Critical Thinking

I substitute teach now.  Substitute teaching is easy, especially if done wrong.  If I just go in, take roll, allow the kids enough freedom to amuse themselves but not enough to cause each other bodily harm or violate school policy, I have an easy day.  If the teacher I'm substituting for actually left a substantial lesson plan, things get a little bit tougher.  I have to establish authority, set expectations, earn respect, and encourage and motivate students who may be more accustomed to substitutes who go with plan A.  A little tougher, but not much.  After all, it's not like I have to grade anything, or do any planning.

Which I hate.  I love planning lessons.  I like reading writing assignments.

So today I substituted, and things took a left turn.  The students were supposed to go to a lab to work on a paper, but the teacher didn't sign up for the lab.  This situation left me in limbo.  Time to improvise.

I've been thinking a lot about critical thinking.  As a teacher, the most important thing I can do is to teach students to be critical thinkers.  In the freefall of the classroom without a lab and therefore without a plan, I decided to have students write a definition of critical thinking.

I asked them, "What is critical thinking?"

I received some good responses, some good definitions.  I also received some bad ones.  "Critical thinking is thinking critically."  Ummm.  No.  "Critical thinking is thinking hard and coming up with a solution to a problem."  Better, but only marginally better.  I received some definitions that emulated definitions from the dictionary.  "Critical thinking is the process of using logic to determine the best course of action when confronted with a situation or problem."  Fancy.  But I still think it misses the point.

In my considerations of critical thinking, I've come up with a working definition that is simple.  For me, the critical thinker can gather not only facts from observations, but also meaning.  Or meanings.  Plural.  But more on that in a bit.

I told the students (seniors) to use critical thinking to give meaning to the results of a study about which I had heard.

The authors of this study took two groups of people, 30 American 6th grade students and 30 Japanese 6th grade students.  Each group was given a math problem to solve.  The math problem was impossible.  There was no solution, but the students weren't given that little bit of information.  Within ten minutes, the Americans had all given up.  The most common statement was "We haven't gone over this yet."  When the Japanese students were given the problem, they had to be stopped after an hour had gone by.  Not one had given up.

The majority of students came up with the following meanings for the results of the study:  Americans are lazy.  Japanese people are smarter.

They didn't think critically.


Their response was based on media messages, stereotypes, what they had heard from their parents, and a general low self-image generated by popular culture and the repeated disparagement of the American educational system.

A critical thinker would look beyond that.  A critical thinker would look at the study from several angles.  The first thing a critical thinker would do would be to break down the study.  The students were given an IMPOSSIBLE problem.  Therefore, the Japanese students were essentially wasting their time in trying to solve it.  That being the case, the Americans were smarter to quit.  Sometimes the only solution to a problem is to walk away from it.

A critical thinker would look even deeper into the study.  A critical thinker would start thinking about what the findings meant in terms of culture.  Eastern culture emphasizes the struggle.  It is glorious and noble to struggle.  The end result is only a secondary impetus to engaging in the struggle.  Whereas Americans?  It's all about the end-game.  Just win, baby.  But also about innovation.  If the traditional means of seeking a solution doesn't work, find a different solution.  Or re-frame the initial problem.  The problem wasn't the math problem.  The problem was they had been given a math problem.  They found a means of solving that problem.

A critical thinker would go beyond the study, beyond the results of the study, into the reactions of people who had heard about the results.  What is their first reaction?  Is there a secondary reaction?  What do the reactions say about the individual reacting, and does that individual typify the culture, and why?

It all comes down to asking that question.  Why?  This is the question the critical thinker asks that the non-critical thinker doesn't.  What is an easily answered question.  How is a little more difficult.  But Why never has an end.  There are causes with causes, and behind those causes are even more causes.  Why is too daunting for some people.  They are willing to accept the first answer that comes along and look no deeper.  But they never know if the first answer was the best answer.  They will say that it is.  They will believe that it is.  And if they never think critically, they can remain convinced that it is, until someone, often painfully, points out the error of their ways.