Critical Reading and Transferable Competences to Foster Multilingualism
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2.1. Academic roots of criticality as an educational goal Criticality as an expression of independent thinking has been considered one of the traditional university values and purposes, much discussed by philosophers of education. As recently as twenty years ago Barnett claimed confidently, ‘The kinds of overarching aims that can be detected in everyday perceptions about higher education seem, if anything, to include the development of the student’s intellectual skills or academic competences’. The western concept of higher education was defined through a list of attributes, such as: ‘critical abilities, especially the propensity to be selfcritical; the ability to analyse and evaluate an argument; the capacity to relate what is learnt to a broad context and to make relevant connections’. The development of the student’s ‘autonomy as a self-sufficient rational enquirer’ was seen not so much as one of the aims of higher education, as ‘essential conditions of it’ (Barnett 1988: 245). In his more recent publications, Barnett does not keep the same assumptions, arguing instead for redefining the concept of criticality and saving its status in higher education. Major changes observed in university education concern the fact that knowledge which ‘brings personal understanding, even knowledge which offers truth’, is less valued than that ‘which is going to improve economic competitiveness and which is going to enhance personal effectiveness’ (Barnett 1997: 29, 35), and that the notion of academic competence has been replaced by ‘more operational, pragmatic and action-oriented forms of knowing’ (Barnett 1997: 27, 30). Does this mean the end of university’s creating an environment for personal and cultural growth, and the development of general intellectual skills, not solely specific ones, directly usable in employment? Barnett answers with his new conception of education that would handle challenges and uncertainties of the new age. It is characterised by reflective knowing, focus on dialogue and argument, as it ‘allows for the continuing examination and construction of self, society and culture, including our ways of knowing and of understanding the world about us and of acting in it’ (Barnett 1997: 42–43). Central to Barnett’s idea is his notion of ‘critical being’ as an approach to life, thinking and criticality that a university educated person should aspire to. The theoretical model of criticality proposed by Barnett incorporates ‘critical reason’ (critical thinking) and two further dimensions: ‘critical self-reflection’, as well as ‘critical action’ in the world (Hilsdon 1997).