Critical Thinking
Is anyone aware of good materials and resources that can be used to teach critical thinking ?
Phillip,
You make a key point about the fact that students need to learn HOW to think. I encounter many students that want a formula to solve problems without using the critical thinking process. This is fine if every problem encountered follows specific steps but they are lost when that does not happen. In real life it seems that most problems do not follow a specific path so it takes reflective thinking to come up with a solution.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
While there are plenty of resources out there that would qualify for sharpening our skills in critical thinking, we must first have the ability to DO critical thinking. Many of our students today have been taught what to think, not HOW to think. Most cannot comprehend the idea that something printed in the media today would be anything but the truth. Many are not able to use common sense (because they seem to not possess any)to decipher whether or not something is the truth or not. There is no ability to think critically. We see a lot of take it in and spit it back out, and never analyze anything to see if what we're hearing is worth our remembering.
Brian,
It is so important to be able to pull together information and resources that help with the decision making process. Your approach has them finding these resources and reviewing them for opinions and diverse perspectives. This is how critical thinking skills are developed. Like the way you are doing this.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Most daily newspapers, magazines, or even news websites are good sources. Pick out a news article and have students scan it for mistakes, biases, logic, and so forth. Political debates are great also... How often do politicians answer a question without actually answering the question, or giving an answer that doesn't mean anything. It doesn't have to be confrontational in class; pick out politicos from both sides and have the students look for arguments and logical fallacies.
A good subject right now is the Obamacare issue. There are criticisms of both sides, and both sides seem to have a stockpile of what can only be called "Lies" (I guess I could be optomistic and call it "faulty logic") about the other side.
