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If critical thinking involves "the ability to recognise problems...and to comprehend and use language with accuracy" as Linda Elder argues ("Achieving critical mass", 25 November), perhaps she should cast a critical eye over the following.

She quotes Edward Glaser's official study on critical thinking in 1941. He wrote: "Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends."

In How We Think (1910), John Dewey wrote that reflective thinking was the "active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends".

I don't want to be critical but...

Gordon Mackie, University of Strathclyde.