Critical Thinking

We often refer to critical thinking as someone who can think very clearly, with reason and complex ideas. This is somewhat true. Yes that does help to begin and mend a critical thinker but critical thinking also includes a combination of skills. Those main characteristics are self awareness, honesty, open-mindedness discipline, and judgment. Using these characteristics daily and with practice develops an amazing critical thinker. That person can live life solving hard problems, creating new ways of solving them, and using new ideas and techniques when needed.

Over time I realize that language and conversation is what shapes us and keeps society together. Without it we would not be stable enough to continue to survive and we would get no where. Using language and conversation is one way to develop our critical thinking. One example would be in class; Mr. Slakey gave us a list of words we had to associate to whether it was negative or positive. Everyone had a different answer, not everyone agreed at first. But through conversation we found a common ground. Using these lists of words allowed us to evaluate with our own perspective on the subject, all while using critical thinking and reasoning to make our own decision. In this process we were honest with our selves, and using judgment from our past experiences while reflecting on them in order to decide and make up our minds.

It is in our nature to be a critical thinker. Everyone can achieve it, but some overlook this next way. By using all our senses to evaluate the world around us is our natural way by using our eyes to see, our nose to smell the different variety of smells, our hands to feel, our tongue to taste, and our ears to hear. The reason why our senses are a big part of developing critical thinking is because our senses help us navigate around the world. Through our sense we are able to understand why things are the way they are, and it something does not seem right the first thing we use is our senses to understand a problem. A critical thinker would notice whether there was a problem or issue by using their senses and through those exact senses would fix it. Whether it is fixing a flat on a bike, realizing you hurt someone’s feelings or even writing an essay, all these tasks are done with the senses.