67. Why Critical Thinking Matters for School & Work – with Professor Mark Massaro
Episode 67
What’s the real point of reading and writing assignments in school? According to Professor Mark Massaro, it’s not just about the grades—it’s about learning to think critically. In this conversation, we explore what critical thinking really is, how students can develop it through reading and writing, and why it’s one of the most valuable (and transferable) skills for both school and work.
What You’ll Learn:
How reading and writing help students develop critical thinking
Why critical thinking matters for resumes, interviews, and real-life decisions
What it looks like when a student (or professional) lacks these skills
How critical thinking skills can keep you from being manipulated (ummm, yes please)
🎙️Other Episodes + Resources Mentioned
Blog Post: What’s the Real Point of School?
Video: Writing Tips for Students Who Get Stuck
About Mark Massaro:
Mark Massaro earned a master’s degree in English Language & Literature from Florida Gulf Coast University, and he is currently a Professor of English at a state college in Florida. His writing has been published in The Georgia Review, The Hill, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Master’s Review, Newsweek, and many others.
✏️Enroll in SchoolHabits University (Curious? Check it out!)
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them 😉
67 Why Critical Thinking Matters for School & Work – with Professor Mark Massaro===
[00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. This is episode 67, and today I am interviewing a college professor. Mark Massaro earned a master's degree in English language and Literature from Florida Gulf Coast University. And he's currently a professor of English at a state college in Florida.
His writing has been published in the Georgia Review, the Hill, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Master's Review, Newsweek, and many, many others. Today's conversation with [00:00:30] Mark is so valuable for students and professionals because we are talking about critical thinking. Now on this podcast, we talk a lot about, a lot about hard skills such as task management and time management and productivity and resourcefulness, and basically how to put the systems in place so you can achieve your goals, whether that is in the classroom or in the workforce. But often overlooked are some of these softer skills, and I'm reluctant to call them softer [00:01:00] skills because they are not soft by any means, and one of these skills is critical thinking.
In our conversation today, mark makes the point that critical thinking is arguably one of the most valuable skills that students can develop in the classroom because it has the greatest impact on their ability to succeed in the workforce.
If you are a student listening today's episode and you have ever had any of the following thoughts, this writing assignment is pointless, Reading this book is useless, analyzing, this text [00:01:30] is dumb then today's conversation is for you. If you are a working professional listening to this today and you have ever encountered what Mark calls a brick wall in the workforce where you just reach this no moving forward point in your skills, in your ability to solve a problem, then at the core might be a lack of critical thinking skills.
So we talk about what critical thinking is, how to develop them in the classroom, how reading and writing and [00:02:00] analyzing literature are the keys to developing these skills. What it looks like when you don't have critical thinking skills, and how a student who develops these critical thinking skills in the classroom is more likely to go on to an industrious, successful and productive career. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Professor Mark Massaro. Let's get into it
[00:02:30]
Katie Azevedo: Well, hello Mark.
Thank you so much for joining us on the show today.
I am excited to see where this conversation goes. How are you doing?
Mark Massaro: I'm good, Katie. How are you?
Katie Azevedo: Awesome, awesome. So I wanna give you a little backstory about why I thought that you would be the perfect [00:03:00] person to interview for today's, for today's episode.
You're a college professor. And so I know that you probably deal with a lot of student resumes or have, you know, read student resumes and it probably just comes up in your line of work.
And this is the season, the spring semester, where I have a lot of college students, um, either former college students returning to the office, um, or maybe just, you know, one-off students coming for some help with their resumes for internships [00:03:30] coming up over the summer. And as you probably know, there's a section on the student resume for skills.
And when I'm working with students on their resumes, you know, with the basic skills, like do you know software, do you know Excel? Right? And then sometimes we get into, um, very niche skills while I'm good at, um, marketing, I'm good at sale. Okay, great. But then the conversation comes up about the softer skills.
So sometimes that is communication, sometimes that's problem solving. And of course it's critical [00:04:00] thinking. And on the resume, when students are saying, well, I should put critical thinking on my resume, my first instinct is, yes, absolutely. People in the workforce are looking, or hiring managers are looking for people with critical thinking skills.
But it often prompts the conversation or, or me, to ask the student the question, what do you know about critical thinking skills? Do you know what they are? Could you even define them? And so I thought to myself this, and you know, they, they typically have some difficulty explaining what critical thinking really is.
Mm-hmm. So I thought to [00:04:30] myself, who would be the perfect type of person to come on the show and chat with me about critical thinking? And I thought a college professor, so here you are. Are you ready to talk about some critical thinking?
Mark Massaro: Yes. I love critical thinking. Awesome. It's extremely important to me.
Katie Azevedo: It is, it is. Would you agree that, um, some of the students that you work with may not be able to define critical thinking?
Mark Massaro: Absolutely. Um, I teach literature composition one and two, creative Writing and all of those classes, the [00:05:00] first day, I usually say before we begin, just so you know, the goal for this class is to develop your critical thinking skills.
That's what I try to implement in all my classes because it's an extremely important, um, element, especially these days of discerning what is logical and what is, you know, emotional and yeah, they usually just define it by using the same word. It's thinking critically. Mm-hmm. Or something like that.
But, um, that's why we really, I'd really try to stress in my classes, you know, question [00:05:30] assumptions, analyze power structures, evaluate human behavior, evaluate history from a critical point of view, so you have an opinion about it based on logic, not just emotion.
Katie Azevedo: That's awesome. You know, I actually have a definition here that I looked up before, before we hit record.
Um, there are so many different definitions of critical thinking out there, and the way that you just defined it is so darn close to the one that I landed on. And this one is from Monash University there in Australia. And they define critical thinking as a kind of [00:06:00] thinking in which you question, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and make a judgment about, which would be, you know, synthesize what you read, hear, say, or write.
So I'm pretty sure that you just hit all of those verbs in your, in your definition. So, pop quiz, you passed, you passed. So my first question to you, I know you teach reading, you know, literature and writing, right? Mm-hmm. But how does analyzing literature, we'll talk about writing in a little bit.
How does analyzing literature [00:06:30] train students to develop their critical thinking skills?
Mark Massaro: Good question. Um, so this is like, what I love in my literature classes is that there's a thing called literary theory and it's pretty much just a different lens in which we interpret. So it's like we change our glasses all the time.
Um. In my,, when I was a student, I had a class just called Literary Theory and we read one short story like 15 times that entire semester. 'cause one way we approached culturally, how does the social norms of the [00:07:00] story shape the characters and their identity? Um, then we read it again from like a Marxist point of view.
How does the class, struggles of the story affect the characters? Psychoanalytic, um, you know, the ba most basic psychology class people learn about, you know, suppressed and repressed desires. How, um, how the subconscious affects the characters. Feminist theory, um, you know, gender roles, power structures. And my favorite is actually new criti, new, uh, historicism.
It's what was happening in the culture [00:07:30] at the time that made that art. Mm-hmm. And I always tell the students, you know, history is extremely important. We learn it so we don't make the same mistakes again. But, and also we recognize patterns. But also I think the best way to understand a culture is just look at the art that came from that culture.
'cause there's something there of expression that numbers and statistics and facts don't really have. So when you start to look at eras through their art, you kind of have this new perspective on what was happening at that time, as for [00:08:00] humans. So I think just analyzing stories and characters from so many different angles.
And you know, when I read that short story 15 times, it was different every single time. You know, you'd think it'd be boring in the beginning that I have to keep reading this thing. Mm-hmm. But when we read it from a different point of view, it just like was a new story every time. This is like extremely important.
You know, in law, uh, business, marketing, psychology, social justice, even teaching, I have to always just kind of interpret where is the student coming from? What's their [00:08:30] background? How is their biases affecting their objectivity? And then, and it's very powerful because then you start to understand why empathy is cultivated from storytelling, which I think is extremely important.
Mm-hmm. You know, to understand someone.
Katie Azevedo: Right. No, I love the way you described it, whether you keep putting on this separate pair of glasses. So like you're looking at the same thing with a different lens. And I think that that gives a great visual for students who might be thinking that critical thinking as an idea is just [00:09:00] something that's very abstract.
You know, we talk on the show a lot. I talk about these hard skills and it's, you know, task management and time management and productivity and getting things done. And these are all skills that people can build with practice, but critical thinking, and I, I think you would agree, is a skill that we can get better at.
It's not something we're born with. Babies aren't, you know, born being able to put on separate pairs of glasses and have compassion and empathy and self-awareness to be like, what is this [00:09:30] other person thinking? How could I view this differently? Right. So that's why I think that you're, you know, the perfect person for this conversation because you teach reading and you teach writing and you teach thinking.
Katie Azevedo (2): Yeah.
Katie Azevedo: And. I see such an overlap between those three verbs, reading and writing and thinking and I don't, I don't think you could have one without the other. Exactly. I think it's kinda like a three leg stool.
Mark Massaro: Yeah. Right,
Katie Azevedo: right,
Mark Massaro: exactly. I always just keep telling the students, this isn't something you should already like, have [00:10:00] Perfect.
It's a skill that you develop just like playing a sport. You know, your first day of practice, you don't just go out and immediately score touchdowns and make, you know, baskets. You have to slowly work your way up to it through practice. So that's why in all of our classes, we look at billboards, bumper stickers, commercials, speeches, and we just try to analyze what techniques are they using in order to make you feel something.
And then once you can start putting your finger on, I know what they're using in order to influence me, you, that's the first step of critical thinking, just recognizing. [00:10:30]
Katie Azevedo: Interesting. So I have, um, I'm curious on your thoughts about. I wanna be careful and say, not say students these days.
Katie Azevedo (2): Yeah. But
Katie Azevedo: students these days, um, I, in my experience, I find that it's hard to get buy-in sometimes, um, from students about the importance of these sort of softer skills and
i, I, I say softer with air quotes, but I, 'cause they're, they're very practical skills. These critical thinking, problem solving. Do you face what I [00:11:00] face with my private clients that when I'm using these words like, oh, it's so important to be able to think critically and we gotta come at this from like a critical perspective.
They don't fully understand what that really means, and they haven't been explicitly taught how to do this, right, do you find that it's hard to get buy-in from your students about the practical application of critical thinking? So, for example,
Katie Azevedo (2): if you
Katie Azevedo: ask you a question and then I jump, I keep going. But if you were to assign your [00:11:30] students a similar assignment like you were assigned, read a single story and read it 15 times and keep putting on separate classes,
do you teach the practical application of this skill in a broader context? Say, okay, well guys, this is important because you need it for your future classes, for your job, for being a good person, for being able to have relationships. Like how do you sell it?
Mark Massaro: There's a reason why, um, a writing class is, you know, prerequisite everyone has to take. So in [00:12:00] my, all my students are, you know, math majors or history majors or business majors, they all have to go through a writing class because those skills are extremely important just for life personally.
And, you know, in the job, uh, all of these skills too, once you recognize something critically, you have an opinion of it, and then you, then you support that opinion based on evidence. Immediately, it's just logical. And the best thing about literature classes is that there can be more than one correct interpretation.
That's [00:12:30] why I, that's why I did good with it is because, you know, I. It's not math and science. There's multiple correct answers from from it, especially if you just support it with evidence. So it just extends so much outward for the rest of their academic careers and then after their academic careers, you have a thought, base it on evidence, you anticipate the counter argument, and then you conclude.
And then that's just the most basic skills that you can have in day-to-day life, just existing in the world. I always tell them that [00:13:00] the, you know, cultures are kind of created in order to influence you in a way, the way cities are designed, the way advertisements are made, and as long as you can recognize, um, rhetorical fallacies and appeals and how they influence you, it's the first step of critical thinking is just to recognize that you are being influenced and then you can, you know, start to develop even more from there.
Katie Azevedo: That's a good point. I hadn't even thought about that as being an angle of this conversation that, 'cause I was like, okay, how can students develop critical thinking and how does writing, how is writing and reading a [00:13:30] vehicle to develop those skills and how can that apply in in the workforce? But then you just made a really good point that when you understand how to think critically, you understand when someone is using those skills on you in the form of influence and not necessarily manipulation. I mean, of course you just mentioned advertising and marketing, right? There's, there's that level too. But even just in, in day-to-day life. The more you're able to, the more you own a skill yourself, the better you're able to [00:14:00] recognize when someone else has that skill and is perhaps using it on you.
Mm-hmm. That, that's a, that's a great selling point, i, I would think if someone weren't buying into why we need to think critically, it's, well, do you wanna be fooled? Do you wanna be pla Do you wanna be the fool? Right. In the,
Mark Massaro: that's why there's such a huge, like, separation between emotional reaction and logical reaction.
Um, we do a, you know, a couple murder mysteries in the class just to have them look at evidence and then make a deduction based on evidence. And [00:14:30] I mean, half the time students are like, the wife did it. They're like, well, where is your evidence for that? And they're like, well, it's always the spouse.
I'm like, okay. But you're letting, you know biases and, you know, fallacies influence. It's not a generalization. Not all spouses will murder you. So let's look at the evidence. So that's why it's like we, you know, we talk a lot about biases. Um, inherited biases, generational biases, cultural biases. As long as you can take a step back and just recognize your own, their own personal patterns of [00:15:00] why they behave and think and believe certain things, um, which is usually just due to culture.
That that's the first step of kind of just assuming this is preventing me from thinking logically.
Katie Azevedo: Mm-hmm. Um, not that, uh, long ago, I think maybe two weeks ago or so, maybe three weeks, I had put out a blog post about what's the real point of school, and, you know, it's not the, to learn the Pythagorean Theorem and, you know, parallelograms and things like that.
It's, it's a playground. It's the only safe, relatively low stakes [00:15:30] arena where people can practice these skills. Because once you're in the workforce, like, no no boss is gonna be like, whoops, you messed up nine times. That's okay. Let's just try again. Like, you don't get nine, you know, you don't get nine strikeouts.
Mm-hmm. Sort of in the real world. And so the writing and the literature and that approach to critical thinking and developing these skills, I think that's probably the best way to view this for students is like, this is your opportunity to [00:16:00] practice thinking. Mm-hmm. Do you ever explicitly tell students, okay, we are gonna read this story and we're gonna analyze it through these, this lens in order to develop critical thinking because it's going to help you in this way.
Like, do you lay out that roadmap or do you let them arrive at that? Yeah,
Mark Massaro: absolutely. When we look at, you know, cultural theory, um, just how the media and social norms of that time have influenced the characters, we can kind of apply it to real world, but also just new historicism.
When we look at what was happening in the time [00:16:30] that created this, that can just be applied to the job market. You know, whenever I see a lot of openings at one university, I kind of think maybe the turnover is for a reason. Um, also, you know, just go, we used to work on cover letters in class just 'cause I think that's a skill that everyone should have.
And I always tell them, they tell you exactly what they want in the job posting. There's words like cultivate, assess, execute. So they're telling you the words that they want you to use back. And I have heard too that [00:17:00] now, um, you know, there's AI generators that are not letting certain resumes go through because they don't have the right words.
Katie Azevedo (2): Mm-hmm.
Mark Massaro: So, I mean, it also comes in handy just for job interviews. You can look around the office of the person that you're being interviewed in and kind of understand what their passions are. You know, I've, I've done that during job interviews where I've just looked around. I'm like, okay. They go skiing and snowboarding a lot.
They have a Bob Dylan poster. I. They have a lot of awards, but a certain, um, genre of liter literature. So then I just naturally work that into the [00:17:30] conversation of how I love snowboarding and I've seen Bob Dylan three times and then it just goes from there. 'cause you have to understand your audience too.
That's another part of critical thinking and that's the, and part of the rhetorical situation is just who is the audience? And then you can kind of understand how you're being influenced because you understand what demographic you are.
Katie Azevedo: You know, I wanna repeat something you said for the listeners, 'cause it was so important that, um, you mentioned that a practical application of learning critical thinking skills through writing and [00:18:00] through reading and analyzing literature and things like that, is the ability to have a conversation in a high stake situation such as an interview.
Um, and again, this just points to the reality that that writing and caring about a write, I'm speaking directly to students caring about a writing assignment and how it's done and not putting it through ChatGPT, not bypassing the actual writing process, which is a proxy for the thinking process, right?
[00:18:30] That is the one of the only ways that you're gonna develop this skill, because what's gonna happen, you're gonna be in a, in a situation where you're having a conversation, you are at a board meeting, you are at an interview, you are in a high stakes conversation, and if you have not developed these critical thinking skills through in the other arenas, school, the classroom, you're gonna stand there with your mouth open and you're gonna miss a valuable opportunity, as you said, to like, look around, read the room.
Right? To read the audience to know, okay, so this is what [00:19:00] this is, um, maybe what they hinted at in their conversation. This is the, the, the backdrop that I see behind them. These are their interests. How can I critically examine this conversation as it's happening in real time and participate in a way that I get the outcome that I'm looking for from this conversation?
Mark Massaro: Yeah, it's an extremely important skill because when I see students bypassing it just by using AI or just any other form of, um, not doing the [00:19:30] work correctly, I get nervous knowing that they may be mm-hmm a nurse or a doctor one day, and then if they cheated their way to get to that position and I'm lying on their, you know, hospital bed and I need their help, they can't just hit pause and then look up something.
You know, you need to develop those deductive skills.
Katie Azevedo: Mm-hmm.
Mark Massaro: Mm-hmm.
Katie Azevedo: Um, question. So what does, what does it look like in the classroom if a student does not have these critical thinking skills?
Mark Massaro: Uh, it's a lot of silence. I [00:20:00] can usually tell who, who's done the reading and who hasn't.
Katie Azevedo (2): Mm-hmm. Um.
Mark Massaro: I get excited though when I see new interpretations.
You know, when I teach the same, I try to change it every semester, just so you know, it's constantly evolving. That's why I always think the best teaching philosophy is always evolving. It's not just one set way of teaching, but, I do kind of understand that the, sometimes the students will have the same answers, but every now and then, there's just this completely novel idea
about a short [00:20:30] story. And that can only come from someone being passionate about the story and how it applies to their life. And that just excites me. And I also have another one of their justification papers that they need to do an interpretation of a poem, but create an artistic expression from it.
And then their papers about that art. So I'm always constantly trying to like, be like, you can create something with this. And students have come in the classroom, played the guitar, and they like measured the notes based on the syllables from the poem or something. I, it's like beyond [00:21:00] my comprehension, but it made sense.
Um, students have made video games, comic books, um, you know, beautiful paintings on canvases, uh, pottery. And then they just, you know, they get to show off their skills. I mean, especially photographers. So I'm always constantly trying to like give them something that they can be passionate about and they usually quickly react.
Katie Azevedo: That's awesome. I know you're at the, um, the university level, but when I taught high school, we were shifting toward project based learning and allowing students to demonstrate [00:21:30] our assessments look like projects in, in many cases it was a slow rollout. But yeah, I think that, you know, at first a lot of students were like, oh, this is the easy way out.
I can just make like a picture or whatever. But the students who didn't succeed in those project, um, those like final projects are the ones who lack the critical thinking skills. 'cause they couldn't take the, the prompt, the argument, the initial reading, whatever it was that was the backbone of the assignment and turn it into something because they weren't able to say, okay, well this is my interpretation.
I've looked [00:22:00] at the evidence, I have analyzed it. I've evaluated it now, making a synthesized judgment of what it means, and here is my personal representation of that. And if you think about the potential for these skills to, to, um, enhance somebody's career, everything you just mentioned, I mean, you mentioned a lot of the arts, but like music playing, um mm-hmm.
Um, creating, um, even a sculpture like that is a product, right? So I'm just thinking like larger, like product development. Yeah. And maybe not like a clay sculpture, but any product development across [00:22:30] any industry requires critical thinking and if the marketing
Mark Massaro: Yes. You know, policy memos, just everything, that, that's why I, I always think I'm like, this is one of your foundational classes for a reason.
Mm-hmm. You need to know how to think and you need to know how to communicate.
Katie Azevedo (2): Mm-hmm.
Mark Massaro: And, and I always say, unfortunately, I wish that the world was all just based on love. It's not, you need to represent yourself on paper. Yes.
Katie Azevedo (2): Yeah.
Mark Massaro: Especially when I. You know, I worked on a lot of retail jobs in my twenties, and then my bosses would [00:23:00] just hand me a stack of resumes and say, find me three people.
And the first thing I would do is who has correct grammar? Who knows the job that they're applying to? And then, uh, just doing some, you know, umbrella a memo to any job you, you know, who's paying attention, who wants this? And then I would always go from like 20 resumes down to like three, just because they represented themselves well on paper.
Katie Azevedo: And that's the first step to being able to represent yourself well in real life, right? Yeah, for sure.
Mark Massaro: Yeah. It's important.
Katie Azevedo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. [00:23:30] Um, so question. So what do you, what Okay, so lemme let me backtrack. I was in a scenario recently and it's, this scenario happens a lot. But there was one that was more recent that inspired a YouTube video that I put out.
Not on this channel, it's, it's on my, my School Habits channel. And it was how, it was writing tips. Writing tips for students who get stuck. And one of the points that I made in that video was that I hear a lot, I bet you hear the same thing. Students be like, well, I, I, I just don't know how to say it.
Like, I know what I wanna say, but I just, [00:24:00] I just don't know how to say it. Say it. And they are under the false assumption that they're stuckness so to speak, is because they just lack the ability to figure out how to say something as if like word order and sequencing and syntax mattered. Um, and my point in that video is that no, it's not usually that you don't know how to say it. It's like you don't actually know what to say.
Katie Azevedo (2): Mm-hmm. And
Katie Azevedo: this is in the context of taking, you know, analyzing. In the video I use, um, a separate Peace. Right. So John Knowles separate Peace, and we [00:24:30] take a quote and I throw it up on the screen. I'm like, okay, so let's say that we're making, here's our thesis, here's the quote that we're using to validate our thesis.
How are you gonna analyze that quote? And that's when students like, well, I, I just know what to say, but I don't know how to say it. And I'm like, I really think that you don't know what to say. And I go to comment, and I can't remember if it was on the, um, the YouTube, the video itself or maybe on like a reel I had made of it, whatever, where someone was like, yeah, but how do I know what to say?
And I thought that was a really great question. 'cause I'm like, [00:25:00] you'll analyze a quote. Yeah. You tie it back to the thesis. You have to like, you know, um, provide the evidence and the rationale and make it really, really undeniably easy for someone to go, oh yeah, now I realize your thesis is, um, is valid. So when you're teaching your students to, let's say, analyze a quote, what advice are you giving them? Which of course, this, this ties directly to critical thinking. You can't analyze a quote if you can't think critically.
Mark Massaro: Yeah. Um, [00:25:30] yeah, I, uh, have you heard of the quote burger?
Katie Azevedo: No.
Mark Massaro: It's, um, well, no, it's just like a, you know, just a...burger...And then I just say that, you know, the, the buns are kind of your words, and then the meat of the paragraph is the quote.
Mm-hmm. So you can't just drop one in the beginning of the paragraph. You can't drop one at the end. So I need to know why it's there. Mm-hmm. So then, you know, we always just start working on, you have to set up the theme for this paragraph that supports the thesis. And I always tell them, whenever you're in doubt, just ask yourself, does this [00:26:00] support the thesis?
Mm-hmm. So whenever they get to that point of, okay, this theme in this paragraph will support the thesis. Good. Okay, now we'll quote, and now they include the quote, and then they have to explain why is that quote important enough to quote. Because I always say like, find the best quote in this entire story to support your claim.
If you're, if you can just summarize it to paraphrase it, it's probably not that important. So where's the best quote that supports you? And then they do have to make that connection of, they have to justify this quote is important enough to [00:26:30] include and quote word for word cite correctly. And then it also has to go back to proving my, my, uh, interpretation.
Mm-hmm. So it's extremely important. This, this happens everywhere, you know.
. Um, even as an instructor though, I constantly have to justify and prove that what I'm doing in my course
meets the state, you know, minimums and requirements. Um, the CLOs, the course learning outcomes, the module learning outcomes. Teachers aren't just left alone to go teach a class. We have to justify why [00:27:00] this lecture, why, why this module , why these activities will meet certain standards of cultivating, thinking of, you know, peer-to-peer inter interaction.
And every year we are kind of interviewed of how are you meeting all of these requirements? And I have to prove it based on the evidence that I'm cultivating in my classes. And this just applies to all jobs, you know. Once you get hired, you're not just not watched. You have to justify you being there.
So that's why you need to know how, you know how to go above and beyond just [00:27:30] proving your worth through critical thinking.
Katie Azevedo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, good point. I, in education for sure, to be an educator at any level, uh, you have to have critical thinking skills, especially someone in your position. 'cause you're teaching these and you can't teach something that you don't know yourself.
But I'm also thinking, we mentioned this before, but with marketing, right? Mm-hmm. You can't, you can't know your audience. And know what their pain points are and be able to agitate those pain points and then say, Hey, but here's, I have the solution, unless you're able to think critically and say, what are their pain points?
What are they dealing with? To the [00:28:00] ability to put yourself in someone's shoes. Yeah. Um, sitting around a table, you know, proposing a, a product. We had mentioned this, and if someone says, well, why is that a good product? Right. To say, I think we should do this. That's kind of like dropping a quote. In an essay.
Mm-hmm. And then your, your managers might say, okay, well, why do you think that? And if you're, if someone comes back with, well, well, like, I, I just think it would, it would, it would be a good idea that would be the equivalent in someone's essay of being like, well, this quote proves the thesis. And then the teacher writing in the comments.
Yeah, but how? Right. Yeah. And [00:28:30] then the manager being like, yeah, but how, why? And not having a response. I think we're making it very clear for our listeners, whether they are students or professionals, that the ability to think critically is probably one of the most valuable skills you could have as a human.
Katie Azevedo (2): Yep.
Katie Azevedo: Of course, in a classroom, of course, in the work setting, but as, as in a hu as a human, because that's what relationships are built on, right? Yeah. To be able to like read the room and what does this other person think, how can I avoid conflict? Right. [00:29:00] Conflict resolution. Yeah.
Mark Massaro: That's another part, just anticipating the counter argument. How are they gonna refute this and how can I prove that I'm correct and they're, you know, not as correct.
I don't wanna say wrong, but you know, especially lawyers. If you'd had a lawyer that wasn't thinking critically and was just thinking pure emotionally, you, they would not be a lawyer anymore. You have to prove stuff based on evidence that makes sense logically. So it is just an, it's the most fundamental aspect of all careers is just the ability to communicate and make [00:29:30] deductions based on evidence.
Katie Azevedo: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Now, um, I've got a few more questions for you. This one, and before we wrap it up, um, you had touched on AI just, just briefly, and my intention isn't to make this episode suddenly veer into, you know, the presence of AI in the classroom.
That is a Yeah, it could, it could. That is a whole nother episode that I'll need to brace. Yes. We'll need to brace ourselves for, um. For the students who can technically figure out a way, whether it's through AI or as you [00:30:00] said through other means of not doing the assignment. Let's talk about writing assignments, right?
For, for, um, of course it's like reading assignments and you might assign somebody to read something and then annotate it. That's some type of assignment. But let's just say writing an essay in response to a text, and if some student could figure out how to make that happen and hand in an essay that didn't require them to think about their thoughts.
Mm-hmm. To write, to formulate those [00:30:30] thoughts, to justify those thoughts in language and, and actually do the work themselves, those students, and I know you would agree, are absolutely missing the entire point. They're missing the entire point. I think, at the college, even at the high school level. But it when you're, when you're in a classroom, in a writing class, when you're writing anything in this, in the context of learning, you're still in the development phase, which is why we go to school.
If you think that the point is the final product words on a page that met [00:31:00] the word count, you know, minimum or whatever, you are missing the entire point. Yes. Right? You agree? Yes. So what, for these students, what do you what, what do you tell 'em? Um.
Mark Massaro: I don't let my personal opinion kind of influence teaching.
I personally though hate ai. Um, I do understand that it's a tool and it's up to the person, you know, how are you gonna use this tool for good or for bad? But, you know, out of, I teach about six courses every semester [00:31:30] and I 25 students per class, and I'd say maybe outta 25 students, you know, four or five will use ai.
I. And it's just extremely obvious. Um, there's no depth, there's no specifics, especially. Um, a lot of the claims are just extremely abstract and vague. So when I, you know, even if it's a personal essay which has happened where I try to link themes, um, from the stories of the poetry to your personal life [00:32:00] of, you know, there's no wrong answer.
All I really ask is like, how does, how does this reflect your personal life or your identity? And some students love it. It's their only chance that in a college class that they can just sit down and write about a personal night of their life that, you know, they felt truly alive. And then a couple students will just wait until the last minute and I'll see it's 1159 when they submitted.
And then it is just empty. There's just nothing there. And then I, you know, even if I was going to grade it, and I have no idea it's ai, it still wouldn't [00:32:30] pass the grading rubric. There's no specifics being used. There's no link between, you know, the theme in their personal life. Um, a lot of those papers will be, you know.
Since the dawn of man, um, you know, people have enjoyed relationships. Relationships are beneficial because relationships are fundamental to each other's lives. And I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. This is so abstract. So immediately they'll just start losing points. And it just skips this extremely [00:33:00] important process, which is what you touched on. It's not about the end goal. You didn't meet the word count. They're paying to be here 'cause they're paying to learn skills that they're gonna need for their careers. And when students just, you know, hit a button and then they get work done, they're gonna miss out on those skills.
And it's obvious by the end of the semester that you didn't develop much and your work never improved and I don't know what you're paying, you know, I don't know what you're using your money [00:33:30] for. You. You can get a degree, but then the real world's gonna be extremely difficult for you because you didn't get the skills that you needed.
And I have read that a lot of new graduates entering the workforce are experiencing extreme brick walls of employers are just firing them 'cause they don't have certain skills. Mm-hmm. And they're shocked by it, but I'm not. It, it's just, you know, hard and we're not trying to like catch you.
Like I always tell the students, I don't wanna look at the turn it in [00:34:00] results and I don't wanna look at the AI results. It'll break my heart and then I can't ignore it though. Like, I know you cheated, so I can't ignore this.
Katie Azevedo: Right. So, right. So for the, for the students listening right now, let's say you're in a panic and you for whatever reason procrastinated, and it's, you know, 1158 and you haven't turned in your paper, um, I.
Absolutely reach out to the professor and say, this is my situation. Take some accountability. I procrastinated. Take the [00:34:30] zero. Right? Take the zero. Or maybe some authenticity and some candor, you know, even in the final, every professor has their own policies of course, but like, without a question, do not AI generate that paper because not only are you discrediting yourself and your reputation, which is like glass, right?
Once it shatters mm-hmm. You can glue it back together, but you see the cracks there, right? You can't fix that. But then you're also doing yourself this massive disservice. Mm-hmm. Um, fast forward, your future self is [00:35:00] gonna look back, like you said, hit a brick wall. Right. You're in a job somewhere and you're thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, I can't, I can't solve this problem.
I can't interact with my colleague. I can't do this thing. I can't imagine a worse feeling. Thinking like the regret of like, oh my gosh, if only I had just done the paper. Mm-hmm. If only I had just gotten over my feelings of like, this assignment's stupid. Yeah, this paper is stupid. This is pointless. Is it?
If you're looking at the assignment and you're thinking it's pointless, you're missing the entire [00:35:30] point. I can't, yeah. I can't emphasize that enough. I know. I know you're thinking the same thing.
Mark Massaro: We were just talking about this actually in a faculty meeting recently, is that some students don't have the critical thinking skills to know how to use AI correctly.
Mm. So. If you don't know how to avoid that abstract answer. And if you don't know how to ask it a specific angle to work from or something to consider or certain sources to use. And that's another thing too, is the sources usually don't exist. Um, that's usually what I can tell from writing.
Um, [00:36:00] one student told me, that's weird. Uh, I don't know why the internet erased those sources. I was like,
Katie Azevedo: that is weird.
Mark Massaro: That is, I've never heard of that either. Um, is it is just, that's the most basic thing is that I. It's a tool, but some people aren't even knowledgeable enough to know how to use the tool correctly.
So when it just spits out this generic response, I know it's ai, I can tell a mile away, of course. And it has the same patterns. Mm-hmm. Um, so they don't even know too of like, [00:36:30] it gives me the same patterns every time. So you just need basic, critical thinking skills to even know how to cheat in the first place.
Katie Azevedo: Right. You
Mark Massaro: know?
Katie Azevedo: Right. Um, no. Excellent, excellent point. So my, my last question to you is, and let's steer steer it away from ai. It doesn't, you don't have to answer this question in the lens of, in the context of critical thinking. But what is your general advice to students who are listening to this right now, who are headed off to college in the fall?
Maybe they're juniors now, or May or seniors now. Maybe they're [00:37:00] juniors, but they're college bound. Advice from a college professor. Let's hear it.
Mark Massaro: Yeah, that could be a whole episode, but it's a, um, my advice personally, it's the same thing my dad told me when I was a student, is just show the teacher you're trying. You know, when I have some, some students I know, you know, outta 25 students,
five will kind of disappear, and then the last few weeks of the semester they'll suddenly reappear and then ask if they can make up, you know, the last two or three months of work. Um, but then there's the other five students in the [00:37:30] group that just go above and beyond. First day of class, they're prepared.
They already have books or they have the syllabus printed. They listen to me during class. They come to office hours or after class that has come up and talk. When I see those students trying, I try to judge everyone fairly. But when I see you're trying your best and you still might not hit exactly where you want it to be, I'm gonna still give you good points because I see you're trying.
Um, even recently, last week, uh, I just did a pop quiz [00:38:00] in my literature class. In my pop quizzes are just to see who's read. It's not something complex, just who's the character, what's their name? When you're done, flip it over. Um, and then some students get it wrong and they just blank out and forget.
But during class they answered every question. They led discussions, they showed me that they read. So even though they just left it blank for their quiz, I still gave them points. 'cause I, they proved to me that they read. So that's the thing, it's just show me you're trying and I [00:38:30] will do my best for you too.
Um. Also, I kind of think a lot of professors set it up, like, you know, the horse to the water. I put everything in my files, everything in my syllabus- you have to um, and then we go over it in class. I even have a massaro cheat sheet that I give all my classes of just basic writing insights.
Don't use the word things in a college paper. Don't use the word stuff. Um, you know, cite correctly. Here's an example. So it's just the most basic things [00:39:00] that a lot of students tell me later in life that they've kept and they hang on their wall just for when they're in their careers now, but. Yeah, I give it to all my students and some forget, some don't pay attention to that.
So that's another thing that's a little frustrating sometimes is like, I can give you everything in our canvas files and the student just doesn't look, they'll just email me.
Katie Azevedo (2): Mm-hmm. So
Mark Massaro: just show me you're trying, show us that you're doing your best. Show us that you know you're being responsible, and then we will just shower you with praise.[00:39:30]
I even have my students, I say if you submit early in the week, I'll give you feedback and you can resubmit before the assignment closes. So on a Sunday or a Monday when I see a bunch of assignments in, for me, they're already graded. So I kind of got a head start on grading, for the student, they get feedback so they, they can fix things.
A lot of the students that wait until the last minute to do a lot of things usually encounter a lot of issues, whether technology or just . Content. Mm-hmm. They just rushed and they didn't hit the mark. So that's why I always just tell [00:40:00] students, do your best. Show me you're trying, submit early in the week and I'll do my best to give you feedback.
And I have a lot of students end my classes with 103 hundred and 4% just 'cause they did all the extra credit work. They went above and beyond. And some students just don't take advantage at the end, the last week they asked, is there any optional work in this class? I said, yeah, there has been all semester every week.
There was an optional assignment. Did you do any of them? And they say no. Like, well, you know.
Katie Azevedo: Yep. Yep. So show up. Do your best. Be [00:40:30] resourceful the best you can when you just try. Yeah. Yeah, just try. That's great. That's awesome advice. Show up, do the work, do your best, and when you get stuck, know what your resources are.
Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Mark Massaro for this awesome conversation today, hopefully. Thank you. It, um, it resonates with the students who are in college, who are college bound and maybe even some folks who are in the workforce themselves and are evaluating their situation and perhaps, you know, some roadblocks that they encounter in these very professional scenarios.
We talked about [00:41:00] meetings, things like that. And, and this might give them some motivation to say, Hey, maybe it's not my task management and my time management, but maybe it's my actual critical thinking skills. All right. Thank you for your time today, Mark.
Mark Massaro: Oh, thank you. It was good to see you.
Katie Azevedo: You too.
Well, that brings us to the end of today's episode. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Professor Mark Massaro. I love having industry experts on the show so that they can share their unique perspective. Right? We talked about that with Mark, that critical thinking involves putting on a new set of glasses and [00:41:30] taking someone else's perspective or looking at a situation through a different lens.
And if we were to get a little bit meta here, I think that's exactly what we did. Remember, you can find a transcript to today's show at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/67 and as always, never stop learning.
