Before You Decide
Critical thinking does not begin when you decide whether something is true or false. It begins earlier — with learning to see what is actually present before your expectations, assumptions, or opinions begin telling you what to look for.
How to Work Through This Lesson
This lesson is designed to be completed in sequence. Each section builds on something you experienced or learned in the section before it. Work through the blocks from top to bottom rather than opening them all at once.
When an exercise asks what you see, think, or conclude, record your answer before opening the explanation. The learning comes from comparing your own reasoning with what is revealed afterward.
You will repeatedly be asked to delay judgment. The goal is not to suppress your opinion, but to establish exactly what you are judging before deciding whether you agree with it.
Complete each block before moving to the next. Later exercises assume that you have practiced the reconstruction skills introduced earlier in the lesson.
By the end of the lesson, you will be able to move through four distinct intellectual operations rather than collapsing them into one:
Lesson 1 · Block 1
What Changes When the Target Changes?
Experience targeting before we define it
Begin Lesson ↓
Read carefully. Do not skip ahead.
You will read the same short account more than once. Follow each reading instruction carefully and record what you notice.
Virginia directed its Department of Education to develop statewide guidance restricting student cellphone use in public schools. The resulting policy requires phones to be turned off and stored away during the school day. Local school divisions determine how phones are stored and how the policy is implemented.
Supporters of the restrictions have pointed to classroom distraction, student concentration, academic performance, and concerns about extensive cellphone and social-media use. Schools must also determine how teachers and administrators will enforce the restrictions.
The policy includes provisions for students with documented medical needs. Schools are also expected to establish procedures for family emergencies and plans for communicating with parents during school-based emergencies. Students who previously kept their phones readily available during the school day therefore have less direct access to them under the policy.
This time, your assignment is different.
Virginia directed its Department of Education to develop statewide guidance restricting student cellphone use in public schools. The resulting policy requires phones to be turned off and stored away during the school day. Local school divisions determine how phones are stored and how the policy is implemented.
Supporters of the restrictions have pointed to classroom distraction, student concentration, academic performance, and concerns about extensive cellphone and social-media use. Schools must also determine how teachers and administrators will enforce the restrictions.
The policy includes provisions for students with documented medical needs. Schools are also expected to establish procedures for family emergencies and plans for communicating with parents during school-based emergencies. Students who previously kept their phones readily available during the school day therefore have less direct access to them under the policy.
Same text. Different target.
Looking for benefits
Looking for costs
Your target changed.
During the first reading, your attention was directed toward distraction, concentration, academic performance, and possible benefits to the school environment.
During the second reading, your attention was directed toward access, parent communication, emergencies, enforcement, and the practical costs of the restriction.
Neither reading was necessarily false. The danger appears when we mistake what our target caused us to notice for everything the evidence contains.
This time, remove both targets.
Do not look for costs.
Ask only:
What is actually here?
Virginia directed its Department of Education to develop statewide guidance restricting student cellphone use in public schools. The resulting policy requires phones to be turned off and stored away during the school day. Local school divisions determine how phones are stored and how the policy is implemented.
Supporters of the restrictions have pointed to classroom distraction, student concentration, academic performance, and concerns about extensive cellphone and social-media use. Schools must also determine how teachers and administrators will enforce the restrictions.
The policy includes provisions for students with documented medical needs. Schools are also expected to establish procedures for family emergencies and plans for communicating with parents during school-based emergencies. Students who previously kept their phones readily available during the school day therefore have less direct access to them under the policy.
Targeting
The purpose of critical thinking is not to eliminate questions, hypotheses, or prior beliefs. Those are unavoidable and often useful.
The discipline is learning to notice when a target is organizing your attention and then deliberately returning to the more basic question:
Lesson 1 · Block 2
Before You Agree or Disagree
Reconstruction Before Evaluation
Continue Lesson ↓
The targeting exercise changes what comes next.
You just experienced how easily a question or expectation can organize your attention. That means there is a problem with beginning an argument by asking whether you agree with it.
Agreement is not the first task.
Most people think critical thinking begins with questions like:
Do I agree?
Is this persuasive?
What is wrong with this argument?
Those questions matter.
But they come too early.
If you have not first determined what the author actually said, you may begin judging an argument that exists partly in your own mind.
Before deciding whether an argument is right or wrong, determine what argument was actually made.
Your first responsibility is representation.
Suppose you strongly disagree with an author.
You identify something the author never claimed, attack it successfully, and conclude that you have refuted the argument.
You may have won an argument.
But it was not necessarily the author’s argument.
If not, evaluation has started too soon.
Four different mental operations
Readers often perform four different tasks almost simultaneously. This course will separate them.
What is actually present?
What argument is actually being made?
Does the argument survive examination?
What am I warranted in concluding?
It is to delay judgment until the object of judgment is clear.
Which question should come first?
For now, suspend the verdict.
As you continue this lesson, adopt a temporary rule:
Your first task is to determine what the argument is.
This is not intellectual neutrality forever.
It is intellectual sequence.
You will evaluate.
You will test.
You will judge.
But first, you must be able to accurately reconstruct.
Lesson 1 · Block 3
Start at the Finish
Topic Is Not Thesis
Continue Lesson ↓
Find the destination before tracing the route.
In the last block, you adopted a temporary rule: reconstruct the argument before evaluating it.
Now reconstruction begins.
Start with the completed intellectual product.
When you read an argument, it is natural to move through it in the order the author wrote it:
first paragraph, second paragraph, third paragraph, conclusion.
But if your goal is to understand how the argument works, another method is often more useful:
Identify the completed intellectual product first. Then work backward through the steps required to reach it.
Do not confuse the topic with the thesis.
Suppose you are asked:
“What is this article arguing?”
And you answer:
That may accurately identify the subject.
But it does not identify the argument.
The subject being discussed.
A proposition the author wants the reader to accept.
Theses make claims about subjects.
Use the proposition test.
A topic can usually be expressed as a word or short phrase:
School discipline
Artificial intelligence
Immigration
Free speech
A thesis must make a proposition about that subject.
It should be something that could be:
accepted,
rejected,
qualified,
defended,
challenged.
Topic or thesis?
Identify the role of each statement.
Now reconstruct the destination yourself.
Supporters argue that delivery trucks currently stop in traffic lanes, slowing traffic and creating hazards for drivers and cyclists. Opponents argue that removing parking spaces would make it harder for customers to reach nearby businesses.
A local editorial argues that the city should create a limited number of loading zones on the busiest delivery blocks and evaluate the results before expanding the program.
A reasonable topic is:
downtown loading zones and parking.
The thesis is more specific:
The city should create a limited number of loading zones on the busiest delivery blocks and evaluate the results before expanding the program.
Your wording does not have to match exactly.
The important distinction is whether you identified both:
what the passage is about
and
what the writer wants you to conclude about it.
Why start at the finish?
Once you know the thesis, the rest of the argument has a destination.
You can now work backward.
Instead of merely collecting sentences that seem important, you can ask:
That question reveals the supporting claims.
Then we can ask what evidence supports those claims.
And eventually we can expose the reasoning, assumptions, and frame underneath them.
Do not merely ask:
“What is this about?”
Ask:
“What am I being asked to believe?”
Lesson 1 · Block 4
Work Backward
Conclusion → Claims → Evidence
Continue Lesson ↓
Now that you know the destination, find what is carrying it.
In Block 3, you learned to identify the thesis or conclusion. Now work backward and ask what must be true for that conclusion to follow.
Ask the next question.
The propositions that answer that question are the argument’s supporting claims.
Separate the three jobs.
The destination of the argument.
The supporting propositions that carry the conclusion.
Facts, statistics, examples, testimony, documents, observations, precedent, or other support.
Watch the structure appear.
A school district should begin classes later for high-school students. Teenagers who regularly receive too little sleep often have difficulty concentrating during early morning classes.
Several districts that moved high-school start times later reported improved attendance and fewer students arriving late.
Supporters therefore argue that a later start time could improve students’ readiness to learn and reduce avoidable attendance problems.
The school district should begin high-school classes later.
Insufficient sleep can interfere with students’ readiness to learn.
Later start times may improve attendance and punctuality.
The point is not yet to decide whether the district should change its schedule.
The point is to make the argument visible.
What role is this statement playing?
Build the skeleton yourself.
A public library is considering eliminating routine overdue fines. Supporters argue that even small unpaid fines can discourage some patrons from returning to the library.
Several library systems that removed overdue fines reported that previously overdue materials were returned and that some patrons who had stopped borrowing began using the library again.
Supporters therefore argue that the library should eliminate routine overdue fines while continuing to charge patrons for materials that are lost or never returned.
Conclusion:
The library should eliminate routine overdue fines while continuing to charge for lost or unreturned materials.
Supporting claim:
Routine overdue fines can discourage some patrons from returning to the library and resuming borrowing.
Evidence:
Several library systems that removed overdue fines reported the return of overdue materials and renewed borrowing by some patrons.
Your wording does not have to match exactly.
The important question is whether you separated: the destination, the supporting proposition, and the material offered as support.
You now have the visible skeleton.
You can identify:
You know where the argument is going, what has to be true to get there, and what material has been offered in support.
But there is still a missing piece.
Evidence does not interpret itself.
Two people can agree completely about a fact and still disagree about what that fact establishes.
Once those pieces are visible, you can begin examining the reasoning between them.
Lesson 1 · Block 5
Find the Hidden Bridge
Inference — how evidence becomes a claim
Continue Lesson ↓
Evidence does not interpret itself.
You now know how to identify a conclusion, its supporting claims, and the evidence offered for those claims.
But one important part of the argument is still hidden.
Look between the evidence and the claim.
Two people can agree on the evidence and disagree about the inference.
Imagine that two people agree completely that attendance improved after the school changed its start time.
One says:
Another says:
They are not necessarily disagreeing about the fact.
They are disagreeing about what the fact establishes.
Inference answers: “What does that supposedly show?”
Use the “because” test.
When the inference is difficult to see, complete this sentence:
A company allowed one department to work remotely three days each week for six months. During that period, the department completed projects at roughly the same rate as before.
Management argues that allowing the department to continue hybrid work is unlikely to significantly reduce productivity.
Project completion remained roughly the same during six months of hybrid work.
Claim:
Hybrid work is unlikely to significantly reduce productivity.
Inference:
If the department maintained roughly the same project output while working remotely three days each week, then the hybrid arrangement appears compatible with maintaining its previous level of productivity.
Which statement is the inference?
Claim: Dedicated loading zones can reduce traffic-lane obstruction by delivery vehicles.
Which statement best expresses the inference?
Notice that it does not yet prove the strongest possible conclusion. It simply makes the reasoning bridge visible.
Claim: Overdue fines can discourage some patrons from returning.
Which statement best expresses the inference?
The other answers go farther than the evidence presently allows.
Write the bridge yourself.
A city added shade structures and trees to two heavily used public plazas. During the following summer, pedestrian counts during the hottest afternoon hours were higher in those plazas than they had been before the changes.
City planners argue that adding shade can make outdoor public spaces more usable during hot weather.
Evidence:
After shade structures and trees were added, pedestrian counts during the hottest afternoon hours were higher than before.
Claim:
Adding shade can make public spaces more usable during hot weather.
Possible inference:
If more people used the plazas during the hottest part of the day after shade was added, the added shade may have made those spaces more comfortable or practical to use during hot weather.
Your wording may differ.
The key is whether you made visible the reasoning that connects what happened to what the author says it shows.
The reconstruction is getting deeper.
You can now identify not only the visible pieces of the argument, but the reasoning move connecting evidence to a claim.
But every inference rests on something.
Sometimes the author states that foundation.
Sometimes it remains unstated.
Either way, the argument may depend on it.
The answer exposes the inference.
Lesson 1 · Block 6
Dig Underneath
Assumptions — what the reasoning needs to be true
Continue Lesson ↓
Every argument stands on things it does not stop to prove.
In Block 5, you learned to expose the inference: the reasoning move between evidence and claim.
Now ask one level deeper: What has to be true for that reasoning to work?
Find what the argument is taking for granted.
Assumptions are not automatically mistakes.
Every argument depends on background propositions.
Writers cannot stop after every sentence and prove everything from the beginning.
Some assumptions are obvious.
Some are reasonable.
Some are disputed.
Some are so deeply embedded in the argument that we barely notice them.
Identifying an assumption does not prove the assumption is false.
The first task is simply to make the hidden structure visible.
What kinds of assumptions might be hiding underneath?
Assumptions can concern many different things.
What does a key word or category mean?
Did one event actually contribute to another?
Why did people act as they did?
What background conditions are being presumed?
What is being treated as good, harmful, fair, sufficient, or important?
Who is assumed to possess the power or responsibility to act?
Use the “must also be true” test.
When an assumption is hard to identify, complete this sentence:
A library removed routine overdue fines. Afterward, some patrons who had stopped borrowing began using the library again.
The library concludes that overdue fines had discouraged at least some patrons from returning.
Some patrons resumed borrowing after routine fines were removed.
Inference:
The removal of fines may have removed a barrier that had discouraged some patrons from returning.
Possible assumption:
The change in borrowing behavior is meaningfully related to the removal of the fines rather than being entirely unrelated to it.
Which assumption does this reasoning need?
Inference: Hybrid work appears compatible with maintaining the department’s previous level of productivity.
Which assumption does this reasoning most clearly depend on?
The argument does not need to assume that everyone prefers hybrid work or that the arrangement is universally best.
Inference: The loading zones gave at least some drivers a practical alternative to blocking traffic lanes.
Which assumption does this reasoning most clearly depend on?
It does not require the much broader propositions in the other choices.
Dig underneath the argument yourself.
A high school created a quiet study room that students could use during lunch and free periods. During the following semester, the room was regularly occupied, and surveys showed that many of the students using it said they had previously struggled to find a quiet place to complete schoolwork during the day.
Administrators conclude that providing designated quiet space helps meet a real need for some students.
Evidence:
The room was regularly used, and many surveyed students said they had previously lacked a quiet place for schoolwork during the day.
Possible inference:
If students regularly used the room and reported previously lacking quiet study space, the room appears to be serving a need that existed before it was created.
Possible assumption:
The students’ use of the room and their survey responses are reasonably representative of a genuine need rather than being unrelated to the purpose of the space.
Other answers may also be reasonable.
The objective is not to prove or disprove the assumption yet. It is to recognize that the reasoning depends on something beyond the visible evidence itself.
You can now see beneath the visible argument.
You know the destination, the supports, the evidence, the reasoning bridge, and what that reasoning quietly depends upon.
One part remains.
Arguments do not merely contain facts and reasoning.
They also define what the problem is.
They decide which facts matter enough to include and which questions deserve attention.
That question exposes assumptions.
Lesson 1 · Block 7
What Has Been Made Important?
Frame — what the argument puts inside and outside the picture
Continue Lesson ↓
Arguments do not only make claims. They define the problem.
You now know how to identify the visible and hidden structure of an argument. One final question remains: What has the argument made important?
Every argument has a frame.
A frame does not automatically make an argument dishonest.
Every explanation has to decide what it is explaining.
Every writer has to select some facts and leave others out.
The critical-thinking question is whether the frame helps us see the problem clearly — or causes important parts of it to disappear.
The same event can sit inside different frames.
This frame directs attention toward enforcement policy, compliance, public safety, and the implementation of immigration law.
This frame directs attention toward the allocation of authority between federal, state, and local institutions.
The underlying events could be identical.
But the frame affects which features of those events appear most significant.
Frame is not the same thing as falsehood.
A city proposes converting several downtown parking spaces into protected bicycle lanes.
Cyclist safety, street design, traffic flow, and transportation choice become especially important.
Parking availability, deliveries, customer access, and business activity become especially important.
Both frames can contain true information.
Neither frame, by itself, necessarily captures everything relevant to the decision.
Three frame questions
Which answer identifies the frame?
What frame is the article primarily using?
That does not make the frame wrong. It tells you what the article has chosen to make central.
The first task is simply to notice that they exist outside the article’s chosen frame.
Identify the frame yourself.
A school district is considering replacing printed textbooks with tablets for most high-school courses.
A technology committee argues that digital materials can be updated more quickly, reduce the number of books students carry, and allow teachers to distribute additional resources immediately.
The committee recommends beginning the transition with a two-year pilot program.
Possible frame:
How can digital materials improve the delivery and convenience of instructional resources?
Inside the frame:
Faster updates, lighter student loads, immediate distribution of additional materials, and a gradual pilot implementation.
Potentially outside the frame:
Device cost, repair and replacement, screen fatigue, internet access, distraction, student preference, data privacy, and whether printed materials work better for some learners.
Those omitted considerations do not automatically defeat the committee’s argument.
The point is to see that the argument has selected a particular question and organized the evidence around it.
The reconstruction framework is now complete.
CLAIMS — What must be true to get there?
EVIDENCE — What is offered to establish those claims?
INFERENCE — How does the evidence supposedly establish them?
ASSUMPTIONS — What must also be accepted for the reasoning to work?
FRAME — What has been included, excluded, emphasized, or defined as important?
Only now is the argument sufficiently visible to begin serious evaluation.
First represent the argument accurately. Then test it.
Lesson 1 · Block 8
Put the Argument on the Table
Full Reconstruction Laboratory
Continue Lesson ↓
This time, you build the reconstruction.
You have now learned all six parts of the reconstruction method. In this exercise, you will use them together on a new argument.
One rule still applies.
Your job is representation.
Reconstruct the argument as accurately as you can before deciding
whether it succeeds.
Read the argument once before filling in anything.
Some school districts have moved from a traditional five-day school week to a four-day schedule, usually by making the remaining school days longer.
District leaders considering the change often point to difficulty recruiting and retaining teachers. In some districts, neighboring systems are able to offer higher salaries, making it difficult to compete for staff. A four-day schedule can therefore be offered as a non-salary benefit to teachers and employees.
Districts that have adopted four-day schedules have sometimes reported increased job applications and improved teacher retention. The schedule may also produce some operating savings, although research suggests those savings are generally modest.
The change also creates costs. Families may need childcare on the additional weekday when school is closed. Those burdens can be especially significant for families with younger children. Research into academic performance has also produced mixed results, with some studies raising concerns about achievement over longer periods.
A district committee concludes that a four-day school week should not be adopted simply as a cost-cutting measure. However, districts facing serious teacher recruitment and retention problems should consider a limited four-day-week pilot, provided they monitor student achievement, attendance, staffing, and family childcare burdens before deciding whether to make the schedule permanent.
Reconstruct the argument.
Conclusion
Districts with serious teacher recruitment and retention problems should consider a limited four-day-week pilot, while monitoring its effects before deciding whether to adopt the schedule permanently.
Claims
A four-day schedule may help districts compete for teachers even
when they cannot match neighboring salaries.
The possible benefits are significant enough to justify testing the
schedule, but the possible academic and family costs make permanent
adoption premature without additional evidence.
Evidence
Some districts using four-day schedules have reported increased job
applications and improved teacher retention.
Cost savings appear to exist but are generally modest.
Families can face additional childcare burdens, and research on
longer-term academic effects is mixed.
Inference
If districts experiencing staffing difficulties have attracted more applicants or retained more teachers after adopting four-day schedules, then the schedule may function as a meaningful recruiting and retention benefit even where salary competition remains difficult.
Assumption
The experiences of other districts are sufficiently relevant that a carefully monitored local pilot could provide useful information about whether similar benefits and costs would occur here.
Frame
The argument frames the four-day week primarily as a possible
staffing strategy that must be evaluated against academic and
family tradeoffs.
It does not frame the issue simply as a way to save money or as a
universal solution for all school districts.
That is the standard.
You are not being asked whether you favor a four-day school week.
You are being asked whether you can accurately represent the reasoning
before judging it.
Lesson 1 · Block 9
Now You May Test the Argument
From reconstruction to evaluation
Continue Lesson ↓
You have earned the right to evaluate.
Until now, the lesson has repeatedly told you: you do not yet have permission to agree or disagree.
You reconstructed first. Now the argument is visible.
Evaluation begins after representation.
Test each part separately.
Return to the four-day-school-week argument.
Districts facing serious teacher recruitment and retention problems should consider a limited four-day-school-week pilot, while monitoring student achievement, attendance, staffing, and family childcare burdens before deciding whether to make the schedule permanent.
Notice how important accurate reconstruction now becomes.
The argument does not say:
“Every school district should move to four days.”
It does not say:
“Four-day school weeks improve academic performance.”
And it does not say:
“Four-day school weeks save large amounts of money.”
If you attack those propositions, you are no longer testing the reconstructed argument.
Test what the evidence actually permits.
Which conclusion is most directly supported by that evidence?
The other choices travel substantially farther than the reported observations permit.
What does that information do to the argument?
The negative evidence is actually part of the reconstructed argument. It helps justify the narrower conclusion.
Measure the inferential distance.
Many weak arguments contain true facts.
The problem is not always the evidence.
Sometimes the conclusion simply travels farther than the evidence can carry it.
Some districts report recruitment or retention benefits from a four-day schedule.
A four-day schedule may provide a staffing benefit in some circumstances.
All school districts should permanently adopt a four-day week.
The greater the distance, the more reasoning and support are needed to cross it.
Test the argument yourself.
A careful evaluation could reasonably conclude that:
• the reported recruitment and retention experiences provide some reason to investigate the policy;
• the mixed academic evidence and childcare concerns create genuine reasons for caution;
• local conditions matter, so evidence from other districts cannot by itself establish what will happen in this district;
• the argument’s conclusion is deliberately limited: it recommends considering a monitored pilot rather than permanent adoption.
That last point matters.
A stronger conclusion such as “the district should permanently adopt a four-day week” would require substantially more evidence than the argument presently provides.
Notice what critical thinking did not require.
You did not have to become an advocate for the proposal.
You did not have to become an opponent of the proposal.
You did not have to decide that every part of the argument was equally strong.
And you did not have to convert uncertainty into certainty.
Strong evidence can justify a limited conclusion without justifying every stronger conclusion that someone might want to draw from it.
