William Perry's Three Stages Of Critical Thinking In The Giver

The movie “The Giver” sets place in a community that is very different than our own. The film is shown in black and white which represents the community and how they live their lives. At the head of the community is the elders who have come up with the rules for the community and choose the jobs assigned to the children. In charge of the elders is the chief elder who is like the president of the community; has the last say. One of the elders is very unique from all of the rest, he is the receiver. The job of the receiver is to retain all of the memories of the world that the community members are not allowed to have themselves. The receiver is also very unique in that he is not allowed to follow the same rules as the rest of the community.

According the Perry an individual may be at different stages at the same time depending on the area of experience. The three stages of critical thinking as defined by William Perry is: Stage 1: The Garden of Eden Stage 2: Anything Goes Stage 3: The Garden of Eden Stage. The First stage, the garden of Eden, everything is very black and white, right or wrong. Everything that the authorities say is considered right and you don’t really question it at this stage. Chafee states, “Our role is to learn and accept information from authorities without question or criticism” (19). The authorities that we first encounter are our parents and as we go into school it becomes our teachers. But like at home we are not to question the authority because our job is to learn. The belief is that we will become dissatisfied with the lack of being able to be curious and question things and go into the second stage of critical thinking, Anything Goes. In this stage no one really “know” what is right. Because we are starting to question authorities in this stage there isn’t much closure like the stage before. Chafee states, “All beliefs are of equal value, and there is no way to determine whether one belief makes more sense than another belief” (19). Because the lack of closure in stage 2 the individual would move onto stage 3, Thinking Critically. The stage of thinking critically is like the ultimate stage to reach in this stage you are able to see that some viewpoints are better than other viewpoints. In this stage people are more open-minded. Unlike the other stages you are looking at all of the views on a topic, the negative and the positive. Chafee states, “We have a responsibility to explore every perspective, evaluate the supporting reasons for each, and develop our own informed conclusions that we are prepared to modify or change based on new information or better