How are critical thinking skills acquired?
Here on Fluther we all value those who don’t blindly follow whatever fad is going on now. But how is it some people can sift through the BS to find the truth, and others can’t (or won’t)? Is it a strictly learned process, and if so, how were we taught it? At what age does it begin? Can you give me some examples of an incident where you began to teach your child this skill?
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27 Answers
Fine! I’ll start!
Yesterday my son stopped by with his two girls, age 14 months and 3 years. He changed the baby’s diaper then gave it to the older girl to throw in the trash. As she was walking toward the kitchen she said, “Is it poopy?”
“No, it’s not poopy,” my son said.
“Is it peey?” she chirped.
My son said, “Nope.”
She stopped dead in her tracks, frozen in mid-stride for about 10 seconds, then whirled around to stare at us. She said, “It is too peey!!!”
I grinned and said, “Good girl!!”
So you’re saying they’re acquired by smell?
scratching head here too.
RE: @Cruiser‘s comment
It’s the answer to a Q posed by @jca found immediately preceding this Q.
@Buttonstc clearly has acquired critical thinking skills somewhere.
He was teasing her, and telling her something that couldn’t be true. She called him on it, and I praised her for it.
Why am I getting so many GQ’s, but no comments?
Another example: My son and I were on the back deck with his 10 year old niece.
My son says, “You know where we get peanut oil? By squishing peanuts!”
I said, “Know where we get olive oil?”
My grand daughter said, “Squishing olives?”
My son said, “Yep. So….ya ever wonder where baby oil come from?”
She yells, “I DON’T KNOW BUT IT DOESN’T COME FROM SQUISHING BABIES!!”
It was so funny! I high fived her!
Why am I getting so many GQ’s, but no comments?
I recognize that critical thinking skills are sorely lacking but I don’t have kids and I’m not a teacher, so I don’t have good examples of teaching it. I’m following in hopes of hearing some.
A lot of mental discipline and practice.
By experience and absence of delusion.
Theories welcome. Parents teach the beginnings of critical thinking. In what ways do we do that? At what age? Do my examples count? I praise the kids for strongly calling “Bologna!”
From having bad things happen from being ignorant. I was just being coy and you caught me and now I have learned a lesson to add ~ the tilda. I don’t really know where critical thinking comes from. But in university you can take a critical thinking class in philosophy.
Your examples simply suggest intelligence, in my opinion. Both children already knew the answer, didn’t they?
As to your original question, I always think of critical thinking skills as a combination of intelligence and self-confidence.
At a young age, it started with playing logic games. I have a strong memory of a game called Pico Fermi Bagle that we played in elementary school. I remembered at one point figuring out that getting a “Bagle” (no digits were correct) was paradoxically the most useful goal, since you could use the digits you knew were wrong plus a digit that was unknown to determine if the unknown was in the answer.
I think using the Socratic method is really valuable too with kids, teaching them to think critically.
Ultimately, majoring in philosophy was the point where I really mastered critical thinking skills. Studying logic and the creation/deconstruction of formal logical arguments really trains your brain to see the bullshit in an argument. I wish this stuff was taught in grade school (especially logical fallacies). It’s a skill every person should study and practice.
GA @gorillapaws. However, philosophy was the one class I attempted to take in college that I just couldn’t abide. I dropped it. Wish I hadn’t, but man, I hated that class.
@longgone it shows intelligence, but I think that by praising them I started to give them the courage and confidence to call bologna when they heard it. I realize these are really simplistic examples but it’s a start.
When my kids were little I’d ask them questions to get them thinking. My dad used to do that. Once I asked, “When did time begin?”
They mentioned some point, like when the earth formed and I said, “Well what was before that?”
My son thought and thought, then said, “I know! September 24, 1984!”
I was taken aback for a moment…then realized…that was his birthday! GA son!
There are lessons in grade school that are designed to teach the kids to distinguish fact from fantasy. But whether those lesson stick depends on the parents, I think. If they strongly encourage them to believe things that can’t possibly be true then I think they’re prone to believe a lot of things in spite of a voice whispering “That’s ridiculous you know.”
@Dutchess_III As kids get older, critical thinking is developed by teaching kids to evaluate the source from which they are getting their information. You can show them how a news story is portrayed in various rightwing and leftwing news sources. This is an increasingly important skill as so many people feel “I read it on the internet so it must be true.” As a college librarian, one of my most important tasks is to teach students what a credible source is.
@janbb Can you share with us a time a student refused your guidance, and insisted on using a less reputable source?
@Dutchess_III Since I’m not privy to the end results of their research – only the teacher is – I have no way of knowing whether a student refused my guidance. It is my general impression that there is a fair amount of intentional or ignorant plagiarism of internet material going on but that is mainly hearsay from teachers on my part. What we do see is a lack of understanding of the research process, for example, generating the Works Cited page before actually working with the material.
@janbb ” It is my general impression that there is a fair amount of intentional or ignorant plagiarism of internet material going on but that is mainly hearsay from teachers on my part.”
This is certainly true. I catch a lot of it. It’s my impression that a lot of students don’t know it’s wrong, though I’m sure many also do know. It’s surprisingly easy to spot – I don’t know why they risk the consequences, given that producing their own work is not actually all that difficult, compared with finding appropriate sources to copy.
@Dutchess_III I had a teacher once who warned us of the importance of using reliable sources. He told us the story of a former student who wrote an exceptionally well-written paper on female combat pilots in the Vietnam war. She was using some websites as her references. Of course there were no female combat pilots in the Vietnam war and my teacher said he had no choice but to give her a 0 for the paper.
I think it depends on what you mean by critical thinking. In the truest sense of the expression, I would think part of it is natural for any intelligent brain, however, it only reaches its aptitude by application.
Problem solving is what I find to develop the skills most directly, and the first thing I would tell my children is that trusting one source of information is no different than trusting another, authoritarian knowledge is authoritarian knowledge, and to gather it as such to apply critical thinking to. In short, authoritarian knowledge is not the result of one’s own critical thinking; it’s one of the pieces one uses to apply their own critical thinking. I would also warn them against drawing conclusions on any matter not requiring such. All reasonable, reputable, and peer reviewed sources once agreed that the world was flat and sat at the center of everything.
I would tell them to find truth, not choose one that has been offered or found by another. I would then explain decision making and provide them a well structured understanding of epistemology. From there, I would pose them many questions and hypotheticals to ponder and consider… to draw them from one side of an argument and back to the other, so they learn to learn, not conclude, form opinion, judge, or believe. And lastly, I would point out their ignorance, as well as my own, so they get comfortable and understand their natural limitations, and they can be confident in their accuracy of personal certainty on any given topic. I would also warn them that I too am nothing but a source, and appropriate doubt should be exercised.
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