THINKING CRITICALLY IN COLLEGE

Many soon-to-be college students view college as a way to prepare themselves for their future jobs or to improve their earning potential. Indeed, with so much emphasis placed on how college qualifies students to pursue various career paths, it’s easy to forget its primary purpose: education. A college education is about more than the rote memorization of facts and formulas; it’s also about more than building a resume or securing an internship. With this book, the author argues that the true value of attending college is the experience of learning new things, which will hopefully make the student a more thoughtful, versatile, and capable human being: “College will require you to learn new things in new ways,” writes Newman in his introduction. “Whatever your specific interests or long-range plans, you certainly wouldn’t choose to devote this time and money to higher education if you weren’t looking to become more educated. Obvious as that sounds, many students begin their college careers without reflecting on just what that means….” Specifically, the author outlines the higher-order critical thinking skills that are essential for success in college and beyond. Newman refreshes skills related to reading, writing, quantitative reasoning, and research that students may have learned in high school but need updating for collegiate learning. He also offers sketches of various academic disciplines, providing samples of the prompts and assignments students might encounter within them. The idea is that, by the end of the book, an incoming college student will have picked up a number of skills it might otherwise take several semesters of trial and error to acquire.

The book is essentially pedagogical—it teaches the reader how to learn better. It’s a worthy endeavor and a valuable one for those industrious enough to make their way through these chapters. Newman’s prose is cheerful and easy to follow, if not always terribly gripping: “Each time you walk into class and take your seat, look around you and take in who is on this journey with you. In most cases, you won’t know them, but given that you are classmates, you have an opportunity to contribute to their learning, and they to yours.” He goes out of his way to demonstrate the thinking behind the concepts he discusses, opening the reader’s eyes (perhaps for the first time) to the reasons underlying the ways they have been and will be taught. The author provides numerous practice exercises to give the reader a taste of what they will encounter as well as sections in which to journal and consider their own interests and goals. The format is fairly standard, with little to distinguish it visually from the numerous other guides and study books aimed at high school students in the run-up to college. Indeed, the question may be not whether the book will help students but whether readers will willingly read and internalize its lessons. Those who do will undoubtedly have a leg up in their first semester.