In uncovering the mechanisms of teaching critical thinking in China,scholars tend to ignore the re-quirement of rational thinking in teaching. Based on the discussion of rational presuppositions of critical thinking in Western cultures, this article argues that, while Western critical thinking presets a kind of rationality which is biased to-wards descriptive logic rather than prescriptive logic, the virtue - centered traditional Chinese culture cultivates a gener-al habit of using methods of prescriptive logic. Descriptive logic accounts for “how to get” true judgments while pre- scriprive logic aims at explaining “why a true judgment is true”. Critical thinking education in China should pay more attention to the role descriptive logic plays. The fact that the new - media infomiarion disseminarion is deepening in- tercultiiral communication makes it necessary to implement critical thinking education in China,but the implementa-tion should be focused on cultivating the students* ability to organize discourse in a logical way.
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