A Look at Critical Thinking

     The saying goes ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. And, boy, is it wrong. Preventative maintenance is a thing for a reason. Cars get routine oil changes. People have annual physicals. Hell, even your favorite websites get facelifts on a regular basis. The same should be said of everyone’s critical thinking skills. At this point in my life, everything that existed in my childhood, that still exists today, has been re-branded. At least once. .. Change is one of the only truly constant things that a person experiences during every stage of their life. This fact of life keeps us constantly at odds with how we face challenges, communicate with people, and learn skills, because of the way that we are taught to learn from a very early age. Shifting learning to focus on knowledge acquisition, motivation, collaboration, and engagement of the learner will enable them to develop more natural and comprehensive critical thinking skills.

     In very broad terms, critical thinking is a skill set combined with an attitude, that allows people to judge information and build knowledge. Critical thinking must be learned, developed, and honed before they can be effectively applied. Peter Boghossian  is a professor of philosophy who’s work, spanning over 20 years, focuses on critical thinking and moral reasoning. During this Critical Thinking Crash Course, Dr. Boghossian argues that if we “are not evaluating ideas, or ways of thinking, or epistemic [knowledge based] thinking, then we are not thinking critically”. Establishing a deeper understanding of personal reasoning is an essential root of critical thinking that allows people to live authentically and to reach their full potential.

     Critical thinking is reflecting thinking. With critical thinking skills we are able to determine the quality of knowledge we are accumulating. But, in order to think critically, a person must be able to identify and accept areas of concern in their internal thought assessment. And, unfortunately, recognizing personal flaws – whether physical, behavioral, emotional, cognitive, or otherwise – often causes fear of stigma or shame of being considered anything other than the all-mighty ’normal’.

     Rather than seeking a way to understand areas of weakness, these ‘vulnerabilities’ are masked or even ignored. It’s much easier to bolster false confidences and continue about life than it is to inspire the attitude necessary to think critically. The attitude required to think critically is one of openness to being incorrect and willingness to alter beliefs. Learning and applying critical thinking within daily life gives a person better insight to their core self. When identity, values, and knowledge, are understood, it becomes easier to make improvements in the way thinking occurs because the person’s perspective has more focus on a well developed self-concept. This is how a person grows cognitively.  Growth that allows them to better interact with the knowledge gained from their experiences with the world.

    The once-popular opinions which drove research of cognitive psychology, later identified critical thinking skills as a self-developing metacognitive ability. It was thought that critical thinking skills accrued during adolescence and young adulthood as a result of biological maturation and environmental experiences. This assumption is incredibly short-sighted. From nearly the beginning, our educational systems have been geared toward habituated learning. We’re taught specific things which are deemed necessary knowledge. Each concept is taught individually, as we are trained to do the task over and over again. With the repetition comes recall ability. Never mind, the reasoning behind your newly engrained actions. All of the actual thinking is left to those with power.

     It’s important to recognize that this type of institutionalized learning came about for a variety of reasons, and has served multiple purposes throughout our history, depending on which lens American public education is scrutinized under. But, that should not prevent people from recognizing that current, over-regulated teaching methodologies and misguided focal points of learning, allow for students to graduate from High School – and, yes, even college – while still being  relatively undeveloped critical thinkers. Realizing that we, as a nation, are simultaneously becoming more educated and less critical of information, puts into perspective the existence of other larger scale social issues we are not fully addressing as a collective.

    The acceptance of systemic acquisition of higher level reasoning abilities has impacted our entire society by way of education systems’ heavy emphasis on standardized teaching and learning. Childhood enthusiasm, creativity, willfulness, and curiosity have little to no place in Kindergarten and elementary lesson planning. Junior and Senior High schools offer fewer and fewer elective courses for students to explore and strengthen their passions. Instead, rigid and rigorous teaching sessions are being backed up by seemingly endless hours of daily homework, and test anxiety has become a concern for parents of five-year-olds. A sad realization has emerged that unless it is sought by the learner, there is a  limited focus on thinking processes even into the college years.

     The process of organic knowledge cultivation through reason and evidence is transformed into a manufactured and manipulated factual archiving of data-bites within today’s education industry. Simply put: being taught WHAT to think is preventing people from learning HOW to think. Lessons are catered to narrow goals from such an early age, that innate curiosities are stifled. Dissenting opinions are rarely presented which limits the learner’s perspective, and the individual is left unable to adequately use logic to determine facts from falsities.

  Making the Choice

     All people think, yet the majority of us remain ignorant of how our individual thinking is structured or how to make assessments of, or improvements to, thought processes. This means that if a problem is encountered, the skills necessary to identify and correct the problem are lacking and mis-information continues to spread. This leaves the majority of people at a significant disadvantage when it comes to making educated decisions. We must be able to articulate how solutions to our problems are identified and developed. Everyone must know how to seek and accept criticisms, offer help, and give credit to others. We all must be talented negotiators who are able to explain our individual needs while being able to detect others’ needs and viewing situations from others’ points of view. Within the current social structures, little is being done to encourage learners to discover their thinking, which poses a number of questions: Why perpetuate a system that leaves citizens at a severe disadvantage? With increased changes and complexities of living in a global, technologically advances society, would it be more beneficial for a greater number of people to have the skills necessary to improve reasoning and  discern facts?  And maybe, most importantly of all: Are we each willing to evaluate our own thinking, set ideology aside, and develop more substantial critical thinking abilities?

     I’m afraid that, aside from a full scale educational reform  or Humanist movement, changing the way thinking is addressed within public schools, will not happen in a timely enough manner to truly impact Earth and Human fate. Acceptance of critical thinking skills being learned, in an active process is essential.  The commonly accepted notion that thinking “takes care of itself,” and the implication that studying “hard” subjects or “concentrating” will result in a person being able to think critically needs to be dispelled. Knowledge is not something that is given to us, it is not inserted into our minds by memory alone. Knowledge is cultivated through critical thinking. This cultivation takes many, many years to reach. And it is essential to understanding your core self in a meaningful way.

• Stop pretending to “know” things. Free yourself from the expectation of giving “right” answers by refusing to make false claims of knowledge. “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer. It’s also a good starting point for learning something new.
• Question how other people “know” things. Use reason to evaluate the “evidence” that others offer as to how they came about their knowledge.
• Does their evidence truly support their claim? Seeing something “on tv” or “on the internet” doesn’t mean it’s true.
• Can you think of a counter-claim that would make their “knowledge” false? Just because someone hasn’t had a specific life experience doesn’t mean it’s not possible (or valid), you might NOT want to tell the other person your counter-claim, just saying’.

• Stop pretending to “know” things. Kids need to understand that adults don’t have all the answers and that it is perfectly OK not to have those answers, as long as you know how to find them when you need them.
• Respond differently to “Why?” questions. Rather than give a simple answer, ask them to guess as to the answer of their question. Talk them through the reasoning of their answers, and then through the right answers.
•  Start more dialogue about the complex parts of their lives. Ask questions often so that we help them discover and develop their own capacity to figure things out using reason.
• Consider things from their point of view and encourage them to do the same of others’.

• Cooperation needs to be a key focus within the work place so that critical thinking can be utilized by larger numbers of people to provide more impact.
• Acknowledge that quick fixes are doing more harm than good. Work toward establishing substantial change by thinking critically about areas that need improvement or attention.
• Our workforce as a whole needs to restructure thinking to include higher levels of clarity, precision, relevance, depth, and coherence.
• Leaders must recognize the value of diverse perspectives, and work toward long-range interests of society

Most importantly, we each need to take it upon ourselves to become lifelong learners. Never stop seeking ways to continuously upgrade reasoning skills, critical thinking skills, or the ability and propensity to enter into the points of view of others. Complex problems have become the norm. Each issue has many facets, and intellectual humility requires that we investigate multiple perspectives before we make a decision. No more “Ready!… Fire!… Aim!”