Thinking Out-loud #5: "Critical thinking" - It's About You.

By Andrae Smith · Oct 9, 2014 · ·
  1. I was reading a discussion earlier about whether "critical thinking" can really be taught in schools. Many people said yes, and I was inclined to believe them as a prospective English teacher (seeing that "developing critical thinking skills" is among the stated goals of many English departments). But those who said no also had an interesting argument that it's about the natural inquisitive nature of the person. In other words, they have to want to know.

    After reading the discussion I began to wonder what "critical thinking" really means, and now I think most people, particularly the students who are trying to "learn it," have the wrong idea. So this is about what it means to me. I believe it can be taught, but not the way we've gone about it. It should be taught by fostering students ability to assess things for themselves and then build a case and sense of confidence in their own perspective.

    Look at the word "critical." The root, "crit" comes from Latin "criticus" (which may be a derivative of the Greek work "kritikos" or "krites," meaning a judge). A critic is a judge, one who tests the merits of something. The suffix -al implies likeness, so to be critical is to be like a critic. Therefore, to think critically is to make determinations from one's own mind by assessing the merits and qualities of some thing.

    To me critical thinking is about the person, and the way he or she perceives, processes and determines truth of the world and everything in it. It's not about learning to see from this perspective or that, but looking beneath the surface of a text or a claim or an idea to make connections from the evidence using one's own reason. Learning about other perspectives is only the starting point, but in the end, yours is the one that matters. It's about what you find after looking from as many angles as possible (close, wide, overhead, underneath, whole, in parts, etc.) with your own eyes

    In literature, this often means asking about who's writing, when are they writing, to whom are they writing, and in what form. It does not mean adopting a Marxist, feminist, naturalist or modernist lens (for example). We can use these questions formulate judgments about the texts meaning, purpose, and more. In science it often mean asking if an idea is in keeping with other scientific findings, and more importantly, if it match the evidence presented. It does not mean accepting a conclusion as fact because there is data, but reviewing the data to see if it supports the conclusion.

    Being critical often means being skeptical, but that is not a bad thing in and of itself. It means having a mind to doubt, and doubt opens doors for questions. These questions questions lead to discovery. It's not about right or wrong, but this process, which inevitably opens and empowers the mind. Only an open mind can think critically because only an open mind is daring enough to look for it's own answer. Critical thinking, then, is a function of the free mind, an intelligent expression of individuality. (Keep in mind intelligence is not a matter of what you know, but how you think, and no two people have to think alike.)

    So can critical thinking be taught? I say yes, but only insofar as one is willing to teach individuality and to foster curiosity and the belief in one's self. A better question might be if it can be learned. That answer depends on the individual, their willingness to trust themselves and their innate desire to learn. In the end, this is all my take, but I do encourage you to have your own opinion.

Comments

  1. Dean Stride
    I'm all for open-mindedness, but not so much that one's brain falls out. I believe there's a limit to everything, including how far one can go with a given critical approach. Oftentimes when someone says "critical" they mean "analytical", or roughly the process of disassembling something and examining it from an in-depth perspective. That is a great way to perceive a well hidden truth, but it also a way to lose focus of the bigger picture if not careful. The same can be said about exploring things in larger scale. This is why I think that before people start trusting in their capacity to judge, they should first refine it, and I believe one can do so by learning how logic operates.

    Logic is a remarkable tool we have developed to make sense of the world. Unlike common sense, however, it is equpped to tackle problems that we usually don't experience. Why are there stars colder than a cup of coffee? How can something be at two places at once? Where an intuitive sense of nature ends, the framework of rationality takes place. And I'm convinced one can teach reason so long as the student is willing, and vice versa. Humans are innately curious, or we wouldn't have made it this far. I believe that it broadly depends on the environment, and the community that dwells within it, whether one's curiosity is equipped to feed an inquisitive mind or left to starve it.
      Andrae Smith likes this.
  2. Andrae Smith
    Well @Dean Stride I can't argue with you in the slightest. I actually really like this response. You are right about many points. We have to look at things from many angles. We have to understand how logic works. My point was that we should be foster peoples belief in their own perspective, not teach them our own. Teach them to use reason and to trust it.
      Dean Stride likes this.
  3. Dean Stride
    Effectively teach them how to think, not what to think. That's where I was getting at, too.
  4. superllama
    i hit this wall in college, when i started to get into fights (verbal only, tyvm) with my philosophy professor. he would tell us to read a certain passage from plato or socrates or whoever and then write what we thought it meant. he started off the class telling us that philosophy is all about making people think, but if we interpreted something differently than he did we got bad grades. so was he asking us to think, or asking us to repeat what he said? he threw me out of the class after i asked him that during discussion-time.
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