The university is supposed to be the institution in society where careful thinking is the norm. Ask yourself, therefore, how often you sit down and think carefully about something. Perhaps more importantly, instead of just assuming that this is something you do, try to describe what “careful thought” means for you in practice. What activities does it typically involve? What does it feel like? How do you know that you’ve been thinking carefully for the past 10, 30 or 60 minutes?

Does it require equipment of any kind? Is it something that you associate with other activities like reading and writing? If so, why?

What occasions force you think carefully about something? How often do they arise?

Also, what are the typical consequences of careful thought? Does it generate ideas or beliefs? Does it undermine your previously held beliefs? Do you associate “thinking carefully” with “changing your mind” or with “coming up with something to say”?

Finally, does your position as an academic support your ability to think carefully? Turning this question back on yourself: have you made optimal use of your conditions to foster care in your thinking? Have you organized your work to allow you to consider matters of concern to you and your peers in careful and thoughtful manner?

Lots of questions. I’ll take up some possible answers in subsequent posts.

Here are some things that students should learn while at university:

• what a “seminal” article is
• what a review article is
• what peer-review involves
• how to find scholarly work on a particular subject (hint: use the library)
• how to check the truth of a factual claim
• how to cite other writers
• what a paragraph is (and how to write one)

If you are a university student and you don’t know some of these things, I encourage you to start learning them. If you are a university teacher and suspect that many of your students don’t understand these things, I encourage you to devote your next class to introducing them to them.

There is, literally, no level of university education where complete ignorance about these things is acceptable or understandable.  (Obviously, if you are a university teacher and don’t know these things, then it’s time you did.) There will of course be degrees of mastery and understanding. I’m saying that students should be developing these competences from day one. And their incompetence on any given day should therefore be graded accordingly.

It has long seemed to me that the social sciences are much too concerned with the innovation of theories and methods, as if our ignorance stems from deficiencies at that level. I’m not sure that’s really where the problem lies. I think our methods and theories are, by and large, fine. What is needed much greater care in their application to the problem of knowing. Indeed, I think instead of developing new methods and theories I we need to strengthen our ability to use the old ones. I think we have forgotten the importance of training in fostering competence.

For quite some time, universities have been increasingly charged with preparing young people for the labor market. Students (and society in general) have demanded that they be given “competences” that are “relevant” to the problems posed by “global competition” or some other ominous force. More recently, however, concerns have begun to be voiced, by both educators and employers, that this drive for competence has neglected a set of underlying competences that were, perhaps, too readily dismissed as “academic”. We can call these “scholarly” competences.

They are important in what has been called “the knowledge society”. Indeed, scholarly competence constitutes what it means to be knowledgeable. Knowledge-able, i.e., “able to know”. It is, of course, grounded in the theories and methods that students learn at university. But it also has an important “craft” dimension, which is the focus of this blog. Most concretely, the ability to know things is supported by the student’s facility with texts, with reading and writing. And that is why the CBS Library has a resident writing consultant. We want to integrate writing skills and library skills into a unified ability to understand the changing world in which we live.

We are confident that this will also be useful to students on the job market, and society in the long run.

I’m going to start posting here again soon. It may take a little while to find a regular rhythm and clear focus. But we have to start somewhere.