Importance Of Education & The Role Of Critical Thinking
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“If you do not study you will not be able to find a good job and you will be a burden to all of us”: This idea is conveyed by many parents to their children. Parents spend much energy and resources to find appropriate schools for their children with the hope of providing them with a good education. They usually try their best to attend to their children’s educational needs by providing them with all necessary books and accessories and sometimes even finding tutors for extra tuition. Most parents believe that education is the best gift that they can offer their sons and daughters. But what is education and how can the educational targets be achieved?
The purpose of education can be briefly described as to enabling individuals to reach their full potential as human beings. Its effects are not only felt individually but also as a member of the society. Individually, through education they should be able to acquire the ability to understand themselves. It broadens the mental scope and open new vistas that are inaccessible otherwise. On the other hand, education prepares youngsters for adulthood so that they may form the next generation of leaders able to hold responsibility and create progressive growth. As such, education can be identified as the foundation of society that brings economic prosperity, social harmony, and political stability.
In the book titled ‘Imagine if’, Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson state that education can be broken down into four basic purposes.
- Personal
- Cultural
- Economic
- Social
Education is personal as aptitudes and dispositions differ with each individual. It is about the cultivation of their minds and hearts. Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their cultural values from one generation to the next. In the modern world, living respectfully with diversity is imperative. Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. It is important for students to experience working environments as part of their education. Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. The empowerment of individuals needs to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life.
Individual ambitions can be realised only through effort in one’s personal development and education is the best path towards that end, because of its systematic approach in acquiring knowledge. The schooling process also helps students to learn how to cope with stress, identify and develop their talents, the development of social skills and teamwork. Perhaps one area that our schools have not given much emphasis is the development of critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking is the art of analysing and evaluating thinking in order to improve it. Critical thinking is essential as a tool of inquiry. Critical thinking skills can be developed through group discussions on real-life problems where students can share their ideas openly while showing respect to others’ perspectives through which a sense of awareness is developed. Critical thinking encourages students to make decisions cautiously after evaluating all possibilities and approach situations in a systematic manner. Excellence in thought can be systematically cultivated.
Diane Halpern proposed a taxonomy of critical thinking skills as a guide for instruction, which consists of the five main skills.
(a) Verbal reasoning skills: This category includes those skills needed to comprehend and defend against the persuasive techniques that are embedded in everyday language.
(b) Argument analysis skills: An argument is a set of statements with at least one conclusion and one reason that supports the conclusion.
(c) Skills in thinking as hypothesis testing: The rationale for this category is that people function similar to intuitive scientists who explain, predict, and control events.
(d) Likelihood and uncertainty: Because very few events in life can be known with certainty, the correct use of cumulative, exclusive, and contingent probabilities should play a critical role in almost every decision.
(e) Decision-making and problem-solving skills: In some sense, all critical thinking skills are used to make decisions and solve problems, but the ones that are included here involve generating and selecting alternatives and judging among them. Creative thinking is subsumed under this category because of its importance in generating alternatives and restating problems and goals.
The critical thinking process can be divided into four steps. Consider global warming as an example.
5. Analysis – This is about the clarification of the issue under consideration. For global warming it can be about the greenhouse gasses and climate change.
6. Reflection – Identification of the causes and possible solutions. For our example, it can be about deforestation, fossil fuel burning, volcanic activity, glacier disappearance, sea level rice, heat waves etc.
7. Evaluation – Consideration of the strength and validity, and weaknesses and negativity of the points of view.
8. Inference – Consideration of the implications of the arguments and providing a structured reasoning to support your choice.
In the process of these discussions, the teacher or the moderator has an important role to play in guiding the contributors with questions such as ‘How do you know this?’, ‘Why does it matter?’, Why is this a problem?’, ‘How could it have ended differently?’, ‘How could we avoid this problem in the future?’ and ‘What is another way to look at this issue?’. According to Bill Beattie “The aim of education should be to teach us how to think rather than what to think, to improve our minds so as to enable us to think for ourselves rather than to load the memory with thoughts of other people”.
R.N.A. de Silva
ndesilva@osc.lk
The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IB) and an educational consultant at The Overseas School of Colombo.
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