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Thinking Critically

What’s the point of that flat, square hat people wear at graduations? Is the square meant to work like a helicopter rotor when everyone throws it?

Actually, the cap is called a mortarboard because the square looks like the board a bricklayer uses to spread mortar. The hat comes from academic tradition at Oxford and Cambridge in England. These universities started almost 1,000 years ago to train priests, and the mortarboard evolved from a priest cap. Some say that the flat part is supposed to represent a book.

You probably have never thought critically about a mortarboard before. Now you’ve read a definition, etymology, history, and analysis. That’s critical thinking. It helps you learn!

(Whatever else you take away from that discussion, mortarboards do fly really well when flung overhead!)