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GOAL AREA 2: CRITICAL THINKING

• Completion of the other Liberal Education goal areas (1, 3 through 11).

To develop thinkers who are able to unify factual, creative, rational, and value-sensitive modes of thought. Critical thinking skills are taught and used throughout the BSU Liberal Education curriculum in order to develop students' awareness of their own thinking and problem-solving procedures. To integrate new skills into their customary ways of thinking, students must be actively engaged in practicing thinking skills and applying them to open-ended problems.

Students will be able to:

1. gather factual information and apply it to a given problem in a manner that is relevant, clear, comprehensive, and conscious of possible bias in the information selected.
2. imagine and seek out a variety of possible goals, assumptions, interpretations, or perspectives which can give alternative meanings or solutions to given situations or problems.
3. analyze the logical connections among the facts, goals, and implicit assumptions relevant to a problem or claim; generate and evaluate implications that follow from them.
4. recognize and articulate the value assumptions which underlie and affect decisions, interpretations, analyses, and evaluations made by ourselves and others.