The art of critical thinking

[lesterb]

I'd like to see some discussion on what critical thinking really is, and how it can be developed or taught.

Josh mentioned that more critical thinking skills are taught in the average Mennonite school than in university. I think that this is almost totally teacher dependant. I don't feel that our school produces this at all, because the upper grade teacher mostly depends on the curriculum to do the teaching. And I haven't seen many Mennonite textbooks that promote critical thinking.

Couple of questions. You can add others.

1. Is there a Christian version of critical thinking? Or is critical thinking simply critical thinking?

2. How can I develop this skill?

3. How can I teach it? Maybe to my family, or in Sunday school, or as a teacher in a Christian school?

[temporal1]

i'm glad you began this thread, you've referred to "critical thinking" a few times in different posts.
i have one thought -
in your subject line, you wrote, "The art of critical thinking."
i believe some receive a gift of being more able than others to think critically.
but, it's also a skill that can be learned. skills are much of what formal education should be about.

families, also, must teach critical thinking; it's important for survival of every description.
including survival of formal education!

i once asked a doctor, "amongst doctors, do you feel some have a gift for it, more than others?"
i was surprised when he did not hesitate, "YES!"

so, think.
with all the formal education that goes into medical school training, there remains an intangible gift that some have, in addition to their education.

God is fascinating.

[MaxPC]

I'd like to see some discussion on what critical thinking really is, and how it can be developed or taught.

Josh mentioned that more critical thinking skills are taught in the average Mennonite school than in university. I think that this is almost totally teacher dependant. I don't feel that our school produces this at all, because the upper grade teacher mostly depends on the curriculum to do the teaching. And I haven't seen many Mennonite textbooks that promote critical thinking.

Couple of questions. You can add others.

1. Is there a Christian version of critical thinking? Or is critical thinking simply critical thinking?

2. How can I develop this skill?

3. How can I teach it? Maybe to my family, or in Sunday school, or as a teacher in a Christian school?

My thoughts:
Critical thinking in Christianity is essentially an evaluation of any information, teaching or viewpoint within the context of your Christian beliefs.

You may be teaching critical thinking skills already by showing your students how to evaluate information that they encounter.

[Neto]

My impression is that conservative Christian schools in particular do not teach critical thinking. From what I have observed there is a tendency to teach the students "what to believe" rather than to give them the tools they need to help them determine what they SHOULD believe. Self-paced learning does not generally allow for discussion, where critical thinking will come into play. And as concerns our Bible schools, just look at a list of their courses. You will see a long list of this & that book of the Bible, as opposed to something like survey courses for the New & Old Testaments, and then a Bible Study METHODS course, generally focusing on a single Bible book, but in an illustrative way more than as an attempt to teach the content of that particular book.

[Bootstrap]

Here's an outline of one model of critical thinking.

There are many models, but they have a lot in common. In critical thinking, we assume we do not know, and keep asking what exactly we want to know, how we can find out, and how we can tell if we are getting an accurate answer over time - and how confident we can be in that answer. At each step, you take the time to examine things from all sides, ask lots of questions - whether or not you can answer them - and take stock of how much you know and how much you still have to learn.

Let me try to apply this to another thread: credible faith. We're not trying to approach that using critical thinking, but we could, if we were willing to go slow and take our time.

First, it's helpful to try to figure out what our goals and purpose are: Why ask what credible faith is? How would a good answer affect the way we live? Are we asking so we can figure out how to live out our faith better as individuals? Or do we think this kind of question is best asked over time as part of a community? Or are we in danger of using it mostly as a way of judging other people we don't like while ignoring the application to ourselves?

Second, it's important to be clear about what we mean by the question. What do we mean by credible faith in the first place? Is there faith that is not credible? Credible to whom? Does faith mean 'trust', 'a particular set of beliefs', 'faithfulness to Jesus', all of the above, or something else? Can we phrase the question more clearly? What kind of question is this - a matter of opinion, personal testimony, biblical teaching, some combination of all of these? What would we have to do to answer this question?

You can keep walking around the wheel clockwise asking this kind of question. At each step, you ask whether you have a clear answer, how you can tell if you've got it right, etc., and figure out where to move from there.

[Josh]

One interesting thing a teacher at a G. B. Brethren school told me is that she prefers Bob Jones curriculum since she feels it teaches critical thinking.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has taught how they think different curricula approach critical thinking, especially across the panoply of Abeka / Bob Jones / Christian Light / Rod & Staff.

[Bootstrap]

Critical thinking in Christianity is essentially an evaluation of any information, teaching or viewpoint within the context of your Christian beliefs.

I agree that we should evaluate everything within the context of our Christian beliefs, but I don't think that's what critical thinking is.

Critical thinking is one way to examine our Christian beliefs and practices to see if the match what's in the Bible, what Jesus said and did, how they relate to That Other Kingdom, etc. Just one way - we definitely need prayer, intuition, emotions, and all other ways to evaluate these things, and it's best done in community with people who have different strengths in these various approaches.

And I think we should evaluate other beliefs, teachings, and viewpoints the same way that we evaluate our own.

You may be teaching critical thinking skills already by showing your students how to evaluate information that they encounter.

I definitely think Lester knows more about critical thinking than he might realize, even if it is not a term he knows.

[lesterb]

One interesting thing a teacher at a G. B. Brethren school told me is that she prefers Bob Jones curriculum since she feels it teaches critical thinking.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has taught how they think different curricula approach critical thinking, especially across the panoply of Abeka / Bob Jones / Christian Light / Rod & Staff.

I've taught material from all of these I think. At least I'm familiar with it if I haven't. But I'm most familiar with Rod and Staff. Rod and Staff would not like the idea of critical thinking. They try to review and edit their material to the point that their books contain only Truth. All the student needs to do is master the material. Memorization is considered very important.

CLP materials in the past have been designed so that a student could work on them alone. That too makes it hard to teach critical thinking (if I'm understanding the term properly). Jon Dee Martin and Lester Showalter tried pretty hard in Perspectives of Truth in Literature, but many times it was too hard to sort out the multiple choice answers they gave.

A teacher can do something about texts many times. I used to combine classes where ever possible in order to leave more time for class discussion. I think that literature is probably one of subjects that lends itself best to such discussion, followed probably by history and of course Bible.

One experiment I tried turned out very interesting. My entire classroom (4 grades 7 - 10, 24 students) read the story "The Lady and the Tiger" then I had them go through it and decide what the outcome probably was. Had a very interesting discussion, then asked them to write a sequel which each of them read aloud. I kept track. If I remember correctly 12 chose the lady and 12 chose the tiger! Pretty good compliment for the author's abilities.

I tried to do something mind stretching like that every Friday. Sometimes we talked about a poem like "The Road Not Taken" other times it was a short story, etc.

I'm enjoying this discussion.

My three single daughters are all teaching. We have some very interesting discussions at times. I hope I can interest them in such ideas.

[Franklin]

One reason that I, as a non-Christian, post to this forum is because this is the ONLY forum on the internet where there is any critical thinking at all. Modern culture has lost the ability for critical thinking. I also participate in an Islamic forum, but Islam does not encourage critical thinking.

Critical thinking means thinking that criticizes ideas. Learning critical thinking means learning to criticize ideas. There is no Christian version of this, it is a general skill.

Not everyone should be taught critical thinking, only those who have an aptitude for it. Poor critical thinking is worse than no critical thinking.

To teach critical thinking, teach something wrong and have the student criticize it. I can (wrongly) mathematically prove that 1=2 in various ways and then ask the student to find the flaw in the reasoning. When I homeschooled my children, I used original source material for American history and this often contained 2 sides of an argument. I would have my child pick one side and I would argue the other side. When he/she lost the argument, we would switch sides and repeat. After switching several times, he/she would see both side of the argument which is critical thinking because it means being able to criticize (and defend) both sides.

[Wade]

I've read public schools a couple hundred years ago would take a subject with neither a right or wrong answer and then divide the classroom into two groups. Then one side would talk with one another about why lets say the color white should be used, while the other side would give answers why black should be used. The way this would then take place is that neither was right but each side had a chance to work together in a group for a common goal and afterward then presenting a case they also heard why the other group may or may not have had good ideas too. In this form if done correctly I believe it could be done respectfully without causing debate in a negative context but seeing why it is important to consider multiple ideas.

Also:
Troubleshooting complex formulas could be helpful but I am not creative enough to give an example other than: I work with very complex machinery that at times are controlled by numerous computers and lots of electric, hydraulic and pneumatic driven fast moving parts. When I am called to come fix this machinery I am giving conclusions from operators of what needs to be done and even though they are trying to help often their conclusions are in fact wrong. Credible sources... (These men spend years on one machine but yet still don't understand how they really function.) So therefore I need to focus on the absolute facts of what is known and therefore I ask questions like; how did it work?, when did it stop working?, how do you think it should work?, what purpose does it serve functioning that way?, is their anything else I can do to brighten your day?
Often in my field then when I am lost at what to do, I need to follow the system through starting at one end and following through until I find the broken link. (Carefully analyzing one part at a time so that it can be simplified as no one person is actually smart enough to understanding the whole of these machines in detail at one time without breaking them down and focusing at one area at a time.) Maybe then when it is fixed I look at how I could have done better in executing how I troubleshot, often times I was forced by lack of time and appropriate parts that I would have to use whatever I could to accomplish the fix. So often I had to come back to what I did and fix it properly - revisiting decisions is helpful for critical thinking. Maybe this will give some ideas of how this could be taught - I was mostly just thrown in - my journeyman quit after me apprenticing for less than one year. When the mill was down people would stand around and the boss would be asking how long is it going to take to fix?

One key element can be looking for the common denominator. The common denominator isn't always the problem but it can be a good place to start. I have seen a church really having internal struggles and was able to pick out something most of them missed because I saw a common denominator.

For example if I struggle to get along with one person and every one else fine then I don't general get too concerned, but when it is with more than a few people then I am likely the common denominator.

Just some thoughts...