From the Inside Flap
Preface  (continued)

Certainly, individuals may not be particularly skilled at this questioning process, but it is hard to imagine what it would mean to always and ever accept as true whatever we hear. Critical thinking thus has staying power. All of us can be confident that the interest in critical thinking will outlive us. So this book is part of a very old, yet enduring, tradition. Our interest in critical thinking ties us together in an important respect: We want to think carefully before we make a belief our own.

From the start of this book's history, we have been motivated by our personal experiences and observations. First, we have been dismayed by the degree to which students and citizens in general increasingly depend on "experts," textbook writers, teachers, lawyers, politicians, journalists, and TV commentators. As the complexity of the world seems to increase at an accelerating rate, there is a greater tendency to become passive absorbers of information, uncritically accepting what we see and hear. We are concerned that too many of us are not actively making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject.

Thus, the need for such a book is now even more pronounced. The use of "sound bites," the popularity of simplistic arguments, and the amount of information to which we are exposed every day have all increased dramatically. To encourage us all to use critical thinking more frequently as an antidote to this "information explosion" is our dream for Asking the Right Questions.

Our experience in teaching critical-thinking skills to our students over a number of years has convinced us that when individuals with diverse abilities are taught these skills in a simplified format, they can learn to apply them successfully. In the process, they develop greater confidence in their ability to make rational choices about social issues, even those with which they have formerly had little experience.

Thus, we have written a text that does a number of things that other books have failed to do. This text develops an integrated series of question-asking skills that can be applied widely. These skills are discussed in an informal style. (We have written to a general audience, not to any specialized group.)

The development of Asking the Right Questions has leaned heavily on our joint experience of sixty years as teachers of critical thinking. Our ideas have evolved in response to numerous classroom experiences with students at many different levels, from freshman to Ph.D. students.