Philadelphia Schools Have Replaced Critical Thinking with “Criticality”

“Like so many school districts in a post-George Floyd America, Philadelphia’s is rushing to embrace anti-racism.”

Mark Twain once wrote, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

The School District of Philadelphia recently overhauled its English Language Arts curriculum, replacing critical thinking with something called criticality, a concept developed by Gholdy Muhammad in her 2020 book Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. Although the word “criticality” sounds very much like critical thinking, it is far from it. In essence, critical thinking is working through opposing sides of an issue and using evidence-based research, reasoning, and background knowledge to reach an informed conclusion. Students who practice critical thinking may form a multitude of positions on a single topic based on their research, logic, and worldview.

Criticality, on the other hand, deals mostly with power, equity, and oppression. It starts with a conclusion, usually on a social issue, and works backward to verify it. Criticality involves challenging what is considered an establishment position to bring some depth and perspective to it. Students who incorporate criticality use research and lived experience to validate the perspective or conclusion already presented to them by teachers during the lesson. Proponents of criticality will argue this constitutes critical thinking because two positions are still presented: the so-called establishment position (which often is never adequately explored, properly argued, or turns out to be a straw man) and what is presented as the progressive, socially just perspective.