Fostering Critical Thinking about Contemporary Social and Political Issues: A Labor Education Experiment

Between January 2000 and January 2001, the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) Labor Education Program worked with United Steel Workers Local 1688 and Pennsylvania Steel Technology's (PST) Career Development Program in Steelton, Pennsylvania, to develop a series of classes on fostering critical thinking about contemporary social and political issues. The program emerged from a series of extended discussions with Ike Gittlen, president of Local 1688, and members of a joint labor-management committee that oversees career development and training for employees at PST.

Stephen Brookfield, a leading theorist and practitioner, has defined critical thinking as "questioning the assumptions that underlie our customary way of thinking and being prepared to think and act differently on the basis of this questioning." This notion guided President Gittlen and members of the joint committee in outlining the kind of program they wanted Penn State to develop. Local 1688 faces a host of daunting challenges—creating unity among individual local unions recently amalgamated into a single unit, meeting the challenges of global competition and declining membership, and addressing the needs of a high-seniority work force concerned about its future security. If the union was to respond effectively to these challenges, Gittlen believed local leaders needed tools that would enable them to think more critically, strategically, and creatively about new approaches and tactics. He also wanted to expose them to different points of view, spur discussion and debate, and sharpen their ability to process, analyze, and evaluate diverse sources of information.

Although Penn State labor educators implicitly incorporate key principles of critical thinking (challenging conventional wisdom, imagining options and alternatives, understanding the social and historical contexts in which events occur, cultivating an attitude of reflective skepticism) into virtually all of our programming, we have rarely been asked to make such concepts the cornerstone of a curriculum. As an example of the kind of forum he envisioned, President Gittlen cited a public television series where a diverse group presented their positions on a controversial social issue and found them challenged by both their fellow participants and a moderator. Our discussions with Gittlen and the joint committee convinced us that there was a genuine commitment to move beyond conventional approaches to labor education, and that we would be allowed considerable freedom to devise an appropriate program. We also realized that in order to create an environment that would spur critical thinking, it would require us to develop new materials, to figure out different ways of presenting them, and to suggest how new skills learned in the classroom could be adapted by union leaders for everyday use.

The joint committee and Penn State labor educators agreed that the classes should be organized around specific issues of vital interest to Local 1688 leaders. The membership of the local was surveyed and identified four issues that became the focus of the first series of classes: globalization, health care, pensions and retirement, and political action. The students (12 to 15 per class) were stewards, committeepersons, or executive board members working at the PST plant and were recruited by President Gittlen and other union members from the joint committee.

One of the most successful classes, an examination of health care issues, illustrates how the program worked. At the outset, instructors defined critical thinking, and students were offered a "toolbox" of specific devices that they could use in assessing and evaluating the information they would subsequently receive. In small groups, students were then given fact sheets that described the number of uninsured persons in America, the rising cost of health care premiums, older Americans and their health care needs, and public concerns about the quality of health care.

After reviewing the fact sheets, students offered their own explanations for the problems with the American health care system and posted them on flip charts situated around the room. Then a panel consisting of a leader from a Service Employees International Union health...