Critical Thinking

AS

Pupils in Year 13 who feel that they want more of an academic challenge than their A2 subjects alone have the option of taking the OCR H052 AS in Critical Thinking.

What is Critical Thinking?

It is a skills-based qualification which teaches the methods of correct reasoning (no credit is given for recall of learned information). It is therefore of use to all other academic subjects, from History and Philosophy to Chemistry and even Music. This is reflected in the backgrounds of the teachers who have taught it at LGS.

There is no required academic route into Critical Thinking, and none are excluded. This is because all education deals in one way or another with how to think well, how to separate truth from falsity and good arguments from bad. What makes Critical Thinking unique is that it is only concerned with these things, rather than using them as tools to learn more about topics such as the tragedies of Sophocles, evolutionary theory, or the thought of Nagarjuna.

What is the Course of Study?

The AS is divided into two broad areas:

• Credibility of evidence: this deals with issues such as bias, relevance, prejudice and accuracy.
• Assessing and developing argument: how does one proceed logically from premises to a conclusion? Attention is given to the variety of ways in which arguments fail, such as false assumptions, inaccurate analogies, the 'slippery slope' and ad hominem.

Two exams are taken at the end of Year 13.

Since its introduction a decade ago, Critical Thinking has become one of the most respected A-Levels available to students. Universities see it as a valuable qualification, including Oxford and Cambridge, who have been taken by its emphasis on thinking skills. It will facilitate all of the different kinds of careers that LGS pupils will follow, but those interested in Law, Medicine, Journalism and Philosophy should particularly consider it.