9A: Think...Thinking...Thought

We finally reach college and all of a sudden there seems to be a similar instruction coming from most of our educators. They keep telling us we need to become critical thinkers. I had heard this term in the past but I never really gave it much thought…how ironic. This was probably due to the fact that in high school teachers weren’t concerned with things unless they were strictly directed from the given text. Our purpose was to memorize that material and then repeat what we remembered on the tests. Since we solely focused on the facts that’s what would be considered “literal thinking”. Now more is expected of us and we have a greater purpose.

College wants us to get in the habit of using “critical thinking”. It is the concept of not only absorbing information but of evaluating it and developing our own explanation and perspective. It requires us to look for deeper meanings in the information we encounter and to interact in engaged discussions instead of just being comfortable with what we are exposed to on the surface. This reminds me of little children and their tremendous curiosity, they don’t just always want to know the WHAT but they also want to know the WHY, WHERE, and HOW.

 
A critical thinker uses logic and reason in order to determine what is true, make decisions, and solve problems. It’s important for us to learn how to think in such a way because unlike other skills that can be easily learned on the job, the ability to think critically is developed with intelligence and time and can be used in all aspects of life. That’s why it is beneficial for us to focus on improving our critical thinking now and learning how it can tie into different subjects and matters. A course in which I could apply critical thinking to is my history class. The professor always gives us his opinion and the information from the book and tells us to use those for test purposes. However, he constantly encourages us to come up with our own theories and opinions in order to make discussions and keep things interesting. This also goes to show that although college puts a bigger emphasis on critical thinking it doesn’t mean that it completely ignores factual/literal thinking.