Session Ten: Outcomes

It is customary to establish what has been learnt at the end of a course. In this case that is not so easy to pin down, since acquiring critical acumen is a long term process. However here is some kind of checklist:

1. You have been exposed to a variety of critical modes; journalistic (Meades, Self), satirical (Waugh), formal (Rowe), idiosyncratic (Rowe), poetic (Ginsberg), materialist/Marxist (Lefebvre, Eagleton, Davis), Neoliberal (Hickey), Libertarian (Rand), interpretive (Berman), which should have widened your perspective on how to think and write critically. All of these modes are potentially available at the same time, but we have picked exemplars of each type.

2. These examples are sourced both from so called 'high' and 'popular' culture, indicating that critical thinking does not presuppose a particular domain. We can be as critical of Gardeners World as we can the Villa Medici.

3. We have attempted, in sequentially going backwards chronologically, to retrace our critical steps, so providing a 'road map' or grand narrative (of sorts) as to where we have been and where we are now. Essentially we have learnt to use the past to help us with today.

4. Each week we have blogged our thoughts on each text, aware of what we have already done, and wary of what might be next. Hopefully some areas have become more fascinating than others, so preparing your for your Research Methods course next semester, and ultimately your dissertation.

5. By doing all of the above, we have hopefully become rather exhausted by our own opinion, and learnt to respect and enjoy the opinions of thinkers we hadn't encountered before, making us more open  to discerning argument.

FINAL BLOG: for your final and tenth blog, you are asked to sum up your critical thinking experience.

SUBMISSION: You are asked to print out and bind your ten blogs, sequentially 1 to 10 and not in reverse order, and submit them to the School Office on the third floor of the Tower Block on the first day you return from the Christmas holidays at the beginning of the Spring term.