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Critical Skills And Critical Pedagogy In An Era Of "Permanent Crisis" In Postsecondary Education Howard A. Doughty, Howard A. Doughty

Outcomes in Higher Education

"Critical thinking," is widely celebrated as a "soft" employability skill, like the communications and human relations capabilities deemed essential for work in the precarious twenty-first- century. We are told it enhances problem-solving skills and contributes to employee flexibility in the competitive global economy. Intellectually, critical thinking derives from the European Enlightenment. It favours the “scientific method,” strives for conceptual clarity and evidence- based statements. It eschews “bias” in all its forms. It opposes metaphysics and historicism, is critical of sentimental romanticism and authoritarian demagoguery, and seeks to purge “ideology” from public discourse. “Critical pedagogy” also criticizes ideology, but differently. It …