Conceptual Toolkit Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by Saint

State: Critical Thinking is the act of object­ively evaluation inform­ation in order to find solutions to complex problems.

Exemplify: There is an overwh­elming amount of inform­ation that is presented to us on a daily basis, whether it’s memes, music, news broadc­asts, articles or peer reviewed texts. Misinf­orm­ation is one of the biggest dangers to us in the digital age. An article by Arnold (2018) in Forbes explains how “fake news” is used to mislead or deflect viewers and how simple steps like checking sources can allow you to think critically and make a sound decision about whether you choose to accept this inform­ation.

Illustrate: This artwork is titled “Critical Thinking”, it was made by Artist Pavlov Bellwether also known as Jack Smith in 2021. The artist note reads “Artists are meant to question everything - often taking the road less travelled. Questions need to be asked.” The artist notes the importance of critical thinking as an artist, as someone who has the potential to reach and move thousands through their work. In a sense, art is like thought. Everyone thinks differ­ently, everyone has their own definition of art as well as different ways of producing art. This painting can be interp­reted many different ways by many different people. Regard­less, truly admiring art requires critical thinking to really evaluate the visual inform­ation that is presented to you.

State: Point of View is how we see the world.

Exemplify: One of the best examples of consid­ering points of view is perspe­cti­ve-­taking. Perspe­cti­ve-­taking is the act of unders­tanding the perspe­ctives of others. It is defined as “The ability to understand how a situation appears to another person and how that person is reacting cognit­ively and emotio­nally to the situat­ion.” (Gelhl­bach, 2004). An article by AMP Creative (2020) outlines the many benefits of practicing perspe­cti­ve-­taking, as a way to open new doors to learning and constr­uctive engagement when faced with a scenario where two people have opposing viewpoints due to their difference in experience and thinking.

Illustrate: When I think of point of view I think of the common saying “Step into the other person’s shoes”. This saying is used to illustrate how consid­ering point of views works. Stepping into someone’s shoes allows you to be put in the same situation as them, making you think about how you would think, what you would feel, or how you would react in that situation. Another example of point of view would be to imagine that you had the ability to watch someone’s life on a screen like a movie. Sometimes we judge people without consid­ering their point of view or what in their life could’ve caused them to think or act a certain way. This analogy also allows us to reflect on why we have certain viewpoints ourselves.

State: Civic engagement is partic­ipating in enacting change in your community through the involv­ement with social issues.

Exemplify: An example of civic engagement is Houston’s Coalition for the homeless and their efforts to remove stigma and decrim­inalize homele­ssness and mental illness by providing educat­ional resources about the relati­onship between mental illness and homele­ssness. The coalition also places unhoused persons directly in homes/­apa­rtments without the thousands of hoops to jump through such as getting clean, finding a job first, and having a down payment (the number one reasons housing programs fail). Practicing civic engagement can be visiting the coalit­ion’s website and getting educated or visiting one of their volunteer opport­uni­ties.

Illustrate: Civic engagement reminds me of when you were younger and your parent or teacher told you to pick up that trash or clean up that table even if you weren’t the one who made the mess. Sometimes the social issues in our commun­ities are not directly affecting us or are not caused by us but helping eradicate the struggle for those around us makes our community a better place just like picking up trash even if it’s not ours makes our air cleaner, our life better, and our space much more desirable and safe to live in.

State: Implic­ations are the potential conseq­uences of our actions.

Exemplify: In “what the eyes don’t see”, Dr. Mona often struggles with her past decision to tell the parents of her patients that the water in Flint was safe to use and drink. Of course, this was before she was aware of the water crisis and that the water was in fact not safe. There’s no way she could have known but as soon as she was aware of the suspicions she did her research. Very extensive research on the changing of the water supply, corrosion, and past water crisis. She then considered the implic­ations of her decision to tell them that the water was fine. When she decided that she had enough inform­ation to confid­ently make a decision on what to do, she was faced with another issue. She hadn’t considered what telling the patients would mean, many of them could not afford to switch to water bottles or didn’t have transp­ort­ation or the means to simply get water from somewhere else.

State: Assump­tions are thoughts or opinions that affect our decision making and cause us to make precon­ceived notions.

Exemplify: It is impossible for us to completely stop making assump­tions, it’s human nature, it’s one of the many way our brain makes connec­tions. Sometimes making assump­tions (espec­ially too often) can halt progre­ssive ideas and actions for change. For example, in the critical reading text “Learning past the hate” (pg. 106), the author explains how mass media was used to paint the picture of white male authors works no longer being taught in schools to instill public outrage. This misinf­orm­ation comes from the assumption that wanting diversity and inclusion in certain spaces means that there is a want to replace the people who currently occupy this space. Which is just not the case, assump­tions like these are made by jumping to conclu­sions and simply not listening to and unders­tanding the call for change.

Artist’s instagram @Kindr­ed_­studio

State: Clarity is being able to effect­ively articulate thoughts and ideas.

Exemplify: An article from psyche.co written by Tom Ghatfield illumi­nates the benefits of clarity and clear thinking. Through clarity we can not only identify what we really think and mean but also find ways to effect­ively share what we think with other people. The article talks about the importance of taking a pause, setting out the essentials for the line of thought, and opening a dialogue in clear thinking. All of these tips were beneficial to him as a tech philos­opher and critical thinker.

Illustrate: To illustrate clarity, imagine being tasked with explaining your thoughts at five different levels: child, teen, college student, graduate student, and expert. To do this takes clarity, even if you are not an expert at what you are thinking or discus­sing, using clarity will allow you to lay out your thinking by evaluating why you think this way, and what inform­ati­on/­evi­dence is there to support your thinking. In this scenario, clarity will also serve as a roadmap of how to present your thinking to different audiences.

State: Evaluating Inform­ation is identi­fying different types of authority and misinf­orm­ation that is used to mislead.

Exemplify: If you ask people in academia “where’s the best place to get factual inform­ation?” the answers will vary but among those answers will be scholarly peer reviewed journals. Due to the peer revision process a lot of the claims made in scholarly texts are fact checked and it’s impossible for anything to be published without proper references to track the source of inform­ation. Hegewisch and Hartmann’s Occupa­tional Segreg­ation (2014) paper is a good example of evaluating inform­ation because it reads like a literature review as the authors review the existing conver­sation about occupa­tional segreg­ation, identify flawed arguments, and errors in existing research before recomm­ending their solutions. To an extent, when we are presented with inform­ation we should all do literature reviews to determine; who is supplying this inform­ation, what’s their motive, what type of authority is present, and what are some potential biases from this source. Doing so will allow us to get a full picture before we decide to reject or accept this inform­ation.

Artwork: https:­//f­ine­art­ame­ric­a.c­om/­fea­tur­ed/­glo­bal­-ma­rke­t-a­nd-­tec­hno­log­y-l­eon­-ze­rni­tsk­y.html

State: Voice is commun­icating something of importance or showing advocacy in a way that can be heard.

Exemplify: On september 16, a 22 year old woman named Mahsa Amini was arrest in Iran by the morality police in Tehran for wearing her hijab “incor­rec­tly”. While in police custody Mahsa died under mysterious circum­stance, it is speculated that she was killed by police. According to the author­ities Mahas suffered a heart attack while at the detention center but witnesses have stated that Mahsa was beaten by police on the way to the detention center. Since Mahsa’s death Iranians all over the country have begun to protest. “death to the oppressor, be it the shah or the supreme leader!” What’s being protested isn’t islamic practice but the oppressive regime imposed by the Iranian govern­ment. Protests are one of the most common use of voice, and sometimes the most effective. This is an example of thousands of people commun­icating or advocating for something or importance to them.

Illustrate: This artwork titled “Human voice” by Anands­waroop Manchiraju illust­rates how different voices can come together in unison to create a single voice. The artist’s note: “The tongue can paint what your eyes cannot see, human voices have the power to set the emotional tone of an individual and the society as a whole. It's important to voice your thoughts, but let us voice positi­vity. Let us think before we talk and remember that our voice has the power to make someone or break someone”. As Americans, we are privileged to have the ability to speak freely without fear of prosec­ution or harm but speech is never really free. Our voice is often times not free of conseq­uences, sometimes protesting leads to impris­onment or sometimes the way we use our voice is harmful to others. It’s important to think of the conseq­uences of how we use our voice before we use it.

State: Margin­ality is the reduced ability to have your voice heard.

Exemplify: The Introd­uction from Brewis and Wutich’s “Lazy, Crazy, and Disgus­ting: Stigma and the Undoing of Global Health” discusses why stigma­tiz­ation occurs and how it all stems from the human fear of contagion and disease along with our innate need to distance ourselves from things that are deemed disgusting and unwanted. “Stigma is used to control and exploit commun­ities — used as a tool to block access to quality healthcare and the basic resources like food and water that are needed to support health” (Brewis and Wutich pg. 11). In this example, stigma is used to purposely keep margin­alized commun­ities like those living in poverty disenf­ran­chised. As critical thinkers, we can combat margin­ality by elimin­ating stigmas.

State: Citize­nship is the partic­ipation and engagement in a community, culture, or society.

Exemplify: Citize­nship allows us to carefully and sympat­het­ically consider the different viewpoints and experi­ences of groups within a society. For example, American Samoa became an uninco­rpo­rated and unorga­nized territory of the United States in 1900. Recently, the U.S supreme court rejected an appeal to take the case of Fitisemanu v. U.S. concerning American Samoan citize­nship rights. In this case three American Samoans living in Utah requested that the court declare American Samoans U.S citizens. The plaintiffs argued that a law that makes American Samoans “nationals but not citizens for the United States at birth” is uncons­tit­uti­onal.

Artwork: https:­//c­ard­iff­and­val­e.a­rt/­202­1/1­0/2­0/a­rtw­ork­-su­ppo­rti­ng-­equ­ali­ty-­div­ers­ity­-an­d-i­ncl­usi­on-­for­-all/