During the final podcast, I ended with a claims regarding the many benefits that would befall our society if the decision-making public (be they choosing whom to vote for, or any other matter) could develop their critical thinking skills to the point where they would be as wise to the professional persuaders (like politicians and advertisers) as these persuaders think they are to us.
The most obvious challenges to such an assertion is that it is utopian to believe that more than a tiny number of people have the ability to master the knowledge and skills outlined in this course (or some similar course) who would thereafter be able to apply a higher level of critical thinking to information intake and decision making.
Now a glib response would be to point out that if an eighth grader can absorb and begin to internalize this material, then so can those older and more experienced. But this explanation puts the cart before the horse. For the reason someone who just turned thirteen was able to learn the subjects taught in the Critical Voter course is that, relatively speaking, they are not that sophisticated.
Yes, some Critical Voter lessons drew from the field of cognitive science, and cognitive science is a vast area of study, filled with people sporting advanced degrees who are constantly breaking new ground. But while the field as a whole is complex (and exciting), for purposes of creating the Critical Voter curriculum, I just drew on a few simple ideas from cognitive science (such as those needed to understand the reasons behind the cognitive biases that severely cloud our judgment).
Similarly, the field of philosophy (from which the Critical Voter curriculum also drew material) contains highly complex subfields such as metaphysics (which tries to figure out the fundamental nature of the existence) and epistemology (the study of what we know and how we know it). But, again, topics from the philosophical tradition tapped to create Critical Voter were few and light (primarily practical concepts related to logic and argumentation).
The good news is that if this program sparked interest in areas like brain science and philosophy, there is vastly more to learn. But for purposes of becoming a critical thinker, the material included in this course is enough to provide you sufficient knowledge to begin to put into practice.
Another way to put this challenge into perspective is to understand what knowledge and skills persuaders (such as the aforementioned politicians and advertisers) possess and whether or not they are so much more sophisticated than the rest of us that we could never hope to match their abilities.
For example, I spent some time scouring various employment databases and other resources to determine just what it takes to become an advertising executive in the area of “creative” (meaning the high-level people responsible for the messages meant to persuade the public). And, for the most part, jobs in this area require a BA and 5-10 years of experience. And while many of the people working in advertising are highly imaginative (and thus successful), the education and experience level they achieved before entering such jobs is not much higher than what you have likely obtained (albeit in a different field).
And even with regard to content knowledge, I doubt that many advertisers, politicians or other professional persuaders have actually studied subjects like rhetoric or Aristotle’s Modes of Persuasion, even if they use principles from these traditions on a daily basis. More likely, they simply tap into “folk wisdom,” in their field, looking at (among other things) marketing messages that worked before to draw inspiration. And while it may happen that a particular marketing message “works” because it blends the right combination of logos, pathos and ethos (for example), this is something you may now be in a better position to articulate than the actual creator of that message.
In other words, practical critical thinking does not involve gnosis (a Greek term for mystic or hidden knowledge that can only ever be understood by a select few). Rather, it involves learning a set of subjects that is likely to be far less complicated than the knowledge you learned in any other subject you studied at school, or learned on the job.
So the challenge is not to find a self-selected, enlightened few able to overcome the hurdle of understanding highly-complex material, Rather, we simply need to convince people who have already mastered subjects far more complex than this one (which is most of us), that the time spent learning practical critical thinking is worth the effort.
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