Today most kids can’t think of a world before the Internet, smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, iPods and iPads – just a few of the things that make information so readily available to them. As a parent that can recall life without such convenient, hi-tech communication, social, and learning tools my first thought on the subject is that kids today are pretty lucky, right? Well yes and no.
Having almost unlimited access to so much information is a good thing. But it can also be distracting and overwhelming, especially if kids are not discerning or astute in their consumption choice - which is where encouraging kids to be critical thinkers can make a lot of sense.
So, what is critical thinking?
The University of Canberra’s Academic Skills Centre defines it as:
“When you are thinking critically, you are not just thinking passively and accepting everything you see and hear. You are thinking actively. You are asking questions about what you see and hear, evaluating, categorising, and finding relationships.”
But the philosophy is not reserved for the tertiary educated.
Based on my five-year old son’s relentless questioning and challenging of explanations of why everyday things are the way they are, it’s probably fair to assume that there are some young children that are natural-born critical thinkers. Yet for others it’s a skill that needs to be encouraged or learned. Either way, if not nurtured early, the ability to be a critical thinker may be lost or lay dormant. For children competing in an increasingly noisy, information- rich world, such a loss could be a disastrous outcome in terms of long-term learning.
But besides monitoring a child’s educational environment - checking in to see what exactly their primary or high school teachers are doing to foster critical thinking, what else can a parent do?
According to a well published academic in the area, Peter Facione, along with a panel of experts convened by the American Philosophical Foundation, there are six core skills that underpin critical thought including:
1. Interpretation - to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules, procedures, or criteria.
2. Analysis - to identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation intended to express belief, judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions.
3. Evaluate - to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person’s perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation.
4. Inference - to identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions.
5. Explanation - being able to present in a cogent and coherent way the results of one’s reasoning.
6. Self- regulation – to self-consciously monitor one’s own cognitive activities… particularly by applying skills in analysis and evaluation one’s own inferential judgments with a view toward questioning, confirming, validating, or correcting.
By working on applying these six basic principles in your children’s day-to-day life you will help produce a more critical thinker.
But if it’s all sounding a bit airy-fairy, at the most fundamental level making an effort to help children question rather than simply accept information, get kids to repeat and clarify things that they have learned - in their own words and, as parents, avoid giving illogical, baseless responses to kid’s queries, you will be well on your way to raising a well rounded critical thinker that along with being pretty interesting company to be around may also be more able to adapt to succeeding in contemporary society.
References available on request
