You may think that, in classical Christian schools, it is of utmost importance that teachers instruct students not only how to think but also what to think. A list of examples of what to teach readily comes to mind: we ought to teach students the core doctrines of the Christian faith (e.g. the existence of the triune God, the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, the Son of God, etc.), we ought to teach English and Latin grammar, and we ought to teach historical facts, such that the battle of Salamis occurred in 480 BC and was fought between the Greeks and the Persians.
In addition to teaching students what to think, I suppose that many classical Christian educators would agree that it is also important to teach students how to think. The phrase “how to think,” commonly refers to the ability to utilize logic (e.g., constructing sound arguments) when thinking about any topic, to apprehend the arguments of a speaker or writer, to construct creative thought experiments that function as counterexamples to arguments, and other skills that resemble these. We teach students the square of opposition, informal fallacies, inference rules, and context clues; we practice constructing speeches, we write essays, we hold mock trials, and much more, all in an effort to teach them how to think.
Occasionally, you will hear claims that one or the other is more important. That is, you will hear, for instance, that teaching students what to think should be the priority for teachers. This is primarily because all the critical thinking skills—all the analytic subtlety—that we could teach to students is ultimately empty without a knowledge of God. If we do not teach students that God exists and that Jesus is God incarnate, who lived, died, resurrected, and ascended into heaven out of love for us and for our salvation, and much else besides, then all our efforts towards teaching students how to think would only amount to creating cleverer heathens.
One might also argue that we ought to prioritize teaching students what to think because students are not developmentally ready for the type of creative thinking that goes hand-in-hand with instruction on how to think. If we focus on teaching students how to think, then our efforts are most likely to end in frustration (perhaps with the exception of those few especially precocious students) because our students’ mind-vaults have not yet been filled with the information they need for novel thinking.
But you may also hear that teaching students how to think should be the priority for teachers. If we neglect teaching students how to think, then we can’t reasonably expect our students to hold onto what we teach them to think. Even for the most important truths, such as the existence of the triune God of the Bible, if we do not teach students how to arrive at and defend these tenets, then we’re just helping them build their spiritual and intellectual houses upon sand , which will collapse when the secular winds of agnosticism, naturalism, and individualism blow.
Most common, though, is the view that places equal weight upon both teaching what to think and teaching how to think. Teachers will caution against erring too far on one side or the other—we shouldn’t focus so much on teaching what to think that we neglect to teach how to think, and vice versa. This middle way implicitly accepts the foregoing characterizations of “teaching what to think” and “teaching how to think” and holds the two in balance. However, we should not draw such a sharp line between teaching what to think and teaching how to think. Jettisoning this distinction will provide a clearer understanding of what our goals should be in teaching our students.
Teaching what to think and how to think should not be distinct because what you think and how you think are not distinct. This is so for two reasons. First, our beliefs are always adorned with the attitudes with which we hold our beliefs. Second, we are justified in holding our beliefs depending on our grounds for holding our beliefs. There is a difference between joyously believing that Jesus loves you and contemptuously believing so. Further, there is a difference between holding the belief that Jesus is fully God and fully man on the basis of an inference from the scriptural witness and holding this belief on the basis of an inference from some street graffiti. In both of these cases, the difference is not in the propositional content of the beliefs (“Jesus loves me” in the first and “Jesus is fully God and fully man” in the second) but rather in how one holds the beliefs.
James indicates that there is not a sharp distinction between what we think and how we think when he writes that the demons believe that God is one (James 2:19). The most important difference between James’s belief that God is one and the demons’ beliefs that God is one is the way in which they hold their beliefs. James’s love for God colors his belief in the unity of God, just as the demons’ hatred of God colors their beliefs. We see here a blending of what they believe and how they believe it, and, surely, one is pleasing to God and the other is not.
The distinction between what we think and how we think also collapses under closer examination of the grounds of our beliefs. Consider two students, one who knows how to solve a certain math problem and has arrived at the solution by doing so, and another who knows the solution because he snuck a peek at what another student put for the solution. Suppose that the student from whom the cheater got the solution used an incorrect method to arrive at the solution, but, by luck, put the correct solution. In such a case, both the cheater and the student who knows how to solve the problem have the correct answer. But there is clear a difference in value between the two beliefs. The latter’s belief has more epistemic worth than the former. The latter’s belief comes from and is sustained by an exercise of virtue, whereas the former’s belief comes from and is sustained by an exercise of vice.
Note that I am not saying that a critical thinking skill, such as the ability to spot a fallacy and, for example, the belief that the Holy Spirit indwells believers are numerically identical. Rather, my claim is that both the analytic abilities we aim to teach and the beliefs we aim to instill are of the same kind. Believing—even believing the truth—is a way of thinking that can be done well or poorly. And critical thinking skills are content-full: they are not merely abilities to employ, but they also have aims, which can be good or bad. The aims of critical thinking skills differentiate them, even though they may seem superficially the same, as Aristotle notes in his distinctions between natural virtue and real virtue, and cleverness and practical wisdom.1
I am also not saying that all skills are differentiated based on their aims. For example, I am not claiming that all biomechanical skills (e.g., riding a bike) are differentiated based on their aims. The person who throws a baseball at a catcher’s mitt and the person who throws a baseball at a wall both utilize the same biomechanical skill, though they could have different aims. Rather, my claim is only limited to those skills that utilize propositional beliefs, such as critical thinking skills. The reason why these are distinguished based on their aims is that their aims determine their essential value (i.e., whether exercising the skill is good or bad); and skills that have different essential values are obviously different. For example, a virtue (which has a noble aim) is essentially different from a vice (which has an ignoble aim), due to their differing aims. Similarly, the grounds of our beliefs and our aims in inquiry and critique mark distinctions between beliefs and critical thinking skills depending upon whether the aims are good or bad.
Finally, I am not claiming that skills can or should have only one aim. Critical thinking skills can have many aims, some good and some bad. But there are some skills that must have certain aims—lacking the aim entails lacking the skill. A general example of this is that virtues must aim at what is right, or, as Aristotle writes, they must aim at τὸ καλόν, “the noble.”2 For instance, the person who gives of resources while aiming at self-aggrandizement may do so skillfully, and this may superficially seem like generosity, but this person does not, in doing so, exhibit virtue. Thus, regarding teaching critical thinking skills, it is possible for us to teach those skills that have virtuous aims or simulacra thereof.
If we should not hold that there is a sharp distinction between what we think and how we think, then how should jettisoning this distinction affect our teaching? The most important effect this should have is something I suspect most classical Christian teachers already do, which is to emphasize that all of our mental activity should be done for the glory of God. The other, perhaps more actionable effects concern things we should avoid. What follows is a non-exhaustive list. First, we should avoid turning logic class into debate team practice. What I mean is that we should avoid teaching logic in a way that is conducive to creating students who argue in ways that it is common for debate team students to argue, which is engaging in argumentation just for the sake of argumentation and not for the sake of arriving at truth. Second, we should avoid allowing the memorization and recitation of creeds and doctrines to devolve into something akin to memorizing the order of a deck of cards—a rote practice devoid of a grasp of deep meaning. Third, we should avoid making school purely academic. There is a sad, dry detachment from sacred and profound truths that goes lockstep with learning such things only for the sake of regurgitating them on tests, essays, and quizzes.
This brief essay applies to itself, in a way. If my claim is correct that an important aspect of beliefs is how we believe them, and thus that there is not a sharp distinction between what we think and how we think, then the lesson applies to you, dear reader, who have made it to the end of this essay. You may now believe that there is not a sharp distinction between how we think and what we think, and you may believe this reluctantly, enthusiastically, confusedly, and so on. My hope is that you will believe it in such a way that spurs you towards action; that you will explore avenues of application with the goal of forming the minds and shaping the hearts of your students.
Author Bio: Emmanuel Smith is a humanities teacher at Christ Classical Academy in Tallahassee, Florida.
