‘Knowing thyself’: The Importance of Critical Thinking for Undergraduate Education

Traditionally departments of the Humanities developed pedagogical methodologies of critical thinking. The importance of critical thinking has increased in the present age of social media and the information highway that bombards us with unregulated information and ‘truths’. However, the practice of teaching critical thinking through a systematized pedagogy has now disappeared, and without critical thinking it is impossible to either analyze critically or to write persuasively. Aristotle’s Rhetoric emphasizes the importance of the ethos of the speaker or writer. Antonio Gramsci writes that critical elaboration begins with the speaker making an inventory of themselves as historical processes to date. English Literature departments have a crucial role to play in formulating a pedagogical model for teaching critical thinking as the tools they expect students to acquire are those of close reading of texts and critical analysis. Using Aristotle’s model of rhetorical speech and Gramsci’s exhortation to ‘know thyself’ undergraduate students should be taught critical thinking at the beginning of their college education.