I Don't Have a Plan

This course will be very different from some the other courses I've developed on the Critical Thinker Academy that are based on material that I've been teaching for years, like the logic courses, or the moral argumentation course I'm developing right now.

I've taught that material many times as a university professor.

I've never taught a course on how to raise a critical thinker.

I've thought about it a lot, but I don't have an organized plan for laying all this out.

In many respects I'm using this platform to develop my thoughts on this topic, to uncover and discover what I want to say about it.

For me it feels more like blogging on a particular topic, or doing preliminary research and writing for a book. I read, I think, I write, and along the way I discover what it is I want to say.

I've written about this aspect of writing before, on the difference between writing for DISCOVERY versus writing for PRESENTATION. (See the video below.)

I'm definitely in the discovery mode. So don't be surprised if I create section headings in the curriculum list, add one or two posts their, reorganize them, change their names, merge them ... that's about me feeling my way through a complex set of ideas and creating a framework for thinking about them along the way.

The section headings below represent topic categories, to which I'll add posts as they're written, and it won't follow a linear order most of the time. It'll just grow organically over time.

I Do Have a Plan

The plan is to keep writing on this topic until the little gems start to appear, the crucial and valuable take-away points.

Then I'll work on elaborating on those gems and creating useful, actionable content to go along with them -- exercises, case studies, checklists, that sort of thing.

Then I'd like to put this into a real book that you can actually hold in your hand, aimed at giving practical advice to parents and teachers.

Thank you for sharing and participating in this process with me, I truly appreciate it.

FYI, here's that video I mentioned on writing for discovery versus writing for presentation. You can find it in my course, "A+ Essay: A Structured Approach to Successful Essay Writing".