I believe that one of the great deficiencies in our educational system today is the focus on what to think rather than how to think about it… meaning that we have long taught facts and information, but not the critical thinking skills that are vital to our own development.
Last year, I took this challenge up with my team in January. I was completely up front with them, explaining that I thought we would all benefit from developing and exercising our critical thinking skills, and so I asked their indulgence in a six month experiment.
We’d each take a couple of turns – myself included – doing a short presentation at each team meeting. It could be on a project, a challenge we faced or really any topic. What I wanted was three things:
- For each member of my team to practice developing and giving a presentation,
- To broaden our knowledge into things we may not have been previously aware of or at least now have known much detail on, and
- To practice our critical thinking skills
It was this last point that I really focused on in that January meeting. I shared the list below of the types of things we could ask but my ultimate point was to get everyone to actively listen and then to question what they were hearing.
All too often, we take information in at face value and are willing to accept it. My suspicion, however, is that most of us hear things at different times that don’t quite sound right to us. We’ve just learned to shrug it off and ignore those internal questions. Critical thinking is all about embracing those questions – and asking more – to help us better understand what we are hearing and, equally important, to hold those telling us to a higher standard.
So how do we practice critical thinking? I offer the list below – which I adapted from “The Thinkers Guide to Critical Thinking” from the Critical Thinking website – as a starting point. There are sample questions to be asked, grouped under themes we should strive for:
Clarity – understandable, the meaning can be grasped
Could you elaborate further?
Could you give me an example?
Could you illustrate what you mean?
Accuracy – free from errors or distortions, true
How could we check on that?
How could we find out if that is true?
How could we verify or test that?
Precision – exact to the necessary level of detail
Could you be more specific?
Could you give me more details?
Could you be more exact?
Relevance – relating to the matter at hand
How does that relate to the problem?
How does that bear on the question?
How does that help us with the issue?
Depth – containing complexities and multiple interrelationships
What factors make this a difficult problem?
What are some of the complexities of this question?
What are some of the difficulties we need to deal with?
Breadth – encompassing multiple viewpoints
Do we need to look at this from another perspective?
Do we need to consider another point of view?
Do we need to look at this in other ways?
Logic – the parts make sense together, no contradictions
Does all this make sense together?
Does your first paragraph fit in with your last?
Does what you say follow from the evidence?
Significance – focusing on the important, not trivial
Is this the most important problem to consider?
Is this the central idea to focus on?
Which of these facts are most important?
Fairness – Justifiable, not self-serving or one-sided
Do I have any vested interest in this issue?
Am I/are you sympathetically representing the viewpoints of others?
Note that there are numerous other standards that may be applied to elements on a contextual basis. Here are just a few: Completeness, Validity, Rationality, Sufficiency, Necessity, Feasibility, Consistency, Authenticity, Effectiveness, Efficiency
Going back to where this post started… I think we are usually very good at teaching our children information. New math or old math, geography, history and science. It’s all things we need to know. But once we have that knowledge… or even as we take it in… we do not do a good enough job yet to think about what we are learning. Encouraging our children – and ourselves – to do more of this will help us be better learners, better members of society and ultimately better people.
Know that I’m pulling for you.
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