But I have no qualms with the believers of Scientology, in fact my point here is not to set them up as saviors or crazies, but instead to connect their language to a common principle found nestled in the warm embrace of pedagogy hope: the concept of auditing.
In the grand scheme of teaching, one goal that is increasingly brought to the defense of the humanities is the concept of critical thinking, and the way that we locate how this term works politically comes with a number of interesting consequences. Let us say, for example, that critical thinking can be defined as thinking that questions assumptions. Such a model can be (and is) used to defend the importance of an education in the humanities, or even education in general. However,
If education is power, is that power merely an adjustment to a specific set of social practices that enable our easier integration into the system? Or is does that power allow for the questioning and resistance of that very system?
We could argue that a turn to critical thinking in many ways leads to the former, but in my opinion, the overall turn toward critical thinking is a turn to the latter, a turn to resistance. Indeed, the Texas GOP recognized this connection between critical thinking and resistance, and in their recent platform they argued that they opposed critical thinking as they believe it tends to focus on "behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."
I'll write it again in case you missed it on the first pass:
THE TEXAS GOP
OPPOSES
CRITICAL THINKING
And oh how the jokes came! Everyone, including the linked-to Forbes article discussing the platform, progressed through a predictable set of reactions. Some assessed the idea seriously to bolster the need for critical thinking, others made fun of the idea that, of all things, the beloved idea of critical thinking could ever come under attack. This incident demonstrated the important connection between the value of critical thinking and the value of education, not only as a guide for pedagogy, but in the public idea of what education is meant to imbue.
This concept of critical thinking also gains and loses value because of it's role in eliding the idea of the standardized test. Critical thinking, some might say, is not a multiple choice question, it is not an definitive, measurable property given a rigorously structured stimuli. And so in this incongruity we arrive at both the idea that standardized tests are poor measures of education, and reciprocally, that critical thinking needs to be more thoroughly defined so that it might be made more easily measurable (or, some might argue, more efficiently bestowed on different students in different situations).
To this end, to define writing more thoroughly, Anne Berthoff came up with the concept of an audit of meaning, which has deep roots in the underlying logics of critical thinking. Berthoff writes:
To this end, to define writing more thoroughly, Anne Berthoff came up with the concept of an audit of meaning, which has deep roots in the underlying logics of critical thinking. Berthoff writes:
Just as a bookkeeper has to account for income and expenditures in order to balance credits and debits, an audit of meanings would have to balance what one sentence has to say against what others seem to say…of course, audit also has to do with listening. In composing, you have to be an auditor in both senses: you have to listen on the inner dialogue, which is thinking, and you have to be able to balance the account of what you’ve been hearing against what is set down on paper. (47)In this comparison, then, I'm aligning critical thinking with a constant audit of meaning, which is by no means the only way to conceive of critical thinking, but one which I believe is especially prevalent today.
Always be thinking!
Always be questioning!
Always be vigilant that your truth is not THE truth!
This language of auditing also plays out in Scientology, but to a different effect. The goal is to audit for emotional disturbance, and for memories that keep a person from being deemed "clear." The difference is that in Scientology there are two people, one playing the role of the auditor and the other playing the role of the audited, but in the ideal state of imbued critical thinking, these roles are both assigned to the individual. Despite this important distinction, the metaphor of the audit lies at the center of these two practices, and both, in some ways, play off the metaphor to a similar effect.
A pedagogical mode which seeks to provide critical thinking skills seeks to enable individuals to separate the false thought from those that are true, by measuring different accounts against one another for a varying set of qualities. Likewise, a Scientology-based audit might seek to free the audited subject from some polluting inner force.
The question is, why doe the auditing metaphor feel cromulent when used in the service of critical thinking but not in service of Scientology? It's because in Scientology we are audited and pedagogy we are presumed to audit ourselves. This model overlooks the ways
THE SELF IS OTHER
by which I mean that our minds and bodies act independently of our direct control. What happens when our students play out the dialogue of the auditor and audited in their mind and come to find that it doesn't add up? The same thing that a Scientology auditor would issue: a guess.
And not only a guess at that (!) but one that seeks to explain the gap, to explain the unknowable difference between knowledge and reality. In that cover-up, that extension that seeks to order, we lose the entire principle of critical thinking in the first place, which is to enable the resistance out the audited subject. The very discomfort we feel towards the idea of the audit of Scientology, I argue, is the very same discomfort we should take toward critical thinking, as both are undercut by the overwhelming desire to define and oppress the other.
And it is to this end I suggest, (quite facetiously) that perhaps the Texas GOP was right all along, that maybe there is something problematic about this thing we like to call critical thinking.
Cheers. Clink.
And not only a guess at that (!) but one that seeks to explain the gap, to explain the unknowable difference between knowledge and reality. In that cover-up, that extension that seeks to order, we lose the entire principle of critical thinking in the first place, which is to enable the resistance out the audited subject. The very discomfort we feel towards the idea of the audit of Scientology, I argue, is the very same discomfort we should take toward critical thinking, as both are undercut by the overwhelming desire to define and oppress the other.
And it is to this end I suggest, (quite facetiously) that perhaps the Texas GOP was right all along, that maybe there is something problematic about this thing we like to call critical thinking.
Cheers. Clink.