes. It involves taking information, processing that information, having the ability to objectively review in one's mind what the consequences of any action will be.
A Critical Thinking Issue
For myself, I have given a great deal of thinking -- critically evaluating as fairly as I can do -- about the behavior of some fellow college and university students. On a recent weekend, hundreds of university students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California gathered at a property rented by students. They were alerted to the fact that there was a party through social media. The alcohol being consumed (and no doubt some drugs were involved) was no doubt the driver as about 50 students got up...
Unfortunately the roof collapsed and eight students were injured. Several students were arrested for public drunkenness; others were arrested for urinating on neighbors' property.
The point here is this: how many of these students did some critical thinking about what might take place at a spontaneously arranged keg party in a college housing neighborhood? It is possible that some actually did some serious thinking and decided to go ahead and attend the party. And how many of the students at the University of Oklahoma who were caught on video singing a racist song did some critical thinking before deciding to join in with a song that is deeply offensive to African-Americans? It's quite clear that alcohol was involved in that rant by fraternity students, but that is absolutely no excuse.
Meanwhile, I am a 20-year-old Chinese-Indonesian student from Jakarta, in my sophomore year at Dean College. I have assimilated into the college culture here in Massachusetts and I appreciate this opportunity to gain academically and to experience friendships with students from many cultures and ethnicities.
I was asked in a communication class to relate to the problem of alcohol abuse on campuses, and I did critically review what I was going to say before I recited my…
