Learn, And Teach Critical Thinking Skills

It’s not too late to always question what you hear

What never changes and what does

Teachers need to teach critical thinking skills in order for students to learn anything else in life. However, if you were not sufficiently taught how to think critically about all subjects, it’s never too late to pick up, or at least review and renew some habits to think critically.

What does it mean to think critically? It means that although we can and do admire expertise in any field, we understand that learning is as much a revising and updating process as it is learning facts and figures.

We learn to ask why, and how, questions.

Some things are not likely to change their factual basis: gravity is still gravity, the Earth is a sphere, the planet changes, humans use abstract language, and so on. But new information about these facts and new theories about them update our knowledge and keep us creative as well as informed.

Every new bit of knowledge that is not fixed can generate questions.

Thinking critically allows students to remain curious, get creative, learn life skills, grow independent and interdependent, approach learning with problem-solving skills, and to carry those skills through a lifetime of learning in all fields, issues, concerns, and applications in home and career.

Curiosity , creativity, and creation

Where I sit now was once beneath at least one mile of Pleistocene ice sheet. It was not that long ago, barely more than ten thousand years ago in my own neighborhood, and barely a blip in geologic time. This part is the established “fact”. What we can be critical of is how and why this conclusion was reached, who challenges it, and what their motivation might be.

Establishing the facts themselves, by looking into all views, sets a frame to fire the imagination. When I get curious about how life looked just a short while back and how different it is now, it sparks a huge amount of creativity as well as curiosity.

What was here? Did a saber tooth range this area? What happened? Why are we so warm now? Why do people fight over how and/or why we are here? What tools did early people come up with? How do innovation and technology affect us now?

When I examine some younger Earth arguments, or as some define them, creationist arguments, I find nothing about the actual sediments, volcanism, and glacial debris left right at my very doorstep. Therefore, I think critically about those arguments, and especially critically about the motivations of those gathering the evidence.

This does nothing to prove necessarily that I am right and they are wrong, but it does allow room for healthy skepticism that all people should take with them to review the case.

Problem-solving and life skills

When we remain curious and creative, we can apply both to all issues, as mentioned. It is a life skill to review every problem from every possible angle.

The preponderance of the evidence should align with understood ways in which the world works. To be able to detect baloney is useful when a person is investigating claims of teachers, employers, leaders, would-be profiteers, and all sellers of products and services.

For example, when going to purchase a home, credit, or insurance, it’s better to find out upfront the total and true costs of those things over time, and the motives of those selling them to you. Learn about externalized (hidden and long-term) costs. As another example, when buying food, ask whether it is just appealing to your emotional and craving needs, or whether it is nutritious, healthy, trash-free, and better for your body and planet as a long-term investment.

When people weigh the evidence of our food, health, or political systems, they are better armed for dealing with the traps that are often inherent in those systems.

This will not keep us from craving that which is not always in our best interest, but it will make us think about it. The more we question benefits and motives, the more we learn about life and how to purposefully move through it.

Even when we look at human nature itself, we can be critical about whether we all thrive better with connection or competition. The answer to the critical thinker is that both are needed.

We obviously must teach our children life-long critical thinking for them to make sense of the world, but we can also keep honing our own skills.

Our international challenges are huge right now, but thinking creatively, with the interconnection and innovation needed to mitigate problems has never been more crucial.

These assets come by keeping our critical thinking skills as sharp as possible.