Thinking Critically
by Doug Berube
Should critical thinking be an educational priority and part of our basic education? How often do people think about how and why they are thinking the way they do?
“…intelligence…is in plentiful supply…the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.” – Carl Sagan
I think it is apparent by the stratification of beliefs in how Americans view America and how it should run and function. Even the professional thinking process today makes decisions by way of confirmation bias. This thinking bias causes coalescing of like thinking, which is the cause of tribal thinking.
How do we become critical thinkers and how to question our own thoughts? First a disclaimer, critical thinking doesn’t mean that we all think the same way. It means critical thinking is a process of using self-regulated, self-aware reason as a tool of high quality fair-mindedness. People who critically think consistently by questioning their logic using reasonable open-mindedness and empathic awareness will have a live in tune their mental health.
“Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out.” – Jacob Needleman
· Analyze Cause and Effect: separate the motive of reason for an action from the result or outcome
· Classify and Sequence: group items or sort them according to similar characteristics.
· Compare and Contrast: determine how things are similar and how they are different.
· Inference: skilled in reasoning and extending logic to come up with plausible options or outcomes.
· Evaluate: able to determine sound criteria for making choices and decisions.
· Observe: skilled in attending to the details of what actually happened.
· Predict: able to finding and analyze trends, and extend these to make sensible predictions about the future.
· Rationalize: able to apply the laws of reason (induction, deduction, analogy) in to judge and argument and determine its merits.
· Prioritize: able to determine the importance of an event or situation and put it in the correct perspective.
· Summarize: able to distill a brief report of what happened or what you have learned.
· Synthesize: able to identify new possible outcome by using pieces of information you already know.
This list of cognitive skills, if used consistently, will clarify our thinking and help us become a critic of our own thinking. Developing these skills will create successful thinking.
Critical thinking will help process all the daily information we digest. We are bombarded with information from every form of media that can be used to transfer ideas. When I was growing up we only had 4 major forms of information media; books, newspapers, television, and radio (for us nerds, we included comic books). Today we have those four and a new plethora of information media only hindered by our imagination. The personal computer was the founding device that connected us to a pathway of information that is expanding exponentially about every two years at a time. This leads to an overwhelmed feeling of information overload. But, Clay Johnson mentions in his book The Information Diet, it is really not about information overload, it is about a healthy consumption of information. Just like we are what we eat, we are also the productions of how we consume information. Critical thinking is the proper tool to use in controlling and processing the information consumed. It will be good for our physical and mental health.
Critical thinking is a process to be used in all facets of our lives; personal, professional, and public. It’s not what we think, but how we think. It’s a constant inquiry and examination of beliefs and actions motivated by civility and respect. Critical thinking and the ability to question questions and becoming a critic of our own thinking should be an educational process learned from the very beginning of our reception of information. Let’s cultivate a healthy consumption of information and question its intent, so we can develop a very rational understanding of the event around us.
“A critical thinker is neither dogmatic nor gullible. The most distinctive features of the critical thinker’s attitude are open-mindedness and skepticism.” – Robert Todd Carroll
References:
Johnson, Clay. The Information Diet. O’Reilly, 2012 pp.2-5
Carroll. Robert Todd. Becoming a Critical Thinker, A Guide for the New Millennium 2nd edition. Pearson 2005
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