Critical Thinking

Question: How can a teacher train students to think critically when they read?

Answer/Quote: “When you’re reading with students, try asking them ‘What is there in what we just read that you feel called upon to doubt?’ ”

“Reading is always Caveat Emptor: Let the buyer beware. No text is free of the bias and errors of the author and young people need to be encouraged repeatedly to recognize that.”

Title: “Teach Young People to ‘Read Against the Grain.’ ” Charles Temple. Journal of Reading (October 1993), 130. Note: For more comments on this topic see Charles Temple’s “What If Beauty Had Been Ugly?” in the February 1993 issue of Language Arts, pp. 89-93.

Comment: You ask a lot of questions in response to what the students have read. One of those questions should be the one suggested by Charles Temple. RayS.