Critical Thinking in College and Life

Being a college graduate and a citizen will lead to many future opportunities to think critically about matters that affect the quality of life for you and your family. Answers are often not clear-cut but rather can be loaded with ambiguity and contention. Taking a position on behalf of you and your family will require careful, critical thinking.

For instance, what should we do about the growing problem of childhood and adult obesity? Should we tackle this problem as a society because reducing the rates of obesity would benefit society as a whole? How could you approach this public health crisis in your community?

Let’s assume that you and some neighbors decide to petition the school board to place on its next agenda a decision to ban soft drinks in the public schools. In response to your request, you are granted permission to speak at the next school board meeting. Your team collaborates to identify the questions that you need to explore:

  1. What is the current obesity rate of adults in this community?
  2. What is the current obesity rate of school-age children in this community, and how does it compare with the rate twenty years ago?
  3. What health interventions are currently in place in schools to offset the potential for obesity?
  4. When were soft-drink machines placed in the schools?
  5. How much profit does each school realize by the sale of such beverages?
  6. How do the schools use these profits?
  7. Have there been any studies on the student population in the community correlating obesity levels with other health problems such as diabetes?
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Who’s Thirsty? Companies that sell sugary drinks know that students are a prime market.
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You collect data using resources at your town library, and in your search for evidence to support your position, you discover that according to the local health department, obesity rates for adults and children in your community exceed the national average and have gone up dramatically in the past twenty years. Rates of diabetes among young adults are also increasing every year. You also learn that soft-drink machines first appeared in schools in your district fifteen years ago. Other than regular physical education classes, the schools don’t have programs in place to encourage healthy eating. Schools receive money from the soft-drink companies, but you cannot get a clear answer about how much money they receive or how it is being used.

The data about the health of the community and the schoolchildren is powerful. You carefully cite all your sources, and your team believes that it is ready to make its case. You assume that the school board will make an immediate decision to remove soft-drink machines from school grounds based on what you have discovered. You cannot imagine another side to this issue, and you wonder how anyone could possibly object to removing from school a substance that, in your view, clearly harms children.

Little did you know that your position would meet stiff opposition during the board meeting. You were shocked to hear arguments such as the following:

  1. Students don’t have to buy these drinks. Nobody makes them.
  2. Students will be unhappy if their soft drinks are taken away, which will negatively affect their academic performance.
  3. The United States is all about freedom of choice. It is morally wrong for any agency of government to interfere with people’s freedom of choice, no matter what a person’s age.
  4. If we allow the school board to tell children what they can and cannot drink, pretty soon they will be telling children what to think or not think.
  5. This proposed restriction interferes with what is best for our country and therefore our children: protecting the free enterprise system.
  6. This proposed policy will lead to significant revenue loss for our school, which will result in higher taxes to make up the shortfall.
  7. There is no evidence that it is the consumption of soft drinks that actually causes obesity. Other sugary foods might be the problem.
  8. If students don’t have these drinks to purchase in school, they will sneak them in from home.
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Weighing All the Issues Committees made up of community members often have to make hard decisions for the common good.