“… if you can ask someone a question that causes them
to think about something unexamined, that challenges them to explore new ways
of seeing the world or making connections, you’ve actually caused a change to
happen.”
I’ve always been good at memorization but not very good at
critical thinking. I always felt like my teachers did not help me learn to
think critically and instead wanted me to remember facts and figures. I excelled
at that and it wasn’t until I was in college before I realized that others were
way ahead of me in the thinking game.
I spent my four years of college, not just learning, but
learning how others study and learn. I really struggled and for the first time
in my life, learning was hard.
I decided that when I became a teacher, I was not going to
have my students face the same results.
Even today, I have to make myself focus on the whys and the
hows rather than just the what questions. My husband is a great person to help
me with this because he always questions things he reads or hears. I tend to
take things at face value and sometimes as fact which I shouldn’t. Then he asks
me how I know what is given is true and why do I feel this way. This is what my
teachers should have been asking me!
Just repeating what they have learned is not going to help
students be successful in life. They need to learn why they should do things
and the importance of what they are learning. They need to learn how to reason
and solve problems. If they can’t solve problems, they are always going to be
dependent on others.
How do you get students to think critically? Please share.
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