As part of my new business,ATC Consulting. ,--feel free to hire me, I've had the pleasure of being the writing consultant for nurses in an RN to BSN program. They are mainly adult woman who have a two year degree and are doing this program to get a Bachelor's. The program spends a great deal of time emphasizing critical thinking. Bloom's taxonomy is front and center.

I was like all yeah, yeah, of course. For fifteen years I used Bloom's taxonomy for every class I taught. Day one I'd get in there and teach them how to move from knowledge or comprehension based questions to analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. College is all about critical thinking, I'd say. But I had sort of forgotten why it was so central until I helped R. write her reflective journal.

She said she'd been sitting in a presentation about how to set up a robotic arm. The presenter said, "Do it this way." And for the first time in her adult life, she thought, "Why? What are his credentials? How did he arrive at that conclusion?"

She wrote in her journal:

Asking the why was a lightbulb that went off. Suddenly, why you ask why and not just do something all began to make sense. Understanding the rationale helps me to decide whether what is being presented is the right thing to do. If I am informed, I can make the best possible decision and be a part of the decision.

In the culture I was raised in and the education I received, you don't question authority or why you are told to do something. Critical thinking is not accepted. In fact, you are punished for it. For example, in fifth grade, I asked my teacher a why question in a sexual education class, and the answer I was given was "Because that's just the way it is." That did not satisfy my curiosity, so I asked even more questions and was punished. What I learned was to never ask why and just pretend that I understood and accept what was said. This affected me when taking standardized tests. Because I had not asked the why questions, I had not understood and did not do well on tests.

That none critical thinking approach to learning continued on into my adult education and my work life. When my instructor would first ask me to elaborate more on an idea or concept, I could not do it. The information was just told to me in the literature or I had learned it, so there was nothing more to say. That is how I thought as an Associate Degree Nurse.


Even though I was teaching critical thinking skills every day, somehow I forgot that many students don't already have them. I forgot that what I was teaching was powerful and subversive, that critical thinking lets you be an equal decision maker in the world, an actor not an acted upon. I can't get credit for teaching R. these critical thinking skills. Her program had spent two years working with her on them. I just got to be there the day it all came together. What a privilege.