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Critical Thinking

Introduction

In educational circles, there is very importance of critical thinking. The teachers are very keen to teach thinking abilities to students in their academic career. In past, teachers focused just on the subjects' history, geography and mathematics. They didn't develop skills in the students of critical thinking but, today, mostly teachers are trying to develop thinking skills in them. Some teachers are teaching “thinking skills” directly to students. The idea of critical thinking has developed in this century. The idea of critical thinking is also termed as critic-creative thinking. Critical thinking is when someone is thinking actively and carefully and making a conclusion on the basis of thinking (Dewey, 1909). In critical thinking, the person thinks in a thoughtful way, considering the problems, using his knowledge and experience to get out of these problems (Glaser, 1941). Critical thinking is also the reflective thinking that is the reflection of ideas in mind and to decide what action to take (Cf. Norris and Ennis, 1989). Critical thinking is thinking about any subject or object skillfully, and it also improves the tendency to think high, and beyond the imaginations (Paul, Fisher and Nosich, 1993).

Discussion

If we take the ideas from someone else, the person may be our family member or a friend, and then critical thinking is passive. The active thinking is when we listen to our ideas, our own decisions, getting information by ourselves, and finally take a step to act upon the decision. Sometimes, we take quick decisions without thinking which can have negative impacts on our future decisions. Therefore, critical thinking is always the careful thinking. The reasoning is also the key element as one has to evaluate the reasoning while doing critical thinking. Critical thinking is just not thinking but skillful thinking. By skillful thinking, we mean that the person should take steps of what he thought critically. The critical thinking improves by thinking of one's thinking, and it is called as Meta cognition.

Let us consider an example of school basket ball team in which all the children are of 11 years. At a very first day, coach asked all the boys to pass the basket ball to other team members. He didn't burden them by showing more examples and practice. The boys really enjoyed passing the basket ball; suddenly he stopped and asked them if you really want to be a basket ball player ...