A Teaching Material of Critical Thinking－Les Misérable

Abstract

Critical thinking, in educational practice, can be more easily approached and trained for students by use of informal contents such as literature, movie, or story telling than by formal logical contents. In this paper, I suggest that <i>Les Misérable</i>, as an example, is one of good teaching materials of critical thinking education. The rationale for this is that familiar literary works arouse common interests of students who have a variety of majors. And critical thinking education with arguments can exert its true value only when it leads students to motivation, theoretical understanding, embodying, and practical application. To show that Les Miserables satisfies this standard, I have introduced first person view summery of the novel and illustrated how various arguments and fallacies can be extracted from the classical literature.