An explicit link between the issues of development and critical thinking is provided by Elder and Paul (1996). In their stage theory of critical thinking, Elder and Paul argued that the first stage beyond unreflective thinking is that of the challenged thinker. The challenged thinker is one who has become aware of the actual role of thinking in life and of significant problems caused by unreflective thinking. This is in accord with our experience, which we will describe and analyze in this article. History and contemporary society are saturated with and driven by thinking, much of which is developmentally immature and disastrous. Scriven and Paul (1987) made the crucial point that shoddy thinking is costly. Our approach to fostering critical thinking deals with the issue of motivation to think critically by focusing on the costs of not doing so. We agree with McPeck (1994) that some course content areas are more suitable than others for fostering critical thinking. In the courses we will describe here, we are able to challenge students to think about issues that have significant impact in the social world. Our goal is to move students to recognize that they can, and should, become critical thinkers and that recognizing meaningful challenges is the first developmental step.
This analysis combines the issue of "narratability" with some psychoanalytic insights, focusing first on the key incident in Meursault's story when he involves himself in writing. Meursault inadvertently inscribes himself in a conflictual drama when he writes a letter for Raymond Sintès. The writing of the letter prefigures both Meursault's later taking up of the gun with which he will kill an Arab and his inexorable evolution toward a situation that makes him capable of narrating and being narrated. It seals him into the colonial world of language. To become capable of narrating is both to become a colonist and to be colonized. It requires a subject/object relationship within the self. Mersault's story is an "allegory" of becoming legible in two ways: as an individual in a real cultural situation and as a character in a novel. Our analysis also links another of the novel's underlying themes-fragmentation of the environment-with our examination of Meursault's movement toward narratability and condemnation. The unbearable intensity of the sun throughout the novel is a token of this fragmentation. The colonialists' tendency to experience their presence in Algeria as both a necessary "civilizing" influence and a noble self-sacrifice is legitimated and perpetuated by their refusal to adapt their costumes and ceremonies to the environment.
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