The Critical Need for Kids to Think Critically

Sam honestly believes all the claims he reads in his junk email. He wants to respond and send money right away to some very suspect source claiming to help starving invertebrates in a country he has never heard of.

Dan follows the lead of other kids, even when they are leading him astray. That got him started on smoking.

Dina has a hard time understanding other peoples' ways of seeing things. She is intolerant of anyone who disagrees with her on any issue.

Yvonne takes everything at face value. So she uncritically agrees with any authority figure's point of view on any matter. That's what she did when her social studies class was discussing America's controversial role in toppling oppressive governments around the world; she blindly accepted her teacher's stance.

Sam, Dan, Dina, and Yvonne are all kids who have not understood and embraced a process called critical thinking.

Critical thinking helps students evaluate the validity of ideas as they acquire the ability to assess the world around them. Emerging as critical thinkers, kids can judge ideas, claims, issues, and products. They can size up points of view. Most important, their critical thinking can be a huge asset in their own day-to-day decision-making. Their evaluations enable children to pass beyond sheer naivetè, to see things as they really are rather than as they seem or are designed to seem. In part it's the ability to distinguish between appearances and reality. Such insight turns out to be a powerful survival tool, an important instrument of success throughout life. And it needs to be assembled during childhood and the adolescent years.

Educators and parents alike can help children hone their critical thinking. Television commercials, newspaper editorials, political speeches, even musical offerings, short stories, and novels are all fair targets for critical scrutiny. Children have to be taught to slow down and ask themselves the right questions in exercising this mode of thinking. The following table, from an 11th grade class assignment, depicts a sequence of steps that can guide the process:

This and similar stepwise approaches can enable students to become savvy evaluators. In all instances they need to be helped to identify their own personal biases, seek the facts, and then decide on the relative merit of that which they are critically inspecting. Also, they should come to realize that gray areas exist, that many ideas and products are neither entirely good nor totally bad.