Mystery snack bags: Wealth Allocation

Here is a great lesson idea that can be adapted: http://ecedweb.unomaha.edu/lessons/popcorn.htm
The basic concept is this: take a bunch of brown lunch bags, fill them with different things ranging from popcorn to crumpled paper, to perhaps even coins mixed with paper.
Then, distribute them under the guise that they are donated snacks. Once students open them, you can discuss resource or wealth allocation in a variety of ways; this can be extended for trade, etc.

"Teaching against idiocy"

This is a really interesting article! Teaching Against Idiocy, Phi Delta Kappa, 2005, by Walter C. Parker
Link to MS Word version http://www.shanoglesby.net/ParkerTeachingAgainstIdiocy.doc

He writes, among other things..
Idiocy shares with idiom and idiosyncratic the root idios, which means private, separate, self-centered -- selfish... When a person's behavior became idiotic -- concerned myopically with private things and unmindful of common things -- then the person was believed to be like a rudderless ship, without consequence save for the danger it posed to others. This meaning of idiocy achieves its force when contrasted with polites (citizen) or public. Here we have a powerful opposition: the private individual versus the public citizen...An idiot is one whose self-centeredness undermines his or her citizen identity, causing it to wither or never to take root in the first place. Private gain is the goal, and the community had better not get in the way.

Critical Thinking Readings

I'm always concerned about narrow and superficial conceptions about critical thinking (CT). Here is a selection of readings on CT which offer a bit of clarification on its meaning, the debates, and so on.

SOME ISSUES IN THE CRITICAL THINKING DEBATE: DEAD HORSES AND RED HERRINGS, ANYONE? this is (while a bit older 1998) a really interesting piece on the "controversies" of definidng CT from the journal "Educational Theory" (which is a very prestigious one) http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/122830

Critical Thinking, Autonomy & practical reason (2004) - really good one which I think will relate to your work - specifically critiques Siegel, and; also in Ed Theory http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/122836

Is Critical Thinking Biased? (this is actually a series of articles in an issue of Ed Theory and it really gets into whether the "dispositions" are problematic or not) http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/122837

Conceptualizing critical thinking - bailin and others - http://web.ubc.ca/okanagan/ctl/__shared/assets/ct-conceptualize597.pdf

Siegel on centrality of character to CT http://ojs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/informal_logic/article/viewFile/2484/1926 - this is along the issues of bias and stuff.

Critical thinking & critical pedagogy (differences etc.) http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules/papers/critical.html - kind of interesting and this fellow Burbules is a critical pedagogue - you might find the contrast enlightening, esp what he thinks CT is not. This of course, is controversial.

Bailin's Critical and Creative thinking - this is important, since there are differences. This journals is a pretty prestigious philosophy journal that has a lot on CT http://www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/informal_logic/article/viewFile/2656/2097

Bailin's response to Emery Hyslop-Margison's critiques of the failings of CT http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/2003/bailin.pdf - and the original Hylsop-Margison is here http://ojs.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/pes/article/viewFile/1753/470 - these are important because this offers you the alternate perspective of "against CT"

Education for CT: Can it be non-indoctrinative? http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/122840

Noddings - war, critical thinking and undrestanding - not unlike the Siegel one we read for our course http://education.uncc.edu/theafner/Advanced%20SS%20methods/War%20and%20Critical%20Thinking.pdf