by Terry Heick
Every few months, I see an article making rounds that critical thinking is not a skill and therefore cannot be taught.
And because it is also difficult to measure and modern public education is motivated by the measure, like an idea, it is located in the area, remote and silent.
Often these articles are with regard to a conversation or research related to Daniel Willingham, psychologist at the University of Virginia which is often associated with this type of complaint. Even if my instinct is to disagree, Willingham, of course, knows more on this subject than me, my goal here is not to challenge this assertion.
I think however that it is possible that we can misunderstand what it means to think critically, on which I wrote (but not often or enough) several times. In The definition of critical thinkingFor example, I said:
Critical thinking is among the first causes of change (personal and social) but is a pariah in schools – for no other reason that it does not condition the spirit of suspecting the form and function of everything it sees, including your class and everything that is taught. Of course, critical thinking without knowledge is embarrassing, like a farmer without field. They need each other – thought and knowledge. They can also disappear in each other while they work. Once we have established this – that they are separated, capable of merge, and that we need each other – we can arrive at the marrow and the fear of all this.
Terry Heick
After looking at the effect of disinformation on recent national and global events, I came to mind that critical thinking is less a competence and more willing or a habit. In short, critical thinking is a state of mind. As I have already said about reading – here, for example, in Why students should read– Is it important that students can Read, it is more important that they TO DO read.
And critical thinking – thinking rationally, with reason and evidence, humility and knowledge, understanding and skepticism – is similar: it is important that students can Think critically but it is more important that they TO DO Think critically.
In this way, critical thinking must be a state of mind.
Critical thinking is a state of mind
Arstechnica (a little) recently wrote about how fixed mentalities harm reflection to discuss the reasons why 24% solve Bayesian reasoning problems in natural frequencies: frequency phobia despite probability blindness.
Just as mathematics can be considered a kind of language and science is a way of thinking, critical thinking (while being a “way” of thought) is first of all a state of mind – a will To do this, both preceded and carried out by a heterogeneous collection of presuppositions and cognitive trends and trends and defaults and even possibly personality traits that are manifested when you read a book or have a discussion or browse a title of news or look for an idea.
Critical thinking is certainly a “competence” but when it is possessed as a state of mind – a playful and humble will – it goes from work to an art. He asks, “Is it true? By what standard? Who would disagree and why? What is the story of this problem or this subject? What is I missing? What types of knowledge do I miss to understand this more closely and how can I acquire them?
Critical thinking as a competence tries to understand.
Critical thinking as a state of mind reads and listens to a witness and is haunted by what he does not know and cannot understand and then, from this starting point, begins the process of reason and to become rational.
Critical thinking is not emotional because his identity is not enveloped in an opinion or a “belief” and being “bad” is precious because it brings us closer to be “good”.
Critical thinking is almost impossible to apply without a kind of bias but, as a mentality, he looks at his own prejudices (see Definition confirmation biasfor example) as a guard could monitor foreigners.
Critical thinking is slow to decide and may not “decide” for the whole because it realizes that in the face of new evidence, it must think again. And again. And again.
And, as a state of mind, it suits all of this because it values reason more than favor with crowds; It promotes precision perceived Precision and encounters all circumstances with a wide and humble and curious eyes, seeking to understand and scare the death of bias and incomplete knowledge and logical errors and other bad cognitive behaviors that might bead.
See? Critical thinking is a skill, but it is also a trend and a line and a tool for manufacturing light in the dark for many becomes a state of mind – both a way of knowing and a way of being.
And all this is part of how to teach it as a skill – as teaching students to read rather than why – is part of our challenge in education. As usual, we ask the bad questions.
Critical thinking is a state of mind
