A Participatory Approach to the Teaching of Critical Reasoning

For those of us who teach critical reasoning, our task of presenting its tools in an interesting way has been facilitated by a number of relatively easy to understand textbooks that include fragments of political, social, and economic issues of our day (albeit sometimes contrived and artificial as well as a chapter or two on the analysis of extended arguments, such as those found in essays, editorials, and letters to newspaper and magazine editors. Generally speaking, authors of these texts have made a concerted effort to arouse students\u27 interest in learning critical thinking skills by inserting issues and reasoning situations into their texts that are more like those that student$ confront in the world