There's a lot of bait to rise to in this article (for example, the economics of having expensive professors teach a mere 25 people at a time) but Steve Krause's response to a paywalled NY Times article has some nice misdirection in it that merits our full attention. Krause is responding to Joe Cruz, who is arguing against the idea that most students learn to think only by writing. The clue to this misdirection is in the 'gotcha' at the end: "isn't it interesting that Cruz decided to write this down?" I'm not sure how else Cruz was going to get paid for a NY Times article. Similarly, Krause notes that Cruz favours "real-time interactions between people talking with each other." Which is also language. Which also involves the same skills of composing series of words, just in a different medium. Which means they are saying - and doing - the same thing, since they both teach using dialogue and composition. To really get at the heart of the idea that learning to think does not necessarily require text we need to get away from institutions (like a university or the NY Times) that are inextricably text-bound. 'Thinking' isn't the same as 'thinking in text'.
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