Break a statement into premises, conclusions, background assumptions, and objections. You will draw simple argument maps that make thinking visible and easier to improve.

Trace the growth of critical thinking from Socratic questioning and formal logic to science, public education, journalism, and cognitive psychology. The history shows why today’s methods value evidence, open criticism, and careful doubt.

Handle arguments where the conclusion must follow if the premises are true. You will practice validity, soundness, conditionals, contradictions, and common patterns like syllogisms.

Judge arguments that support a conclusion without proving it completely. This chapter covers generalization, analogy, inference to the best explanation, and how much support is enough.

Recognize weak reasoning patterns such as straw men, false dilemmas, slippery slopes, circular arguments, and appeals to popularity. The goal is not name-calling, but explaining exactly where reasoning breaks.

Judge whether evidence is relevant, sufficient, recent, and gathered in a trustworthy way. You will compare testimony, observation, documents, data, experiments, and expert judgment.

Decide when an expert, institution, witness, or source deserves trust. This chapter covers credentials, incentives, conflicts of interest, track records, peer review, and responsible skepticism.

Read percentages, averages, samples, polls, margins of error, and charts without being misled. You will practice spotting cherry-picked numbers, bad comparisons, and missing denominators.

Use probability, base rates, uncertainty ranges, and risk language to make better judgments. This chapter helps you avoid overreacting to vivid stories while ignoring the bigger pattern.

Separate correlation from cause and look for hidden variables, reverse causation, and selection effects. You will practice asking what evidence would actually show that one thing changed another.

Use hypotheses, controls, experiments, replication, measurement, and peer review to judge scientific claims. This chapter also covers why science changes its mind without becoming “just opinion.”

Notice confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, availability bias, anchoring, group pressure, and emotional shortcuts. You will build small habits that slow down bad judgment before it hardens into certainty.

Practice holding beliefs with the right level of confidence and updating them when better evidence appears. This chapter covers intellectual humility, steelmanning, and the difference between being open-minded and being gullible.

Read essays, reports, articles, and opinion pieces by tracking the author’s main claim, support, assumptions, and missing evidence. You will mark up a text in a way that prepares you to respond fairly.

Search, save, quote, paraphrase, and cite sources in a clean trail others can inspect. This chapter builds practical research habits for school, work, civic decisions, and personal projects.

Write a critique that is accurate, fair, and useful. You will summarize an argument charitably, test its strongest support, name weaknesses clearly, and suggest what would make it stronger.

Use questions, listening, paraphrasing, and burden-of-proof rules to keep disagreement productive. This chapter helps you challenge ideas without turning every conversation into a fight.

Reason through claims about right and wrong by naming values, duties, harms, rights, fairness, and consequences. You will practice handling moral disagreement without pretending values are irrelevant.

Make choices when options have tradeoffs, uncertainty, costs, and competing goals. This chapter covers decision tables, expected value, opportunity cost, second-order effects, and reversible versus irreversible choices.

Work through messy real-world problems by defining the issue, identifying constraints, generating options, testing assumptions, and reviewing results. You will create a short problem-solving plan rather than jumping to the first fix.

See how recommendation systems, search rankings, ads, and engagement loops shape what information reaches you. You will practice changing your information diet and checking whether a feed is narrowing your view.

Handle rumors, viral posts, political claims, screenshots, and emotionally charged stories with a repeatable checking process. This chapter covers lateral reading, source tracing, reverse image search, context checks, and fact-checking limits.

Evaluate images, audio, video, and documents that may be edited, staged, or AI-generated. You will practice looking for provenance, metadata, corroboration, and realistic signs of manipulation without relying on one magic detector.

Use chatbots, search assistants, and AI writing tools as helpers without handing over judgment. This chapter covers hallucinations, prompt framing, source verification, bias, privacy, and when human expertise is still required.

Question dashboards, performance metrics, rankings, and automated scores used in workplaces and institutions. You will check what is being measured, what is missing, who benefits, and how a number can change behavior.

Compare how evidence works in law, medicine, history, policy, engineering, and journalism. This chapter helps you adapt your standards to the setting instead of using the same proof test everywhere.

Follow a full workflow from a public claim to a justified conclusion: define the claim, gather sources, rate evidence, handle uncertainty, write findings, and state limits. The result is a short investigation report someone else can audit.

Follow a full workflow from a difficult choice to a defensible recommendation: frame the decision, set criteria, compare options, test assumptions, consider risks, and communicate the final judgment. You will produce a one-page decision brief.

Plan how to keep improving through reading, writing, debate, data practice, research projects, and feedback from people who disagree with you. This chapter covers roles that rely on critical thinking, proof-of-skill artifacts, useful courses and competitions, and ways to stay current.