Thinking Critically

Thinking Critically

In layperson's terms, critical thinking consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth.

The ability to engage in careful, reflective thought has been viewed in various ways: as an employability skill for an increasingly wide range of jobs, as a fundamental characteristic of an educated person, and as a requirement for responsible citizenship in a democratic society.

Virtually everyone would agree that a primary, yet insufficiently met, goal of schooling is to enable students to think critically. This is where our education fails in delivery – be it school or even the college.

Diversity and divergence in thought is not encouraged in school or college. Every student must learn to reproduce as truly as possible what is in the book or what the teacher states or espouses inside the classroom. More the efficiency in making a true reproduction of such contents exhibited during exams and higher are the marks and rewards received. Deviation or difference from such content begets penalties and punishments.

It is amazing to see the concept of MODEL ANSWERS being advocated and propagated by teachers, academics, examiners, evaluators and even the Education Boards and Universities. The entire system appears to be working towards convergence of learning and education to a uniform benchmark of a single idea or thought expressed in only one format and style. The message given to the learner is that there is only one gospel truth and that single truth can take only one form of presentation and expression. Conformity to such truth is reinforced through rewards. The learner is punished for moving away from such singularity thereby killing any nascent streaks of innovation and thinking, if one ever existed in them.

"Good" learners, keen, efficient and motivated to exhibit and prove that they have been successful learners start chasing 'MARKS' rather than learning because 'marks obtained' has become the only specific and acceptable measure of a learner's success. And it is to the credit of these learners that they are able to demonstrate near 100 % learning by scoring near 100% marks in their board-exams.

Learners have successfully been learning what the system taught them rather that what the system ought to have taught them. They have successfully learnt there is a premium on getting high marks, they have learnt how to get more marks but they did not learn - Critical thinking; Creative thinking and Higher-order thinking.

Our schools and colleges don't educate people to "think," presumably they may not even know that there are specific types of critical thinking that are characteristic of different subject matter; that's what we mean when we refer to "thinking like a scientist" or "thinking like a philosopher" or "thinking like a historian."

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